Crabby Blogging Lady

I had the misfortune of seeing the very first few episodes of the TV show, Lost. How long has this show been running? A couple of years? I can’t believe it didn’t die after its first season, that any intelligent American would watch this show!
Ah, that explains the popularity of the program…

Lost is like a cross between Gilligan’s Island, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and values clarification lessons I was taught (and adamantly rejected) in school. When I was in high school, values clarification was just becoming vogue. In my senior year, we got a new Spanish teacher– she was 21 years old, fresh out of Colgate University, and therefore knew NOTHING. For most of the year, she had us cook AND eat gazpacho (I will never forgive her for that); she told us “funny” stories of her trip to Spain (oh, the depths of the Spanish language she learned in those 3 weeks there!); and she had us complete and discuss values clarification, in which I refused to participate and caused a big stink in class. Oh, and we did learn a little Spanish– in the last month before graduation– when Miss Wet-Behind-Her-Ears realized she hadn’t completed her Scope & Sequence, and dumped on us a 300-page AMSCO book which we had to complete for graduation. Needless to say, we couldn’t keep up and never finished the stupid book (it was pitifully boring, anyway).

So where was I?

Oh yes, values clarification. In a nutshell, it’s a type of “situation analysis” or moral relativism. You judge what’s right and wrong based on your personal assessment of the moment or time. In my Spanish class, for example, we were told that a nuclear explosion had wiped out all the population but 20 people, and destroyed all the food supply save for a small amount to feed 10 people for a year. Who is most worthy to live? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker?

Real educational stuff, that public schooling. Mmmm.

My classmates, predictably, chose the young doctor, the young man and women (for future procreation), the farmer, the scientist… and ditched the preacher, the baby, the person with the flu, and the old folks. (Sounds eerily like the Health Care Reform Bill, eh?) Me, I loved throwing a wrench in the works– I always chose the preacher because there would have to be SOMEONE who had to knock everyone’s self-centered heads together and preach morality, heal the sick, and whip the evildoers. Heh heh. I didn’t need to pass that class to graduate on time, anyway…

ANYWAY. That TV show–Lost– as I watched it, it SO reminded me of those old values clarification classes. Yeah, you’ve got a guy with a hunk of shrapnel in his chest, he’s using up the scarce supplies of medicine and water, he’s only going to die– somebody shoot the dude and put him (and all of us) out of his misery… what drivel.

Plus, I just hated the behavioral psychology thrust on the viewer. Someone tell me for WHAT purpose we needed to see the main actress half naked, standing on the beach in her Victoria’s Secret?! And the women who dressed like ho’s with their miniskirts and super-tight tank tops… and let their bikinis flap in the wind?? RRRRRIGHHT!!! Well, I guess the producers have got to think of SOMETHING to keep the men watching…. but it made me want to puke. Not to mention the HORROR everyone had when it was discovered that someone had something DANGEROUS— a GUN! And then, KNIVES!!! Oh, the tragedy!! Suuuure, like all these Californians are going to PEACE and LOVE the snarling wild boars to death, and eat coconuts until they are rescued!!

:wassat:

On the other hand, the acting was actually pretty good. I mean, how hard is it for a Hollywood person to dress in skimpy clothes, complain about their breaking fingernails, and communicate with the Mount Shasta-like psychic monster in the jungle? Oh yeah– some guy who’d been paralyzed MIRACULOUSLY now walks again, and another guy is MIRACULOUSLY led to a water source by his dead (resurrected??) father whose coffin was in the crashed plane… but Jesus Christ is stupid because He isn’t as old as the beloved and mysterious Backgammon game!!!

:duncehat:

Who watches this stuff?!? THIS is what people dump into their brains religiously EVERY WEEK?!?! I felt my IQ drip out of my nose as I watched it! And it’s not “harmless” entertainment, either– it’s behavior modification with a heck of a lot of that values clarification in it.

People, PLEASE! Have some self-respect!!!

*THROWS UP ARMS IN DISGUST*

Did you know that the word “holiday” comes from the term “holy day”? A day that is honored and sanctified above others? July 4th is Independence Day, a “holy day” to us, granted from our holy rollers, the Founding Fathers. They didn’t see it as a time for us lazy, beer-burping baseball spectators to rah-rah the home team or run to grab all the sales at the stores (as wonderful as that is).

Independence Day is about our independence from Great Britain! It’s NOT about immigration! Hello?!

