“Let It Rock,” A Humanist Pop-Rock Anthem

Having a degree in English is virtually worthless, though I must confess it has provided me with many skills that—though they are unprofitable—are rather amusing.  In particular, I am quite fond of the skills I learned in my literary theory courses.  After taking these courses, I learned that it is possible to interpret a text in any manner I pleased using absurd pseudo-philosophical ideas like deconstruction, psychoanalysis, or reader-response theory.  These skills allowed me to write papers interpreting virtually any short story or novel as an ode to humanistic or atheistic values, to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as subversively pro-slavery, and to interpret songs like “A Boy Named Sue” as a rumination on the Oedipal complex and Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer” as an endorsement of Christian sexual mores and values.  With a little French philosophy under my belt, there was no end to my capacity to spew bullshit.

With this history in mind, I was naturally quite bemused and overjoyed to read this post about misheard lyrics over at the War on Error blog.  In the post, the author laments the dearth of humanistic music after realizing his humanistic/atheistic interpretation of of Kevin Rudolf’s “Let It Rock” was the result of a misunderstood lyric.

Owing to my aforementioned stunning ability to bullshit, of course, I found his lamentations premature.  Virtually all songs have humanistic or atheistic themes if you’re willing to get your hands dirty with a little creative interpretation based on faddish and pretentious French literary criticism!  “Let It Rock” is indeed a humanistic anthem!  Whether he meant it or not, Kevin Rudolf has in fact penned a quite sobering song espousing humanistic values that entail a rejection of the false comforts given by both spirituality and an uncritical, shallow materialism.

The first verse of the song is so openly critical of religion that I wonder how I never noticed it before.  Rudolf sings:

I see your dirty face
High behind your collar

These lines indicate that the person described by the song is a priest.  “High behind your collar” is certainly a reference to a priest’s white clerical collar and his high status within a community.  But this priest clearly has something to hide.  He shelters himself behind his collar, using his religious status to hide his inequities.  The singer, of course, can recognize his wrongdoings, emphasizing that the priest is impure and has a “dirty face,” and notes that the priest uses his religion as a barrier or shield against any recognition of his true nature.

What is done in vain
Truth is hard to swallow
So you pray to God
To justify the way you live a lie, live a lie, live a lie

Here the singer is emphasizing the wrongs of the priest on two levels.  On one level, the priest is living a lie for devoting his life to a falsehood.  His prayers to God are “done in vain,” most notably because God does not exist, and this is a truth that is “hard to swallow,” or difficult to accept.  Thus, the priest has devoted himself to a lie.  But on another level, the priest is only praying to God to justify his moral depravities.  That is, the priest is an immoral man, and he tries to use his religion and faith as a justification for his wrongdoings.  He lives a lie because he portrays himself as godly and moral when he is anything but.

And you take your time
And you do your crime
Well you made your bed
I’m in mine

These lyrics further show that the priest has done something wrong, this time blatantly.  The singer directly states that the priest has committed a crime.  He chastises the priest with the line, “you made your bed,” as in the common criticism “you made your bed; now lie in it,” thereby implying that the priest must accept the consequences of his wrongdoing.  In essence, then, the first verse describes religious hypocrisy, and the use of religion to veil wrongdoing.  The singer, as we’ll see, espouses humanistic values that are not seeped in hypocrisy or the factual inaccuracy of belief in a higher power, and he claims the moral high ground here, noting that he contentedly sleeps in the bed he has made for himself; he exclaims, “Well you made your bed / I’m in mine.”

The second verse expands on these themes, explaining that the origin of the priest’s faith stemmed from a rejection of the world, from a false dichotomy between meaningless materialism and false religion:

Now the son’s disgraced
He, who knew his father
When he cursed his name
Turned, and chased the dollar

Here we can see that the priest came to religion from a position of materialistic values and moral emptiness.  “The son,” an obvious reference to Jesus, is disgraced by the priest’s current abuse of his faith and his moral hypocrisy, but the priest has always been a disgrace.  In the past, the priest knew his father (that is, he believed in God, the father) and cursed His name by chasing material wealth, possessions, and money.  The next lines explain that he would later come to reject the pursual of material wealth:

But it broke his heart
So he stuck his middle finger
To the world
To the world
To the world

As can be seen, the priest’s past decisions to chase money and material wealth “broke his heart.”  He didn’t find any satisfaction in meaningless consumption and hedonism.  This, in turn, led to his denial of the world, to his becoming a priest.  He denied reality, sticking his middle finger to the physical world, and instead immersed himself in an unreal world of superstition and religion, abandoning an extreme of empty materialism for an extreme of religious hypocrisy.  The priest who came to God after rejecting a meaningless hedonism is still living a lie, for neither worldview is correct or ultimately satisfying.

And you take your time
And you stand in line
Well you’ll get what’s yours
I got mine

Here we see the result of the priest’s turn to religion.  His denial of the world, indeed, his contempt for it, allow him to “take his time” with life, to not seek to live each moment to its fullest, and to instead merely “wait in line” for a judgment from God that will never come.  The singer, naturally, recognizes that the priest will get nothing from a rejection of the world and a turn to religion, noting that his own humanistic perspective on the world allows him to get the most out of life.  In that sense, the priest will wait to get what’s his, and receive nothing, while the singer proclaims, using the past tense to emphasize its fulfillment, “I got mine,” as he has already seized his opportunities and lives life to the fullest and need not wait for a fictional savior.  There is also a double meaning at work when the singer tells the priest, “you’ll get what’s yours,” as the singer is implying that his own humanistic ethical principles are more than capable of cutting through his religious hypocrisy and judging him as morally depraved, as we will see from the chorus.

The chorus, then, is where the humanistic values truly shine.  The singer loudly yells:

Because when I arrive
I, I’ll bring the fire

Thus, the singer recognizes that there is no God, no hell, and no divine punishment.  Instead, judgment must be meted out on humanistic principles, by individuals.  There is no hellfire awaiting the priest for his sins, but humanistic values and ethical principles can judge the priest.  In that sense, then, the humanistic singer “brings the fire”; not literal fires as in hell, but figurative fire as in moral condemnation and judgment from a humanist who can see through the priest’s attempts to hide behind religion.  The singer himself will judge the priest for his moral wrongdoing, based upon his humanistic ethical principles.

