Let’s all do what Jesus did

Listening to a radio programme on the ongoing row about women priests and bishops, a woman said that there shouldn’t be women priests “because Jesus didn’t have female disciples”.

My initial reaction was disbelief that a woman had said this (but then, there’s no lower limit to what garbage anyone can be brainwashed into accepting and regurgitating on demand), but then I began to think.

So, true Christians have to do “what Jesus did”?

Let’s look at “what Jesus did”:

He was Jewish
He was circumcised
He obeyed the Torah
He probably spoke Aramaic
He never ate pork
He wore a long robe and sandals, but his clothing was never of mixed materials
He was a carpenter
He walked everywhere, or rode on a donkey.
Given that this was over two thousand years ago, standards of personal hygiene were probably pretty low – and there were no running water or indoor toilets.

So, to do "what Jesus did," a “true Christian” would have to be:

Jewish, circumcised, abstain from pork, obey the Torah, become a woodworker, wear a long robe (but not of mixed fabrics) and sandals, sell their car and never use public transport or get a lift from friends but walk everywhere, use a hole in the ground as a toilet and bathe about once a year.

How many "true Christians" do all of that? or even any of that?

And priests?

 
Jesus chose his disciples from common people, who were very likely semi-literate (apart from Matthew; a tax collector can be expected to be literate and numerate).

They’d have had no special education, no university degrees – they all got their hands dirty with manual labour. They didn’t wear clothes to advertise how special they thought they were, that shouted “Hey, look how holy I am!”

Jesus chose his disciples from the men of his country - there’s no mention of any of them being Black, Asian, Oriental or Caucasian.

So, as "Jesus didn't do it", all Black, Asian, Oriental and Caucasian priests should be ejcted from the priesthood.

Every Christian priest should be a Jew born in the Middle East – after all, that’s “what Jesus did”.

Would a Christian stand up and say that Black men should be barred from the priesthood because “Jesus never had a Black disciple? Or that a Chinese man should never be ordained because “Jesus never had Chinese disciple”?

Of course not! That’s discrimination against MEN, and we can’t have that! 

But discrimination against women, for exactly that same reason, that “Jesus didn't do it” is perfectly acceptable – it’s only against women, and what do they matter?

What an amazing coincidence that the only time that they must do "what Jesus did" is when it comes to  keeping the religious hierarchy as a smug boys-only club!

Some are so pants-wettingly afraid of losing the tiny scrap of authority that they think they have that they’ll change their religion rather than face up to their bigotry, admit it for what it is, and work to change it.

Cowards and hypocrites!!!!

A comment on even more cuts in educational spending

(to the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn)


My daughter came home from school last night;
she'd just started learning to read and write:
it's the saddest thing I've ever seen –
because my daughter is seventeen.

chorus
But it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.

Sixteen kids share a tattered book,
all of them trying to get a look;
around the kids the books all pass,
even though there's forty in a class.

Tomorrow's people will be in a state –
a world to which they can't relate;
in a sea of national apathy –
it could never happen to you and me.

One day all people will be the same,
unable to read, or write their name,
totally unfitted for
anything but manual labour.

The bosses, of course, will be the few
who've got more money than me and you;
and, being well-off financially,
can send their kids to university.

A two-class system is evolving now,
but this thing we must not allow;
a national of menials, working at low wage,
a technological Dark Age.

A people who can't read or write
won't put up much of a fight;
the ruling class can steal them blind ...
Could this be what they've got in mind?

Cos it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.



1989 – sadly still as relevant these days

Penetrating insights

I’ve been pondering this subject for a while (mostly pondering how to state my case with the maximum of clarity and the minimum of basic Anglo-Saxon). Let’s see how near I’ve got …

In (nearly?) all sexual encounters between men and women, it’s the man who does the penetrating: even in kissing, the man is more likely to penetrate the woman’s mouth than she is his.

So it’s common for women to discover the limit that will initiate their inbuilt gag reflex, and correspondingly rare for men to discover theirs.

Not being penetrated as a general rule, men don’t know what it feels like, and so blithely continue to shove things into places that were never meant to receive such items, especially with such enthusiastic vigour.


So, blokes, here’s an idea: why don’t you try a few things on yourself, to find out what it’s like to be on the receiving end of what you give out?

Step 1: Get a piece of raw liver and cut it to tongue shape and size. Now shove it into your mouth, and then push the tip of it down your throat. Move it about as you move your tongue about in your lover’s mouth.