I grew up in the 70s and 80s… and all those stupid TV shows and newscasts were about how wonderful our country is because of all the immigrants we got, and we celebrate it on July 4th, feverishly reciting The New Colossus over and over again. Holy cow, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. July 4th has NOTHING to do with immigration, especially the profligate and unbridled immigration our country saw during the 1800s and late 1990s.

“[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible… founded in good policy?… They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass… If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.VIII, 1782. ME 2:118

So while that “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” stuff makes for good poetry, a nation that has not a stable immigration policy with ENFORCED borders isn’t really defined as a nation! And the United States of America does not owe its greatness to the gazilions of immigrants that flooded here from other countries!

P.S. Before you start up on your brainwashed blabber about how xenophobic I sound, please be aware that THIS IS REALITY. So get a life. I’m not xenophobic.

Independence Day is about our independence from Great Britain! It’s NOT about veterans! Nowadays I keep hearing how “We wouldn’t be free without G.I. Joe.” Ummm… sorry, that’s not true. G.I. Joe didn’t go to Normandy or Korea or Vietnam or Kuwait or Iraq to set us free. G.I. Joe went to set Europe, South Korea, South Vietnam, Kuwait, and Iraq free. Oh by the way, the government did a pretty crappy job managing the wars as well as managing the G.I. Joes’ pensions and medical care. :-p Enough said.

Independence Day is about “No King but Jesus.” Yes, a shocker that may come to the brainwashed public school masses, where you learned that the Americans rebelled because our tea was being taxed, and because the patriots were free-thinkers who wanted to be secular humanists and live in a socialist utopia! Ha ha! Have I got an education for you– WRONG.

P.S. Before you start up on your brainwashed blabber about how George Washington was a Deist and etc, please be aware that I am a HISTORY SCHOLAR. Please don’t give me quotes from Thomas Fleming, George Wood, and the other revisionists. Go read the writings of Washington (you can start here), Hamilton, Franklin, Witherspoon, Rush, Webster, and Jay, like I have. You JUST may get an education!

Yeah, I’m feisty today. But there’s something about Independence Day that gets my goat. I have that Patriot blood surging through my veins, and by golly, I hate commie coup d’ etats.

So go out there and eat your hot dog and drink your beer. But remember that it was those God-fearing, Bible-thumpin’, iron-backboned, liberty-loving folks who made it so you could eat and drink in peace and liberty.

WHY don’t they hire HAPPY librarians or post office managers? There should be some sort of happy test that all workers must take, with happy ratings. If you are a nasty, cantankerous old curmudgeon, you shouldn’t get the job. Period.

WHY does my town have flashing yellow traffic lights at 2am in the still-busy commercial district… but run the regular green-yellow-red traffic lights at 2am in empty residential areas? I am baffled why I have to sit and wait for the lights to change on Elm and Park Streets… yet the lights are blinking at WalMart where it’s a dog-eat-dog driving experience!!

WHY will people so readily believe in alien lifeforms, evolution, and Santa Claus, but say they don’t believe in God or in Christ’s resurrection?

WHY do children have so much energy, and not adults?

WHY do rabbits, deer, and insects devour my flowers and vegetables? WHY don’t they eat the stinkin’ weeds?!

WHY do people believe things that are on the HDTV? WHY did people believe Walter Cronkite when he said, “And that’s the way it is.” No, that’s NOT the way it is. WHY was he believed?

WHY is there an “S” in the word “lisp”?

WHY don’t we ever hear father-in-law jokes?

I finally figured it out. FINALLY.

Hoh hoh, you read those simple words and have NO IDEA the weeks of toil, frustration, and rage that goes behind them.

Joe may love his telemarketing calls, but me– I HATE THEM. I hate them with a white hot, liquid-lava, seething boils of bubbling rage. And I can’t stand them, either. I have things to do! Important people call me! I DO NOT appreciate running over to the phone TEN, TWELVE times a day only to hear a telemarketer’s schpiel! To hear that phone ring AGAIN and AGAIN… GAHHHHHHH!

I screen all my calls with my answering machine. I guess a lot of people do that, because the stinkin’ telemarketers have come up with new, inventive ways to bother us. They will allow the answering machine message to roll, and then when the tape starts recording, they either say “Hello? Hello”? and hang up, or… ooo feel the blood rise….. they hang up their phone and allow the dial tone to record. And because my answering machine *thinks* the BEEP BEEP BEEP is a viable sound, it keeeeeeeps on recording, until all the recording space is used up! Which means that any REAL call I get, I miss, because my REAL caller has no space to leave a REAL message. And it happens ALL DAY LONG. ALL DAY LONG!!!! Who would do such a thing? WHO in their right mind would terrorize my family from 9am to 10pm with “Hello? Hello?” and then hang up!?!?!?!