Make you come alive
I can take you higher

With these lines, the singer emphasizes further his humanistic perspective.  Humanistic principles can give life and meaning and purpose; they can make you “come alive” and embrace life, living for truth instead of falsity.  And they can take one beyond an empty materialism.  Humanistic principles can “take you higher” than that.

What this is, forgot?
I must now remind you
Let It Rock (rock!)
Let It Rock (rock!)
Let It Rock

With this final rejoinder, the singer reminds us all that life should not be negated through religion or a shallow materialism.  Morality and judgment are possible through humanistic principles (they allow you to “bring the fire” of judgment) while embracing reality as it is rather than inventing an unknowable spiritual realm to hide within.  The singer encourages us in the end not to reject life but to enjoy it for what it is: in other words, to let it rock!  Life can have the joys of hedonistic materialism and the meaning of religion—all that is required are humanistic values.

So far in the song, we’ve seen a materialistic priest reject the world after being unable to find happiness in a shallow materialism and a meaningless search for wealth.  We’ve seen this person become a man of faith, a priest, and yet still succumb to his inner demons, to commit crimes and live a life of hypocrisy, his depravity hidden underneath his religious status.  In this way, the song is both a criticism of religious values and the sort of materialistic nihilism often posited as the only other alternative to religion.  In the end, though, the song is critical of both views, seeking a middle ground of secular humanism, a naturalistic philosophy that rejects the supernatural and unknowable and gives us purpose and meaning through rational principles.  The first verses clearly chastise religious hypocrisy and the inability to find answers in the spiritual, but the next verses are just as critical of rampant materialism, mostly by letting the inanity of the purely materialistic perspective speak for itself.

Thus, Lil’ Wayne embodies the spirit of empty, meaningless materialism with his lyrics in the song, in which he raps about accumulating wealth, “my jewelry is louder than an engine sound,” and sexual hedonism.  At one point, he lists off a string of girls names, implying that he’ll make them remove their tops and have their “panties drop.”  These rap lyrics, though, are likewise followed by singer Kevin Rudolf’s fiery rejoinder of a chorus, in which he reminds Lil’ Wayne that humanistic values reject his empty hedonism as much as they reject religion.  His own humanism allows him to “let it rock” and enjoy life while still maintaining meaning and value, allowing people to truly “come alive” and take things “higher.”  It is obvious that Kevin Rudolf is attacking both views, the false values of religion and the meaninglessness of hedonism, because only at this point—when the song has presented both the religious priest and the materialistic rapper—does Rudolf sing the chorus twice, once for each worldview his humanism rejects.

In a final rejoinder to both the empty materialism embodied by Lil’ Wayne and the religious hypocrisy of the priest who rejected the world, Kevin Rudolf sings a plaintive cry to end the song:

I wish I could be
As cool as you
And I wish I could say
The things you do
But I can’t and I won’t live a lie
No not this time

Essentially, the singer admits that he wishes he could enjoy the shallow materialism of a Lil’ Wayne when he says “I wish I could be / as cool as you”; likewise, he wishes he could make pretenses at moral certainty and purity, like the hypocritical priest, when he croons, “I wish I could say / the things you do.”  In the end, though, the singer recognizes that both the priest and the shallow materialist are living in bad faith, seeped in a world without meaning or a world with false meaning, and he rejects both the unyielding hedonism of Lil’ Wayne and the unfounded asceticism and hypocrisy of religion.  As a humanist, he can both enjoy the world for what it really is (let it rock) and live a life of purpose and meaning (bringing the fire and taking you higher).  He refuses to live either lie, and accepts reality for what it is.

Immaculate Conceptions, Inc.

Are you tired of having your husband endlessly hump you in a mechanical, passionless effort to conceive?  Are you sick of having children with all sorts of genetic flaws, like lazy eyes and blonde hair?  Are you sick of the long, arduous process of in vitro fertilization?  Why go through any of this when you can have better results quicker and without the hassle?

Don’t conceive with science—immaculately conceive!

That’s right, immaculate conception is here!  There are no test tubes, no destroyed embryos, and no need for any physical contact with your husband whatsoever—everything a wife could ever want!  The process is quite simple.  All you have to do is send a check or money order for 29.99 to Immaculate Conceptions, Inc., and our crack team of religious mystics will immediately begin beseeching the Lord, on your behalf, for a precious divine son or daughter to immaculately enter your holy womb.  And you need never fear customer dissatisfaction, because our staff will not stop praying, sacrificing goats, speaking in tongues, and all sorts of other crazy shit until your belly has been filled with a divine baby!  We can’t promise that God will bestow upon you this most holy of gifts, but we can promise that we will incessantly pray for an exceedingly unlikely event with unprecedented fervor!

Before you have a baby, though, you must ask yourself some very serious questions.  Am I ready for an immaculate baby?  Can I afford to save up enough to send my immaculate baby to immaculate college?  Am I prepared to satiate the child’s immaculate rooting reflex with my breast?  Contrary to popular belief, raising immaculate babies is no walk in the park, unless it’s one of those parks in a bad neighborhood with a lot of crack deals going down, in which case it is exactly like a walk in the park in almost every detail.  If we’re going to pray an immaculate baby into your belly, you need to be prepared!  This immaculate baby is the most important choice in your life.  But if you’re not ready to buckle down and raise your immaculate children right, then you should have inferior children the old-fashioned way: by getting drunk and passing out at the local hoedown.

Some of the benefits of immaculate conception include the following:

• It’s cleaner!  No bodily fluids are necessary!  Why go through the draining, messy process of sexual intercourse for a baby when you can get the same thing without any fuss?  All you have to do is set it and forget it!  An instant, immaculately conceived baby!
• You’ll be the talk of the town!  Ever notice how pregnant women get all kinds of attention?  People want to touch their bellies, to ask them when the baby is due, and so on.  But imagine how much MORE attention you’ll get when they find out your baby is immaculately conceived!  Women who got pregnant through boring, conventional means will be shamed and embarrassed as the crowded throng of people gathered around them quickly disperses toward you as soon as they see your immaculate pregnancy!  People will never stop touching your belly!  EVER!
• You can drink all the wine you want while pregnant!  Unlike regular babies, immaculately conceived babies are totally immune to alcohol.  In fact, their blood is already wine, anyway.  Bottoms up!  Your alcoholism, far from being a destructive force that ruins your life, is now fuel for your wine-blooded, divine baby!
• Immaculate babies will not resemble your husband, that foul creature riddled with imperfections, in any way, but instead possess all the best qualities of God.  Except for the penis size.  Having an infinitely long penis just isn’t practical on the Earthly plane; or if you’re born a girl.