Step 2: Select the vegetable of your choice and whittle it into the approximate size and shape of your own favourite body-part. (You can over-estimate as much as you like here!)
Now try oral sex with that. How does it feel to you to have something that size pushing into your mouth and down your throat?
We all know the thing about "sticking your fingers down your throat to make you sick". Well, the effect is exactly the same with anything else stuck down your throat.


Step 3: Since quite a few men seem to have a thing about anal sex, the next step is obvious ...


Check out how it feels to you before you do it to other people. You might learn a few things that would make you a better and more considerate lover.

(In the interests of sexual equality, women could take another slice or liver and fold it into a “butterfly” and see how the man feels, too!)

Wha'is the matter with clothes manufacturers these days?

I’ve been trying to find women’s long-sleeved shirts (cos I want a change from Primark men’s shirts!).

That’s all I want – plain, boring, long-sleeved women’s shirts that are long enough in the body so as not to come untucked when one bends forward (I thoroughly dislike that “air-gap” – are “ladies” supposed to do nothing except look pretty? They’re not meant to do anything that means they have to lean forward even a bit??)

I just found something (eventually!) on eBay (what’s the point of searching for “ladies’ long sleeved white shirts” when you get three pages of short-sleeved black t-shirts?) … so I looked at some of the shirts that were actually what I’d been looking for.

And then I noticed how they were sized. I quote:

size 8 - XS (30")
size 10 - S (32")
size 12 - M (34")
size 14 - L (36")
size 16 - XL (38")
and so on ….

I average around size 14 and I don’t feel particularly obese, thank you very much!

At least this is slightly better than a previous instance: I bought a basque for a fancy dress event: size 14. when it arrived, I tried it on and it fitted well.

Then I noticed the size label sewn into it … “XL”.

If I’d known that before I bought it, I wouldn’t have bought it, no matter how well it fitted – how dare some (probably male) git in an office somewhere arbitrarily decree that anyone my size is well on the way to obesity?

WTF are we coming to when a size 14 is considered “extra large”?

And you wonder why so many women and girls have bad body images when they’re as good as told that if they’re not matchsticks they’re barrage balloons?

You wonder why so many women and girls are anorexic or on the way to anorexia when we’re told that a female who is properly woman-shaped is “extra large”, implying the incipient onset of clinical obesity?

Why don’t manufactures just put the actual size on the garment and leave out “small-to-gigantic” labels, with all the attendant hang-ups that they cause?

They’re only generalisations, anyway – one manufacture’s “medium” is another’s “huge”, so they’re no more than very vague descriptions.

I’ve had “medium” t-shirts that were large enough to get a second person in as well, and “large” t-shirts that I had to get on with a shoe-horn.

They don’t actually tell one the real size of the garment unless one knows what the manufacturer consider small, medium or large – they’re comparatives, but we’re not given the comparison to let us work out what ruler the manufacture is measuring with.

Even clothing sizes are relative: the UK, Europe and US all have different size labels for the same physical size.

So why don’t they just put the actual chest size – 34”, 36”, or whatever. Inches are inches, so it won’t matter which country one lives in; if one uses the imperial measuring system, one will know if a garment will fit or not.

Of course, if they put both inches and centimetres on garments, then us Imperialists could gradually get to know our metric sizes too!

But let’s cut this “extra large” bollocks. We don’t need it! any more than we need the “size 0” at the other end of the scale – the one that we’re all supposed to aspire to if we want to be real women! Even if it kills us, and it probably will.

That’s entertainment?

A tart with her tits hanging out
or a slut who is always in rut
or a chick on a search for a dick
that’s entertainment?

A jill who is exists for the thrill
of a john who is always hard-on
or a joe who is raring to go
that’s entertainment?

A maid who is laid by a man she just met
a bitch with an itch to be screwed by a vet
the perv who deserves everything that she’ll get
and you know that she’ll get it
so hard she won’t forget it

A “girl” who is thrown in a whirl
by the boss when he asks for a toss
and she never fails to come across
that’s entertainment?

The whores who don’t wear any drawers
every man’s got the thing she adores
and you know that she’ll take it from scores
that’s entertainment?

The chick loves to lick at a donkey-sized chunk
of the jock with a cock the size of a tree-trunk
who will then spray her with a gallon of “gunk”
She’s not there to have fun too
she’s just there to be done to

Every woman’s got tits like balloons
at the sight of a penis she swoons
if the heroes are hung like baboons
that’s entertainment?

Woman used like inflatable toys
they’ll do anything to please the boys
that’s the fantasy that porn enjoys

Every woman’s a whore
are you really sure
that’s entertainment?

fight nosy websites!

