I Never Shut Up

I’m So Lazy

christ davis — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:07:00 +0000

I can’t cough up my own post, but Rude Pundit is bringing the good shit. Go read it and tell me he’s wrong, if you dare.

How Many More Sausage Heads ?

christ davis — Thu, 08 May 2008 03:54:09 +0000

In response to an article in the New York Times regarding the Bell murder protests, some comments were so precious. Regard:

“NYPD with 36 thousand cops killed 10 people last year in a city with over 8 million people plus the millions more that flood it from NJ & LI. We have one of the most restrained police forces in terms of deadly force in the US. Sure theyll stop a black man for sneezing but these protests are just to keep Al Sharpton relevant…”

— Posted by marsel

How ironic, in the name of fairness and justice, the protestors blocked innocent people from their business, medical, social and other appointments in the city. Yeah, that’ll win the public over. Showboating Al Sharpton and his gullible minions would do better to familiarize themselves with due process and civil order, and plan a more effective strategy for dealing with anger.

I was stuck in Harlem coming off the Triboro Bridge trying to get home. I sat for about half an hour in my car, engine off, as people sat in front of my car.

If their goal was to get headlines, they got them. But this verdict has received lots of media attention already. I hope they feel they accomplished something, since I really had to pee and it was pretty close call there.

— Posted by sarah

Civil disobedience does not takes courage when you are part of a ugly mob.

These people are a selfish mob to block roads and bridges.

Working people who see these fools should and will mock and resent them for it.

I am sorry I posted this so late in the day as I was delayed driving home today.

— Posted by Patrick”

anyone else notice Sharpton waited until AFTER Obama locked up the Nomination by winning North Carolina last night?

Now THAT’S smart politics.

keep the protests (that are sure to be viewed as racial in the media) out of the presidential primary.

well played, Al.

— Posted by bob

“What a bunch of jerks! They basically took the drivers hostage!

— Posted by Julia”

Thank you Mr. Sharpton for diverting resources and money that could actually be helping poor people and crime riden neighborhoods. Also, thanks for leading individuals to waste gasoline when its price is at an all-time high as drivers cam to a stop as they sat idly thanks to your tactics. In turn, you hurt the environment and many’s pocketbooks who had absolutely nothing to do with the Bell tragedy.

— Posted by RSH

Further evidence the US is becoming a banana republic (a la Argentina, for example): protesters who think it’s acceptable to block the flow of traffic. Commuters, law-abiding and blameless, must have been frothing at the mouth.

God forbid this should become the norm.

Here is a police force that, if anything, has shown restraint, and whose tactics, if anything, have SAVED black lives. So let’s not have any of those self-pitying, populist allegations of institutionalized racism — which and off which Mr. Sharpton feeds.

Pity Mr. Bell. Wish, with Mr. Sharpton, that it had been Mr. Sharpton. For a martyr is what Mr. Sharpton so plainly craves to be.

— Posted by Matthew Z

Vietnamese dominate the nail care business…Koreans dominate the dry-cleaning business… and Others dominate the public-disturbance and mayhem business. They really have their priorities straight.

— Posted by Jack

I simply can’t see how protests do anything but antagonize and potentially harm the innocents caught in the traffic jams.

Do the protesters ever think of anyone but themselves?…

— Posted by MD

In fact, the city I live in is and always has been marred by vicious behavior by the cops, mostly aimed at Blacks, followed closely by whining and gnashing of teeth by the local press when some other Blacks and their liberal lapdogs dare to protest. Until very recently, maybe five years, our little slice of heaven on earth was the most physically segregated city in the u.s. It is a bit different now, but not much. The same high-tech bullshit as above comes out of the less evolved segment of our Fair City every time the cops beat someone half to death for reacting negatively to a baker’s dozen cops landing on his back.

I deal with poor, fucked-for-life men every day, about 1/2 & 1/2 Black and White. This city used to be a major manufacturing center, but now there are mostly crap jobs for no money, and temp at that. No benefits or insurance for sure and usually just enough money to make a person ineligible for general assistance insurance or food stamps. For men who want to work but are thwarted at every turn, many turn to petty crime or idle drunkenness, which only adds more gaps to their work history.

This post has slewed in a slightly different direction than I intended, but is still within the subject of ignorant race bating and ugliness of spirit causing other humans undue harm, discounted if the trains are running on time, or even if they aren’t.