But don’t take our word for it!  Hear what our customers are saying!

“At first I was skeptical—but nine months after someone had mysteriously broken-in to my house, leaving only a wet turkey baster behind, I suddenly gave birth to a miraculous child!” -Debra

“For the longest time, I thought my womb was barren.  But after desiring to have a child so badly that I was willing to contact the fine folks at Immaculate Conceptions, I quickly found myself pregnant.  Granted, the doctors described it as a ‘hysterical pregnancy’ and insisted there was no child in my womb.  But they just didn’t understand that my child was immaculate, and therefore invisible and god-like.  Soon I gave birth to my immaculate, immaterial child (he no doubt gets the qualities of ineffability and invisibility from his father), and I felt overwhelmed with joy!  Thank you, Immaculate Conceptions!” -Linda

“I originally got married because I wanted to have children, but quickly came to the unfortunate realization that this would mean touching my husband, who is covered in unsightly hair and resembles a creature not unlike an Ewok.  Not wanting to do this, much less produce hairy Ewok offspring, I called Immaculate Conceptions for guidance.  Now I have a wonderful immaculate child!  But strangely even divine children can look like Ewoks.” -Carly

Run, don’t walk, to your nearest grocer for your bottle of Immaculate Conceptions!  (The bottle contains our phone number, so just call us when you get it and then we’ll pray for you and such.  We have to do it this way because our number is unlisted; this guy kept calling and breathing heavily into the phone.  Bastard.)

How to Conquer the World

Conquering the world is a difficult task, but it is a worthwhile goal for any aspiring evil genius. Now what is the most important part of conquering the world? Is it having really cool, high-ranking henchmen with weird physical deformities and absurd methods of attack involving thrown items of clothing? No. Is it devising elaborate, Rube Goldberg-type methods of killing potential heroes? No. The most important thing to have before setting out to conquer the world is lots and lots of underlings. You’ll need people to build your rockets, to transport your rockets, to clean your rockets, and to spell out the word “rocket” on the side of the rocket and maybe put some cool flame decals on it so everyone will know that it is, indeed, a rocket. But where do you find these underlings? How does one come across people so eager and willing to aid in the destruction of their very own planet? Well, it isn’t easy to find them, but it can be done.

First of all, you have the find the most gullible people in the world. This can be done in a variety of ways. Start conversations on various topics, like the following:

• The moon landing was a hoax.
• Evolution is a lie.
• Glenn Beck sure does make a lot of sense.
• Homeopathy totally cures cancer.

If you find anyone agreeing with you, this person is surely a gullible buffoon. Capture him in your net and take him to your secret headquarters. He may be suspicious at first, but you can put his mind at ease by throwing out phrases like “I am only kidnapping you to cure you of the quantum energy chi trapped in your DNA that can only be released through holistic, traditional Chinese medicinal practices involving watered down trace elements,” “I am removing you from society because it’s all a conspiracy theory to cover up huge governmental black flag operations that everyone is in on except you,” “I am taking you to a tea party protest to save you from the health care death panelists out to kill you with their fascist and socialist political ideologies,” or “Darwin said evolution was a lie on his deathbed, so I’m taking you to the great church of Jesus to build a rocket that will disprove evolution with Biblical science.”

Now normally you’d think you can stop here, knowing you have a tidy sum of idiots, but that is not the case. Some of these people will still not be stupid enough to be your minions. (Some, namely the Glenn Beck fans, may even be too stupid, forgetting such essentials as how to breathe or eat, rendering these minions useless for any task aside from sitting in a vegetative state in front of a TV blaring Fox News.) To ensure your minions will be stupid enough for your world-conquering tasks, you have to put them into an environment that rewards stupid behavior and winnows out those showing signs of intelligence. Call it survival of the idiots.

Finding the biggest idiots is relatively simple.  After having starved the captives for a few days, put the starved gullible morons into a giant maze, with a big hunk of cheese at the end of the maze.  Hidden inside the big hunk of cheese, place a giant, crazed robot with guns for arms that wields a chainsaw. Any candidates who reach the end of the maze should be eaten by the crazed robot for being intelligent enough to find the food. In this way, you’ve created a selection mechanism against any hint of intelligence. Those still stuck in the maze, endlessly pushing against the doors that say “pull” in search of the exit, are your new minions.

Don’t stop there, of course. Though there are a lot of stupid people in the world, there are likely not enough for a good-sized army of minions after you’ve winnowed out a good portion of the population with your stupidity-maze bottleneck effect.  To increase their numbers, you need to breed them with each other. Then you should breed their children with each other, always keeping the relationships as incestuous as possible.  The inbreeding of those who are already massively stupid will only encourage the proliferation of idiocy through the gene pool.  (Empirical evidence supports this fact.  See, for instance, Prince Charles, supporter of homeopathy and all things woo.)  After a few generations of sexy incestuous mating, you’re ready to take over the world with your new horde of minions. Also, be sure to invent a cure for old age and death, so that you can live long enough to survive through several generations of idiot-breeding.

With your minions in tow, you must then build rockets, like any good evil genius. Give your minions simple instructions using single-syllable words and easy to understand verbs like “go,” “do,” and “woo”. Have them build, label, apply sweet flame decals to, and transport rockets. Threaten to shoot said rockets at various countries unless they provide you with large sums of money. Show the leaders of the world images of your hordes of minions, using photoshop to edit out their glazed over stares, homeopathic pill bottles, creation-science textbooks, and the pools of drool and saliva at their feet. As long as you are not a communist and encourage capitalism among your peoples, Western governments will work with you. It also helps to have large resources of oil. But never under any circumstances become communist or possess no oil when threatening Western countries with your rockets. Then they will just bomb the shit out of you and your puny rockets.