I just had cause to contact a company via its website to ask a question about a product.

I eventually found the “contact us” button, carefully hidden from casual view; it opened a form, not an email, and I filled out my title and name and then typed out my question and clicked on Send.

The message refused to send because I had not given my street name. I put in a variation of my standard response: “why bother” and Sent again.

It refused to send because I had not told them which city I lived in. I did another gibberish answer and Sent again.

It refused to send because I had not given my postcode. I made up a sequence and Sent again.

It refused to send because I had not given my phone number. I put in a random sequence of numbers and Sent again.

This time it deigned to accept the message.

Now WTF do they want with that extra information? I emailed them, I want an email back. Do they need to know which city, and what part of which city, I live in to be able to do that?

I certainly don’t want them phoning me, or, more importantly, selling on my details to phone spammers.

Why do they think they need to know all this before they’re able to email me back?

Why do they think they have the right to demand that I give them this information before I’m allowed to send them a sodding email in the expectation [hope, really] of getting a sodding email back?

I never give more than the absolute minimum of data on principle (do I have to give my phone number if I want to buy a packet of crisps at a local shop? Do I have to prove where I live to ask someone in the street for directions?).

And also because I don’t see that it’s any of their damn business. If we do a deal and I buy a product from them, then they’ll need my address. If they send me a brochure through the post, then they’ll need my address. In neither case will they need my phone number.

The only data that they actually need are my name and email address. But they do these forms which demand hat you give them everything except your credit card details!

Rebel! Send rubbish answers to impertinent or gratuitously irrelevant and intrusive demands for personal information. I'll probably be on their records as living in “why bother” street in “myob” city with a postcode of N1 0NE and a phone number of 01234567889.

Don’t give the sods any more information than they actually need to be able to deal with your query.


Wonder if there’s a law against demanding unnecessary details in forms such as this? If there ain’t, there should be.

Flushed with irritation

I’m pretty easy-going, but I do have one absolute house-rule: in fact I feel so strongly about it that I have a sign on my bathroom wall: “Please close the toilet lid before you flush”.

It may seem petty or overly fussy for me to ask people to do this, and especially to go to the lengths of actually typing out and printing a notice, then sticking it to the wall above the tank, but consider this ….

When water splashes down into water, other water is thrown up in reaction. Everyone must have experienced this for themselves, or at least seen this effect in those amazing pictures where water is captured falling into water, and throwing up a beautiful crown of water in response. (Found one such and added it: it's not what I was actually looking for, but it's what I actually found.)

This reaction also applies to toilets. When you flush the toilet, water falls into water, and tiny droplets of water are thrown up from the bowl and get into the air – which you then breathe in.

This also applies to anything that you’ve just put into the toilet.

And, in my house, it’s not just you that would breathe in these tiny airborne droplets of your urine, fæces or vomit! If you really want to inhale microscopic fragments of your own bodily wastes, do it in your own home, not mine.


And it’s not just an inhalation hazard. Eventually the droplets would settle out of the air – onto everything within range.

I read somewhere that one’s toothbrush should be stored at least six feet away from the toilet. This seems to indicate that six feet is the radius of the “fallout zone”. Which means that not only my toothbrush should be six feet away from the toilet: also my face flannel, body scrubs, towels …

Just think of it: you could be brushing your teeth, or washing and drying your face or body with something that holds microscopic fragments of your own piss – or even worse, someone else’s!

God Help America

I posted the following question on Yahoo Answers, exactly as it is here, complete with typos that I've only just noticed!:


"Whny not a pre-emptive strike ON the USA?

The USA, apparently, believes it has the right to invade countries that might have caused it military or terrorist problems if left unchecked.

It assumes the right to "strike first" to prevent harm to the homeland

in that case, would it object if other countries, who (no doubt with just as much if not even more justification) believe that the USA will pose a future threat to their homelands, were to invade the USA before it had the chance to do it to them?

After all, there's an old saying about sauce for the goose ..."

**********

there were eight answers: one of them was this, exactly as i t apprears here:

"AMERICA HAS NEVER STARTED A WAR...and THEY HAVE NEVER OCCUPIED A COUNTRY OR TAKEN ANYTHING FROM IT!

WE WERE INVADED if you don't REMEMBER"

***********
to which my response was:

"no need to shout! and I wonder what books you learned your history from?!"