One idea that never caught my imagination is that there are, other than cultural expression, fundamental differences between people with different skin colors. Until I was about eight, I lived in several small communities that were mostly white, with a smattering of Mexican migrant workers who stopped, in one town. In a few years the State was raising me and that is when I discovered Blacks, outside of the context of music/movies. Forced to engage each other we broke into four camps: Blacks; Whites; Whites emulating Blacks(poorly); Humans. I have always identified with the Humans. I understand intellectually that there are people who divide the world into useless categories predicated on skin color, or religion, or allegiance to a fucking sports team, and that some of these sausage heads are prepared to kill to maintain the division. But I’ll be damned if I can wrap my head around this idea. Trying to figure this behavior out has consumed more time than I can calculate.

Not for a minute attempting to position myself as some sort of avatar of righteous behavior, I have been able to navigate through life without having to resort to reducing the entire species to abstractions in order not to have to deal with individuals. I know that I am not alone, but with 6+ billions of our species on the planet, statistically there should be fewer sausage heads, right?

good night, Family

Pollyanna

CarnivUL of The fraudless

christ davis — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:23:40 +0000

Go now to The Frame Problem and check out the fun. There is a fine collection of videos and some coherent yakking about Anonymous and the Scientologist jackasses.

Feeling superfluous

christ davis — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:11:46 +0000

There are so many articulate, well read people out there in the aetheosphere that it seems that there is nothing that I could write that will not have been said more succinctly by one of the regulars I read. Partly, this is due to the lack of practice I have actually writing things down in a reasonably coherent manner. I can talk my ass off, and do. I have had long discussions of poetry, politics and biology with a good friend of mine. I am interested in all of these topics, but I understand the limits of my knowledge. I have a dread of stepping out past the point where I know what the hell I’m talking about. I can and will offer my opinions on other peoples posts, but that is a much different thing than constructing a post of my own that makes sense. I do not want to gain a reputation like Denise O’Leary and her ilk, all incoherence and bluster. So, I will be sticking to what I know something about: religion and the toxic idiocy that it catalyzes in unwary people. There are no shortage of these unfortunates around me.

Let’s see how this goes, I tell the crickets chirping in the audience.

______

Speaking of good reading, go to here for some bloggy goodness.

Pure Gold

christ davis — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:16:10 +0000

“fucking ironic how the only missing links are those on uncommon descent”

Quoth me here in comment #3, discussing the deleted thread about the slaughter of Simmons by PZ Myers the other day.

I want Shalini!

christ davis — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:19:07 +0000

I tried to read my favorite rude woman blog today and got a screen saying I have to be invited. Shalini, I ain’t a troll! May I enter? I need the snark!

Now it seems that there is some sort of drama in her world. I hope the trouble is amenable to 5,000 bloggers landing on its neck.

goddamnit

christ davis — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:53:39 +0000

Some fucking religious idiot killed Benazir Bhutto.

Fuck you, you fucking fucks!

Tattoo Season Is Here Again!

christ davis — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:33:29 +0000

So,my very cool employer gave me a gift certificate to the shop of the artist who has covered me with about 50% of my tats. Then what do my wondering eyes behold, but this post on Crooked Timber. Now the only problem is which design, and where to place it.

A Godless Life

christ davis — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 04:41:56 +0000

I have been atheist my entire life, as far as I can tell. I remember in Sunday school when I was six or seven, being more interested in the pronunciation of the multi-syllabic names. I also remembering that the books I was reading from the library were better written. My mom had been teaching me words since I was about ten days old ( really, only a slight exaggeration ), so I guess the see-spot-run level indoctrination was transparent. In any case, by the time I was eight years old I was allowed to opt out of that, although we still attended services every week for political reasons having to do with my Father’s job aspirations. All I was expected to do was stay awake; my mind was always far away.

Over the years I was pestered by various entities who had possession of my case file to attend the church of their choosing, mandatorily. If I asserted that I had no religious beliefs I received a stock-issue look of bafflement. The annoyance of hearing regularly that “of course you have to choose a religious denomination, it’s for your own good” from the pig-ignorant sociopaths that controlled my existence was only exceeded by my anger over their refusal to allow me access to books worth reading. They certainly facilitated my rapid flight into the sub-basement of my mind, where I remained, pissed off, for entirely too long. Bastards.

I have to say that I have known quite a few religious folk over the years who were decent, sweet and kind to me. I spent a significant amount of time at a Catholic Worker soup kitchen in California, which was run by a group comprised of Jews, Buddhists, various flavors of Christians and many uncategorizable malcontents and nutjobs. I never had to fear proselytizing from anyone, except the anarchists.