Congratulations! Now that your threats of violence with rockets and a large army of idiot minions have succeeded, you will become a sovereign nation. At this point, you can meet the President of the United States at the UN after giving a long, rambling speech filled with conspiracy theories about JFK and in which you call the President your “son.” But even after gaining legitimacy, never try to usurp the United States’ army. The United States is a whole country full of half-stupid creationist woo conspiracy theorist minions that has been breeding for over 200 years. You’re better off going up against France or Sweden.

Researchers Clone God, Uncover Theological Mysteries

Early yesterday morning at Columbia University in New York, scientists at the biological theology institute managed the impossible. They had cloned God.

“Everyone told us that it couldn’t be done,” smiled lead researcher Denny McDaniels. “But where’s their God now?” He then pointed at God, who he had cloned, in the corner of the lab.

For years, scientists had always insisted that science could not address theological questions, much less clone God. But in a scene reminiscent of the movie Jurassic Park, the researchers at Columbia University managed to isolate some of God’s genetic material in a surprising, but in hindsight obvious, manner.

No, they didn’t find a mosquito trapped in amber that had once sucked on Jesus’ divine blood. Instead, they took the genetic material directly from Christ’s body.

“One of my Catholic friends mentioned to me that he had eaten Jesus,” said Timothy Lane. “After all these years of saying absurd things like this—’I've just eaten Jesus,’ ‘I just drank the blood of Jesus,’ ‘Jesus sort of tastes a bit like a stale cracker’—it finally dawned on me that perhaps he was being serious. As it turns out, Catholic priests know magic and can turn crackers into pieces of Jesus’ body. This was exactly the kind of breakthrough we were looking for in our quest for cloning God.”

With the cooperation of a rogue Catholic sect, the research team was finally able to secure a piece of Jesus. “Our earlier attempts to get a piece of Christ ran into all sorts of difficulties,” said one of the researchers. “Being scientists, we don’t understand things about god and churches and weird mystical rituals, but we nevertheless had to send in some agents to try to find one of these mysterious Jesus crackers we had heard about.” He continued, “We were probably run out of at least eleven churches before we found one that was willing to cooperate with us. Most of them were horrified when we said we wanted to clone their Jesus crackers. Others were horrified by the way we dressed and acted—we wore Amish-style beards and primitive and somber clothing and continually burst out into song and spoke in jibberish and beat ourselves silly with self-inflicted wounds—from our perches among the scientific elite, this is simply how the religious types seemed to us, so petty and small. Thankfully, in the end, we found a church that really did act in this way, and they accepted us with open arms and gave us full use of their Jesus crackers.”

With the Jesus crackers in tow, the researchers began testing the materials immediately back at the lab. “We took the crackers that had been turned into Jesus and used the latest in genomic technology to scan it for traces of viable DNA material. After a week of scanning, we hit the genetic payload—a full genome for God!”

Of course, the research was not without its ethical dilemmas. “Some of us wondered whether we could be artificially inducing the second coming of Christ, and hence Judgment Day,” said Denny McDaniels. “What if we cloned Jesus, and he woke up all groggy and confused, and then all his angels with the trumpets and shit came down and were all like, ‘Hey Jesus, aren’t you a bit early?’ and then Jesus might say, ‘It’s not my fault; these idiots brought me here early with their dastardly science!’ and then the angels would say, ‘Damn you, science!’ and being scientists who hate god and know nothing of arcane and foolish religious matters, we’d already be off to a bad footing, so certainly waking Jesus early could be problematic for us.”

Thankfully, these ethical problems never surfaced. God was cloned quite uneventfully, and now sits in the corner of the lab with a rather docile expression.

Of course, after cloning the wheat-based crackers that had been turned into Jesus, researchers were confronted with a surprising revelation concerning the nature of God. “We never would have thought,” said one of the researchers, “that God would turn out to be wheat.” Said Timothy Lane, “I think this explains all the seed-sowing parables, if you ask me.”

Congress Endorses Shouted Accusations, Immediately Descends Into Chaos

In a fateful decision, Congress has decided that it is now formally acceptable to shout, “You lie!”, or any variant thereof, at any time on the Congressional floor.  After Representative Joe Wilson was rebuked this week for his outburst during President Obama’s speech, several members of Congress from both parties decided the action taken was too harsh and unnecessary.  As a result, Congress convened and elected to revoke any future rebukes, rejoinders, condemnations, or spankings, giving politicians the right to speak their minds at any time.  While this decision at first appeared as if it would have little effect on the daily affairs of congress, in practice the decision’s ramifications have been devastating.

It turns out that politicians lie.  A lot.  If you were to shout every time a politician lied, you’d never stop shouting.  As such, congressional sessions now sound like this:  “YOUUUUUU LIEEEEEE YOUUUULIIEEEE LIIEEYOUUUULIEEEELIIEEEYOUUUUULIIEEEE!!!”  Clearly, this is in stark contrast to how congressional sessions sounded in the past: “BLARRGGHHHHHHHH! LIPSTICK!”

“Obviously things—YOU LIE!—are a bit different now,” said Democratic Representative Dave Starky.  “Things are—oh, I lie?  No, YOU LIE!—a bit more hectic now.  Many have even taken to shouting ‘Fire!’ during crowded Congressional sessions—sometimes even in the absence of fire!”

Like blaring cicadas awakened from thirteen years of dormancy, Congress has been yelling obscenities and accusations for four straight days now, barely pausing to take a breath.  The noise is so bad that even the cicadas have been complaining.  “I’ve been stagnant for over a decade now,” said Chuck the cicada.  “So yeah, I wake up and I’m kind of grumpy, and I’m just trying to sing to some of the ladies.”  He shakes his head.  “But how am I supposed to sing to the ladies with all this racket?  Some of the lady cicadas are even going interspecies; I swear I saw one of my exgirlfriends fly into Joe Wilson’s mouth as he was emitting what appeared to be some sort of erotic insect cry.”  We here at Saintgasoline.com can neither confirm nor deny these rumors at this time, although it is true that at least one Representative has flown to Argentina with a certain winged companion.