*****

Can you believe that that got voted as "Best Answer" by two people? [if it were voted in by one, I'd suspect the person who wrote that answer voted for himself]

but is that really what people are taught in the USA? in school, in the media, on tv and radio and newspapers? is that The Great American Version Of History?

if that's the case, then I can only repeat the comment I made on the YA page at the time -"if that's the best answer, then God Help America!"

And God help the rest of the world, cos it's dickheads like this that elect the ones who have their fingers on the biggest nuclear trigger in the world!


here's the page url: dunno if it'll work on click, or if you'll need to copy and paste it into the address box:
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnhsEd3mpda2y5.AjDJUCeohBgx.;_ylv=3?qid=20091218194214AA2D6LG

Pagan explanation for the Scout Association

I reverence the earth.
I reverence life – all life.
I reverence all creation.
I reverence the Creator.
I reverence the gifts
of the Goddess
in every aspect
of life.

I value the changing
of the seasons,
the differing beauties
of each new day;

I value everyone's uniqueness,
the shared joys
of working beside others,
discovering unities
in our differences.

I value myself,
and my role in life,
and my place in
the world.

I value life
in all its forms,
and respect it,
and do my best
not to bring harm
to any part of if.

I value my right to choose
my own path through life.

Everyone picks the path
that seems best
to them.

This is mine.



So tell me: exactly which part of this makes me a pædophile?


*****

Earliest date I can find for this is April 2007.
-------------------------------------

I started in Scouting in the mid-70s – the youngest in our family was a boy, so mum took him to Cubs; they needed help, so she joined in, then dad did, then …

Over the following eighteen-plus years I trained and qualified as both a Cub Scout and a Scout leader.

In the late 90s I had to take some time out to get my head sorted – I was under a lot of stress and suffering deep depression, partly due to trying to resist admitting to myself that I could no longer honestly call myself “a Christian” and that “pagan” would be more accurate.

By the early 2000s I was feeling well enough to want to rejoin – only in the Scout Fellowship (retired and other people who don’t work directly with the kids, but help out in the background at district events, etc), to see how I got on with that before I tried going deeper.

Apart from anything else, I’d become visually impaired and didn’t know how well I’d be able to cope with a bunch of energetic kids when I couldn’t see them clearly. But I thought it’d be interesting for the kids – and other leaders – to have a disabled leader, to discuss the differences.

On the form I had to fill in there was a question on religious/spiritual direction. Scouting insists that members have a spiritual leaning: agnostics can join, but atheists can’t.

I put “pagan” in the space provided – I was advised to put “agnostic” or even “atheist”, but thought that, for once I wanted to be totally honest – besides, I thought that it might be interesting, for kids – and leaders – to discuss this difference, too.

The district secretary told me that he’d contacted Scout HQ to ask what kind of promise I should make (the standard Scout promise is a Christian one, but they have other variants for other faiths). He wanted to know if there was a pagan one.

Their immediate response? I had to be “kept away from the kids at all costs”.

Never mind that I already had 18+ years as a Cub and Scout Leader with not even the suspicion of a shadow of a doubt against my character; never mind that I had never acted with anything other than the utmost probity towards the young people in my care.

I was a pagan, and therefore a pervert who’d drag the kids off to the woods to perform satanic rituals on them whenever we went camping.

They obviously didn’t, and probably still don’t, have any idea what “a pagan” actually is, and they probably never bothered to try to find out.

They didn’t contact me to ask, I’m not aware of them contacting the district secretary (who’d known me for almost all those 18+ years) to find out what kind of a person I was.

They didn’t even know enough to know that “Satan” is a Christian invention and that only Christian sickoes perform “Satanic rituals”.

So I wrote the above poem (apart from the question at the end, which I added later) and sent it to them, but I doubt that they ever bothered to read it: they’d made up their minds, why confuse them with the truth?

I understand that children and young adults need to be protected from potential predators, and I thoroughly approve – I’d been through police checks to become a leader before, and I’d come up with the scent of roses. Children have to be protected from perverts.

But why automatically assume that anyone who doesn’t follow the dry, dusty, colourless road of a well-trampled mainstream religion must be a pervert?

Why didn’t they bother to check what form my spiritual beliefs actually took before they made up their middle-class Christian minds?

When the district secretary told me what they had said, he laughed: he knew me, he’d known me for nearly two decades; he knew how ridiculous the very idea was.

But, sadly, the Scout Association didn’t know, and very probably still doesn’t.

There have, unfortunately, been some instances of Scout leaders sexually abusing the children in their care: I bet most of those leaders had “Christian” on their forms.