Since 1998 I have been closely associated with A.A., but these days I do not have to sit still for any earbanging from evangelists. I have been around long enough to establish my bona fides. I live in a relatively small city, of which the recovery community is an insular fraction. Mostly, people don’t care about my atheism; Some get this pitiful scared look on their faces, if they don’t know me well. Some get angry because I am undercutting the absolutism of their interpretation of A.A.

I have read many, many books on religion and atheism. I have another on order now. Through all of these books, and the sometimes contentious, stimulating conversations I have had with people I have never been able to understand why anyone could believe in any of the gods they were loyal to. This bafflement I expect to continue. I get the need for community and ties to like minded people, and to an overarching philosophy, but gods, well I don’t know…

Thanks for your attention. Or, perhaps, Wake Up!

Turning Your Will Over To What?

christ davis — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:22:09 +0000

Many people who are or have been associated with one of the Anonymous groups, principally Alcoholics, Narcotics or Cocaine Anonymous, are aware that they are based in evangelic Christianity. The Oxford Group of Frank Buchman specifically. I will not talk of this, as the industrious Agent Orange has done this exhaustively.

I would like to address the perceived necessity of what is called “turning your will over” to god as a prerequisite to autonomy. Every drunk ( any addict, but for brevity I will use drunks universally) comes to recovery pretty much wrung out, desperate for a solution, whether they have any previous exposure to the A’s or not. I can speak best of my own experiences, but these are likely universal, or as close to it as makes no difference.

I knew that I was a drunk for nearly the whole time that I drank. Always excessive drinking followed closely by catastrophes. This was my lot in life; not the most pleasant life, but oh well. So, when I got to the brink and decided that I did not want to die under an overpass in the midst of another week long blackout, I reached out. Immediately the chorus began chanting: “only god can save you; we were once as you are; your best thinking got you here”, etc. Having been atheist as long as I can remember, I almost bolted that day. But weariness made me hold off while I looked for the loopholes. This turned out to be easy, although I wasted a year or so battling the god people, rather than thanking them for their suggestions and promptly forgetting what they said that was higher powered.

The myriad A’s have convinced the world that they have the only answer to drink, dope, gambling, sex, and nearly any behavior that can be overdone by humans. Everything is a Disease, which can only be cured by a spiritual conversion to god worship. Nothing in AA dogma has been changed since Bill Wilson tripped on a Belladonna cocktail and saw whatever he thought he saw. Drop the pretense that you can make a rational decision to save your own ass; this is impossible, because in and of yourself you are powerless against any random chemical or behavior. This is undiluted nonsense, of course, but humans have a need for community and this is the lever, or more accurately, the rack that a drunk gets stretched on. Pretend that autonomy is defined by completely abdicating autonomy, or die.

I have a friend who I have known almost as long as I have been sober. He went head first into god. Rapture Ready was the start page in his browser. If I cracked the tiniest joke about imaginary 6 foot rabbits he would not talk to me for a week. He knows I am Hellbound. But, for many years we traipsed all over this city looking for serious minded people in recovery. We watched dozens of men fall off here through not making themselves stay sober. Neither of us could understand why the other refused to see the manifest truth of the others position.

The rigid insistence on the idea that only gods allow one to stay sober is untrue. My experience and the experiences of many open and secret atheists in recovery is the evidence. The, I’m sure, tens of thousands who had to quit for whatever reason, without going to AA are evidence. The thousands who use Rational Recovery are evidence. The hundreds that I have seen come through our tiny facility who were convinced that they had no power in themselves to stop a behavior that had ruined marriages, health and jobs is evidence that god is not interested in drunks. I have seen men come back to this place three and four times, desperate to stop smoking or drinking their lives away, absolutely certain that if they had only groveled a bit more earnestly to god and tithed another 5% to the church, when they were subsisting on Ramen fucking noodles already, then they might be delivered of their compulsions. These men see me still here, sober, still denying gods, and ask how I do it. I tell them: stop using, stand on your decision, take responsibility for that. If you feel the need to pray, do so, but you must not give away your autonomy. Gods are a tool that work for some people, I think, because they do not invest every iota of their being into the tool. They are still responsible for their actions and words. They do not pretend to be the embodiment of their god on Earth, or its slave.

My worst thinking got me into the bottom of a bottle for nearly three decades. My best thinking is slowly allowing me to make sense of my corner of the world. I would no sooner give the responsibility for either state to a god than I would eat ground glass for breakfast.