Republican Senator Joy Turgasco, in between her angry shouting, spoke to us about the Congressional phenomenon.  “The word liar is being used so much that it has almost completely lost its meaning here,” she reported.  “You can see all these regression patterns and nested hierarchies of accusations of dishonesty.  Bob calls Joe a liar, Joe says that Bob is lying about his lying, and then Bob says Joe is lying about his lying about his lying.  After about seven of these regressions we don’t even know what the hell we’re saying anymore, really, but we do it anyway.  This is how we make progress in Congress.”

For a few hours following the acceptance of the new rule, however, Congress had become exceptionally quiet as a result of Democratic Senator James Barnes.  In the midst of all the accusations of lies and dishonesty, Barnes suddenly blurted out, “I’m lying right now!”  Everyone immediately stopped, looked around, and scratched their heads.  One Senator tentatively ventured, “You…lie?  Or not? Or both?”  James Barnes, a former philosophy professor, had foiled them with the liar’s paradox.

The silence, unfortunately, was short-lived.  After hours of deep reflection, another representative shouted out, “No paradoxical self-referential remarks are allowed!”  Barnes, who was quite familiar with the resolution Congress had reached on the matter, knew that no such rule had been established, and shouted out, “YOU LIE!”  He immediately followed this up with, “Whoops!”, but not before having his plaintive cry drowned out by a resuming torrent of obscure shouting and incessant wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus Christ Hates Black People

I’m sorry, I just had to do it.

Bag Boy Equality

For years, homosexuals have been fighting desperately for positive social recognition and acceptance.  But lost in the midst of this gay activism, which is filled with men wearing evening gowns and singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” while holding a dog leash attached to a half-naked man clad in leather, are the bag boys.  Who will sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and hold creepy leashed leather dudes for the bag boys?  Apparently no one.

The bigotry and hatred of bag boys often goes unnoticed and under-reported.  As a result, the bag boys of the world suffer their lonely plights in silence, heads down, the tears streaming down their faces as they stand at the ends of conveyor belts at the checkout lanes all across America.

“We need some sort of recognition,” said Denny Murphy, a bag boy veteran of fifteen years.  “I’ll stand down here at the end of the checkout lane, practically screaming to these people, ‘DO YOU WANT PAPER OR PLASTIC?!’ and they can’t even be bothered to respond.  Sometimes they’ll look up from their purses or wallets, eyes wandering around in confusion, and ask the checkout clerk if they heard anything.  So then we just start putting things in plastic.  At this point, the customer always turns around, finally deigns to notice us, and tersely says, ‘Oh, don’t give me plastic!  Jesus.  Here, use these incredibly awkward burlap sacks, and put the burlap sacks inside of a double paper bag wrapped in seven plastic bags for sturdiness.’”  Denny sighs in exasperation.  “Like hobos and the homeless begging for change, no one will even look us in the eye.  But at least the hobos occasionally get money and respect.”

Most would probably say bag boys are simply ostracized, and nothing more.  But in reality, they suffer outright condemnation and violence led by several religious groups.  They are frequently oppressed worse than homosexuals, women, midgets, and homosexual midget women.

“Being a bag boy just isn’t natural,” said Ned Haggart, a pastor at the local mega-church in Bumfucksville, Arkansas.  “When you go into the wild, you don’t see the monkeys and the fruit bats and the manatees putting their groceries in bags.  Unless they are those trained monkeys that are in the circus—but they’ve just been corrupted by the evil bag boy liberal agenda.”

Increasingly, bag boys are being politically targeted by religious fundamentalists.  Many worker unions are attempting to prevent bag boys from recieving wages by preserving what they call “the traditional workforce.”  Jay Dobeson, president of the conservative organization Focus on the Workforce, had this to say:  “A job is defined as a union between an employer and and employee, not an employer and a bag boy.”  He says bag boy with such characteristic rage that his jowls quiver and shake.  “Jobs have been defined this way throughout history.  To just all of a sudden redefine what a job is to include bag boys would cause the destruction of our workforce and the moral fabric of our society.  Soon we’d be telling our children that it’s okay to bag other people’s groceries.  And then the proliferation of so many plastic bags would suffocate everyone.  These bag boy activist groups are just going too far.  They should just be content that we no longer stone them to death and move on.”

Meanwhile, outside a Walmart in Ames, Iowa, a sign-waving crowd has gathered to protest the recent passing of bag boy equality legislation, which allowed bag boys to receive wages for their work.  The legislation also allowed bag boys to marry other bag boys, a practice that had long been forbidden and punishable by death.  The signs at the protest rally vary in quality from poorly-spelled scrawls written on pieces of cardboard to embroidered banners—but the one thing they all have in common is their denouncing of the bag boy equality laws.  One sign says, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Paper and Plastic and Steve!”  Other signs display only Bible verses that condemn bag boys as abominations.  At one point, the crowd starts chanting a Bible verse.  “Man shall not lay food in bags for other men!  Man shall not lay food in bags for other men!”  Apparently they haven’t quite mastered the art of chanting short, pithy rhymes with a decent ryhthm, but they’re trying—in their own confused way.

Of course, though the religious influences on the condemnation of bag boys is quite overt in this crowd of protestors, some in attendance, including key conservative leaders and anti-bagging politicians, insist that the Bible has nothing to do with it.

“This isn’t about religion; this is about preserving the traditional definition of ‘workforce’,” said former senator and Presidential candidate Michael Beehucka.  “I have no problem with bag boys; I only have a problem with people who choose to put things in bags.”  I press him further to clarify his secular, nonreligious reasons for condemning bag boys.  “It’s really quite simple,” he says.  “Look, if everyone were a bag boy, the workforce would grind to a halt.  There would be no more engineers or scientists or politicians or pastors or pig breeders.  We’d all just bag things, and then there’d be nothing left to bag, except other bags!  So being a bag boy is self-defeating.  And it’s even worse if you let the bag boys marry other bag boys!  Two boys can’t have kids!  That means no more future!  The human race would end at the quick-reflexed bagging hands of the bag boys.”  He smiles and continues.  “Now, I’m no bigot.  Some of my best friends are bag boys.  And I think bag boys have a right to life and free speech.  But I also have a right to not look at them and not have them touch my cantaloupes and put them in bags.  And I have a right to not let them marry each other.  We live in a civil society and a democracy, and that is the only thing stopping us from ripping them apart and raping them, as this is what routinely happens to creatures in the wild who become bag boys.”  Some of the other protestors at the rally nod in agreement as he speaks.

Unfortunately for the bag boys, it seems that conservative groups are now focusing all of their efforts on bagging.  They’ve largely given up on homosexuality and lobster-eating and satanic messages in rock music and wearing mixed fabrics.  Much of this is because the homosexuals already have control of the media in the form of the Gay…ermm, Bravo…television network.  Shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy are  accepted fixtures of American society.  George Hazard, prominent bag boy rights activist, finds this worrying.  “We’ve been trying to model our activism on that of the gay rights movement, which has made so much progress.  I’m even pitching ideas for several bag-boy-related reality TV shows—like ‘Two Girls, One Bag’, ‘Mother May I Sleep With Bagger–the Timmy McFaye Story’, and ‘CSI: Bagger’.  Unfortunately, the bag boy equality movement has made little headway in today’s culture.  Even bag ladies and douche bags have better reputations.  But at least we’re not as bad as the atheists.  Nobody likes those fuckers.”

Of course, only time will tell if things will change for bag boys in the future.  For now the future looks bleak, with what few victories the bag boys have garnered generating continual outrage and bad press.  Bag boy Douglas Grosse, in summary of the bag boy plight, said,  “Everyone thinks they can just ignore us because the word boy is part of our title and we tend to be young and pimply and are easily ignored fixtures at the ends of checkout lanes and we don’t even get to do anything cool like bat boys or ball boys—but we’re people, too, and one day the world will realize that.”  Is little Douglas Grosse correct?  Is bag boy equality really in the bag?  They can only hope.  But for now, they just keep on baggin’.

Atheism Will Get You Laid!

Owing to personal experience, the following data seemed highly counterintuitive, but apparently being an atheist will get you laid.  And not just by goats, but by women!  Women who are not goats!

Okay, I’m actually giving this data the headline writer treatment.  Without my overblown exagerrations, the blog entry actually says something slightly less exciting.  Basically, when someone on the dating website OKCupid uses the term atheist in a message, the other person is more likely to respond.  Much more likely.  The baseline response rate is about 30%, and using the word atheist increases the response rate to over 40%.  Hello, vagina-town!  Surprisingly, OKCupid did not note any effectiveness for the phrase “Saint Gasoline is amazingly endowed,” which is how I begin all my messages, as I speak in the third person and I’m a habitual liar.

The graphic below is telling.  It shows that atheists get to bang a lot more headboards than any other religious group.  Plus, unlike the religious, we also get the added bonus of being able to actually enjoy the sex without any attendant guilt!  And we also don’t have to time our sexual encounters with the rhythm method and continually measure our wife’s mucous levels to determine the proper time for coitus, although that certainly sounds quite, erm, arousing.  But behold, the chart:

The atheists are coming! The atheists are coming!

The data are so compelling that OKCupid themselves advocate conversion to atheism, or at least belief in lesser-known deities like Thor and Zeus, in the name of love:

Though very few people actually do it, invoking the sky-breaking thunderbolts of zeus does help a person get noticed (reply rate 56%), but maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise on a site that is itself named for a member of the Greek pantheon. So if you can’t bring yourself to deny the deity, consider opening yourself up to a whole wacky bunch of them. But ideally you should just disbelieve the whole thing. It can help your love life, and, besides, if there really was a god, wouldn’t first messages always get a reply?

Ah yes, it’s the problem of dating-evil argument for the nonexistence of God.  Let us define God as omnipotent and morally perfect. Now, it is morally preferable for God to let me get laid after mentioning him in random messages to Internet chicks.  However, I do not get laid by random Internet chicks when I mention God. If God cannot get me laid, he is either not omnipotent or not good.  Therefore, God does not exist. (It is amazing the sorts of things you can prove when you are lonely and desperate for human contact.  Please may I touch your vagina?)

Now, even though mentioning Zeus garners a 56% reply rate over the 42% reply rate for mentioning atheism, I foolishly refuse to believe in any of these lesser gods, preferring to disbelieve.  The only god I would ever consider believing in is the one that is an elephant with a bunch of extra arms and shit.

It is important to note, of course, that OKCupid probably does not adequately represent the general population.  I’ve found, after extensive study, that sending messages mentioning atheism on other dating web sites (Match, Chemistry, EHarmony, AdultFriendFinder, IWantToHaveSexWithGoats, etc.) does not lead to similar results.  After sending millions of desperate emails to women with nothing in common with me, I’ve found that mentioning atheism on these other sites causes the women to throw holy water on you, expecting you to melt.  And lest my highly scientific data be questioned, rest assured that I kept the usage of the word atheist constant throughout my messages, surrounding it with a variety of variable textual contexts, and I was rejected in all scenarios in which atheism was mentioned, whether I also mentioned that I never wear pants and make out with fainting goats or that I am an impeccably well-mannered human being who wants 2.5 kids, the .5 of a kid being used to feed the other two.  Atheism is, without a doubt, the cause of all the rejection letters and screams of horror.  Even mentioning the goat fetish in the absence of talk about atheism garners more responses.  At least among the goats.

What can we conclude?  Well, if you are an atheist, and you want to get laid hard—so hard—then be sure to join OKCupid.  The site is crawling with atheist men and women just waiting for your emails about atheism and zombie Jesus. (Both zombie and jesus also seem to increase reply rates, so why not combine them?)

From the OKCupid blog again:

Atheist actually showed up surprisingly often (342 times per 10,000 messages, second only to 552 mentions of christian and ahead of 278 for jewish and 142 for muslim).

As can be seen, the ladies on OKCupid are talking about atheists!  Of course, seeing as how I am a member, it is likely that at least 93.4% of these uses of the word atheist are attributable to me, as I routinely receive hundreds of messages per every 10,000 that talk about atheism, zombies, and the messenger’s burning desire to feel my meat inside her hoo-ha.  Why these ladies are so obsessed with my delicatessan meats, I’ll never understand, though my penis is surely jealous.

Conversation on a Death Panel

Far away, in the dank recesses of some bureaucratic office building, a guild of government officials gathers, all of them hooded and somber, their eyes glaring with the sheen of the unyielding power that has recently been granted to them by the health care reform bill. They sit around a long, oval shaped table, distributing thick folders prominently labeled “Grannies” with a red slash through the word.

Panelist 1: I hereby convene this death panel!

Panelist 2: And yet you forego the traditional ceremonial practice of drinking a glass of blood to open the meeting!

Panelist 3: I think we all had enough blood to drink at lunch.

Panelist 1: You all know very well that, as a Catholic, I only drink blood on Sundays.  But nevermind that.  Let us forget the silly ceremony and directly address the “Granny” question.

Panelist 2: (Excitedly) I say we kill them all! Turn ‘em into firewood, my papa always said. There’s nothing quite like the smell of granny roasting on an open fire.

Panelist 3: I’m sorry, but we have to make at least a minimal effort to give health care to some of these grannies. Of course, there is a time and place for setting various grannies alight if that is financially prudent, but we can’t simply assume a pyre of all grannies will offer the most benefits and least costs. Gasoline, after all, is expensive, and grannies are slow to burn, unlike those soft, flammable Down Syndrome babies; they just light up like tiny little Roman candles!

Panelist 2: Look, the only reason I signed on for this death panel gig was to burn some grannies. If you want to provide health care to some of them, you go ahead and do that, but the health care bill was pretty explicit in endorsing universal mandatory granny burning. The Democrats are only considering dropping the public option provision, not the universal granny burning provision.

Panelist 1: Do the two of you never stop bickering? Let us please try to discuss the Granny issue rationally. This is America, after all, where things have always been discussed rationally and never exaggerated, overblown, or distorted by media outlets.

Panelist 2: (Incredulously) America?! Everyone knows we’re actually Nazi Germany now. The renaming was established on page 423 of the health care bill: “Verily, with the passing of this bill, thou shalt rename thy country ‘Nazi Germany’.” Plus it shouldn’t be a surprise that this country is no longer America, seeing as how we elected someone who was actually born in Kenya to the highest office.  I can’t believe the conservatives didn’t uncover our Kenyan plant in the government sooner!  In the next election we may even get our Nigerian puppet in office, after sending emails to all American voters about how they need to provide their bank account numbers, social security number, and vote Democrat if they wish to receive the $1,000,000 left for them in a Nigerian bank by their long-lost Nigerian relative.

Panelist 3: Obama from Kenya? Don’t be so foolish. That Kenyan birth certificate was a total fraud and a joke. Besides, everyone knows that Obama was actually born in hell, him being the antichrist and all.  This is why we liberals loyally serve him, O Dark Master!

Panelist 2: Regardless, we still need to go through this list of grannies and assign them to various forms of death. Like the health care bill noted, this is the most effective way of reducing costs associated with health care.

Panelist 1: Now wait just a second. We can’t just kill these grannies in whatever way suits you. We have to kill only those grannies that are likely to incur the most health care costs, and kill them in a manner that is cheap and affordable. Contrary to prior belief, killing grannies is actually quite costly. Did you know that socialized medicine in other countries often spends as much as $12 for every granny killed?  When you consider those costs with the fact that putting grannies in a hamster wheel to generate electricity can save $20 on a yearly electricity bill, you have to wonder if we should be so quick to kill all grannies.

Panelist 2: It’s true. Plus, in order to be euthanized, the grannies have to wait in endless, government-run lines, stretching for miles.  In some cases these grannies may have to wait for months and years just to get their much-needed euthansia services from the government.  This is what happens with government-run euthanasia.  If only we could just hire someone from the private sector, like Blackwater, to ice those grannies.  It worked for Bush in Iraq, after all!  But that would not go over well with our liberal, health-care-waiting-list-loving constituents.  Those crazy hippies just love waiting in lines!

Panelist 3: We may have to set up a private sector granny-euthanizing system, to help placate those rich, Republican grannies who want to be euthanized without government involvement by private entities.  It’s a compromise to consider.  Plus with a little granny euthanasia competition, perhaps the industry could be spurred to more and more efficient granny destruction.

Panelist 1: I’ll have to run that by the granny death squad czar.

Panelist 2: Okay, okay, but let’s just get on with it!  (Reaches for a file from the large folder.)  Here.  This is Granny Mae’s medical file.  (Pauses to think a bit.)  I say we burn her!

Panelist 3: Shouldn’t we determine whether she weighs as much as a duck fir…

Panelist 1: No!  We can’t burn Granny Mae.  Are you ignoring the details of her file?  She’s white!  Everyone knows that the new liberal medical affirmative action program detailed on page 342 of the bill mandates that illegal immigrants and minorities get first dibs on our euthanasia services.  No more will the white man be privileged!

Panelist 3: I think you mean the white man or woman.  We have to be sure to be gender neutral when talking about our white privilege!

Panelist 1:  This is true.  As such, though, Grannie Mae must be placed last on the waiting list for euthanasia.  Unfortunately we will have to ration our granny-killing squad, and only those most in need of a granny killing will receive it.

Panelist 2: Oh, I hope those conservatives don’t hear about this.  Soon they’ll be bitching about rationed care, talking about the tragedy of the commons and what-not.  When everyone has access to euthanasia, you don’t take care of it or take responsibility for it, they’ll say, and sooner or later the euthanasia will be so degraded and corrupted by misuse that it will amount to hitting old ladies with mittens and nerfballs or else trying to set them on fire withice water.  If only economics didn’t constantly try to foil our death panel decisions!

Panelist 3:  Wait.  Do you… Do you smell that?

Panelist 2:  It smells like burning.  Mmm!  The fresh smell of grannies!

Panelist 3:  That’s not grannies. It appears that I’m the one on fire.

Panelist 2:  Well, would you look at that!  So am I!

Panelist 1:  Okay, I might as well tell you guys.  You are both too old.  So I had to set you on fire.  We decided this in the upper hierarchy of death panels that oversees this lower death panel.

Panelist 3:  I’m just glad that my insurance costs for this procedure will be covered by the government health care plan!  I’m not sure my family could afford the matches and combustibles that made this possible!

Panelist 1: (Dousing himself with gasoline.)  Yes, our new health care plan is a great boon to everyone, in part because of our efforts on the death panel.  Thankfully, I too was chosen to be euthanized.  I myself was the deciding vote!  To think they tried to deny my chance at euthanasia, and cost-saving, merely because I am 1/4th white.  It’s almost reverse discrimination!

Panelist 2:  Just think, under the old plan of private, employer-based insurance, we would have been denied coverage for this euthanasia!  They would have killed us the old-fashioned way, by simply denying us any insurance for our pre-existing conditions and finding ways to weasel out of paying for important procedures or covering claims!  A panel of insurance company claims adjusters would gather, not unlike we gather here, decide who gets coverage based on their health histories and physical examinations, and pore over claims to deny in an effort to preserve profit margins!  Can you imagine such a world?  A world where panels actually convene to kill grannies?

Panelist 1: I simply cannot imagine such a thing.  Insurance companies denying coverage to the sick and the poor, charging unreasonable premiums that most can’t afford, and in effect sentencing these people to a slow, euthanized death?  I can’t imagine what that could possibly be like!

Suddenly, there is silence.  The death panelists are reduced to ash.  A large group of identically dressed janitors enters, all of them wearing jumpsuits with sickle and hammer logos on the breast, and they slowly and incompetently attempt to sweep up the ashes, inefficiently and haphazardly moving about as they are shouted at by multitudes of bureaucrats with megaphones giving them conflicting directions, while those bureaucrats are shouted at by further bureaucrats with conflicting suggestions, and so on into infinity, until eventually, after years of random, erratic sweeping, the ashes have finally been swept up into a neat pile, and the next death panel enters, armed with a new stack of granny-euthanasia files, ready to fulfill their duty as death panelists to kill as many grannies as possible.

Walter Cronkite and Numerological Destiny

By Deepsack Woo-Hands

Walter Cronkite, the prominent and prolithic news anchorman, died a few days ago. What the news outlets won’t tell you, of course, is that Cronkite’s death was predicted by numerology. In fact, a prominent numerologist, who wishes to remain anonymous, had been predicting for years (ever since Cronkite’s 80th birthday) that Cronkite would soon pass away. Amazingly, a mere 12 years later, at the surprisingly young age of 92, Cronkite suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from complications relating to dementia.

“I saw this coming from a mile away,” said the numerologist, knowingly. “Possibly two miles away, but at least one mile away for sure.”

According to the numerologist, the numbers in Kronkite’s life had been pointing toward an untimely end, and they all culminated in the ultimate numerological sign of death on July 13, 2009. Mysteriously, Cronkite did not die on that fateful day, but four days later, on July 17. But as we all know, 4 = 2 * 2, which can be written as (1 + 1) (1 + 1), which can further be rewritten as (0 +1 + 1)(1 + 1 + 0). “Those two zeroes on either end of the equation signify death, with the four ones signifying the month of July, which has only four letters.”

The coincidences don’t stop there. “Walter’s life was dominated by the numbers 1 and 0. Traditionally, the number 0 signifies nothingness or everything, which is annihilation or death in the Eastern mode of thought. The number 1 represents the individual, the physical world. Having the number 1, symbolizing the mortal coil, so tightly wound in with the number 0, tells us that his life would be prolific, great, and soon to end.” And for those skeptics who would dispute the significance of these numbers, one need only look at the numerologist’s chart, which he referred to as “my super-duper number thingy”. The chart of Cronkite’s life is filled with the numbers 1 and 0. In fact, the whole chart is 1s and 0s.

In explanation, the numerologist said, “Almost 12 years ago, I took all the important dates from Walter’s life, put them into my computer, converted them to computer code, and printed them out. For some reason, all the dates, all the ages, and all the numbers were represented as 1s and 0s on the paper. The computer was trying to tell me something by converting the numbers to this strange, mystical script.”

The numerologist listened to his numbers. He immediately began predicting Cronkite’s death only a decade ago. “Skeptics tried to tell me that numerology is bunk, that my predictions failed year after year; their minds are closed to the possibilities.” He took a sip from his coffee and pointed to his chart filled with numbers. “According to my super-duper number thingy, Cronkite was headed to doom, as indicated by the proliferation of 1s and 0s. The skeptics scoffed and tried to tell me that the computer had converted it to this mystical (and probably made-up) thingamajig they called ‘binary,’ which strikes me as ad hoc special pleading—as if a computer can think and possess enough intelligence to turn numbers into different numbers! Next they’ll be saying computers can turn 6s into 7s and 30s into 23s!” He held up his chart, the 1s and 0s eerily filling the page. “But who’s laughing now? Cronkite died, just as I predicted!”

“The numbers never lie.”

Of course, not everyone accepts numerology. After finding a random token skeptic, a Mr. Saint Gasoline, I asked him several hard-hitting questions, questions for which he had no answer. I asked him to tell me the meaning of life, and he had no real response. I asked him to tell me the sound of one hand clapping, and he looked at me in confusion. I asked him to describe for me the taste of honor, and his eyes merely glazed over. I even asked him a basic science question, how many protons are in the element kryptonite, and he couldn’t respond. He was, in short, a fool without answers, and not just because I asked meaningless questions. It was also because I forgot to take notes.

“In the grand scheme of things, Numerology is but a wart on the ass of claimed ‘psychic’ powers, somehow managing to be more ridiculous than cold reading and tea leaf divination. Of course, tarot card reading is a meta-wart, a wart upon the wart that is numerology, probably with a big hair growing out of it, or at least a cancerous growth called Sylvia Browne protruding fiendishly from it, which is the most malignant of all incredulous cancers,” said the token skeptic, who was wearing a dirty t-shirt, smelled bad, looked incredibly dishevelled, and probably had never been laid.

But despite the single skeptic, the coincidences are too many to count—unless you know numbers well and numerology even better! How, after all, is it possible that 0s and 1s filled Cronkite’s life a mere moments (or decades) before his death at the tender age of 92? How can the skeptics explain away the fact that Michael Jackson’s death was similarly preceded by a string of 1s and 0s when converted to binary computer code? And how can they explain the fact that celebrities always die in threes, which can be reduced to three 1s, or which for some reason comes out as 11 when converted to computer code, which can be written as 11 + 0? Ones and zeroes, again! Does it mean our lives are all governed by mystical numerological principles? Perhaps. We’ll never know for sure. Or will we?