*snap*

*throws chair through the window*

So… it happened again today. I had a long day, was tired and was on my way upstairs to lay down for a little rest before I have to burn cook tonight’s dinner. Lo and behold, the phone rang, and it was them!!! “Hello? Hello?” I ran to my machine and hit the “stop” button to hang up on them. I think I was too late– they hung up first– but I was seething mad. I snatched up the phone and hit the *69, which gives me the number of the caller. I half expected it to be an “unavilable” number, since telemarketers often cloak their numbers. Imagine my surprise and delight when the number was given back to me. I hurriedly went to my computer to look up the number, expecting some car warranty scam or a new diet pill that I had to order.

Holy cow, it’s the ACLJ calling me. The American Center for Liberty and Justice. *groan*

I like the ACLJ, because I just hate the ACLU. But at least the ACLU leaves me alone.

But GOOD GOD, there’s a whole Hate Fest brewing over the ACLJ’s telemarketing calls. Apparently, lots and lots of people are getting these “Hello? Hello?” calls, and are angry. I was floored– Are the people at ACLJ INSANE?!?! Do they really think that folks are going to donate to the ACLJ cause and support their efforts if they nastily harrass people and assault answering machines?! They must be INSANE, absolutely insane!!!!!

The forum I found (where the Hate Fest is meeting) has a telephone number that you can call to get off their Harrass List. Oh my word, there are dozens, perhaps hunderds and thousands of people all seeing red, like me! All have been getting the stupid “Hello? Hello?” and going ballistic, like me. And I was ready to pay my phone company to change my telephone number, it was so bad. I am glad I finally figured this out! I called the Do Not Call Number, and the person I spoke with seemed verrry experienced with such a request. They took my number with an “ah yes” and that was that.

I will say that I do donate to charities. I like the mission of the ACLJ. I don’t know how they got my telephone number… I can’t remember ever giving money to them, unless Mr. Crabby did something dumb (unlikely). But the ACLJ had better stop doing this real quick-like, or they are going to find a LOT of very unhappy people who will NEVER give a cent. Like me, now. Forgetttttt itttttt!

And I don’t want to hear from any of you smart alecs, leaving comments and bad-mouthing the ACLJ, because you smart alecs think you’re atheistic and humanist ways are so much better. Balderdash. Despite me hating the telemarketing calls, AT LEAST the ACLJ ASKS for money. The ACLU TAKES money, from us taxpayers. So there. :-p

UPDATE: a mere TWENTY minutes after I posted this, I got ANOTHER telemarketing call!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GAHHHHHHHHHHHH! Not from the ACLJ, but from another stinkin’ *&@$# company! The number: 305-728-0130. Am I ever going to get any rest?!?!?!

• Why did they decide to call it “Twitter”? What a dumb name. Didn’t they realize that sarcastic people like me would wind up calling Twitter participants “twitheads”? Didn’t the people from Twitter think ahead a little, and consider that??
• How on EARTH do advertisements and billboards get printed with the most atrocious spelling errors? Don’t advertisements usually go through ridgid prooffing and editting befor being printted and destributted? Those speling errers are so bad, it makes me cringge to sea tham.
• Why do atheists vehemently deny that God exists, but talk about God and religion all the time? I mean, if they are so confident that God doesn’t exist, why is disproving His existence always on their minds?
• Why do people associate cats with women and dogs with men? Cats are soft and mysterious and well-mannered; dogs are stinky and eat garbage and are dirty, and….

  oh.

  I think I understand now. Never mind.

• And why is it OK to call George W. Bush a chimp, but it’s racist to call Barack Obama a chimp?

  

  

  I did a search on “Bush Chimp” and came up with pages upon pages of websites devoted to and photos filled with Bush monkeys. Do a quick search for “Obama Chimp” and while I found a few cartoons and weird photos, I only found a handfull of websites with it. Yet for some reason, it’s been a-OK to monkey-ify Bush but if you monkey-ify Obama, you’re going to straight to hell, do not collect $200.

Why are some people, like Richard Dawkins and other boneheads, so ready and willing to believe in aliens and yet refuse to believe in God? I watched the movie “Expelled” recently, and during an interview, Dawkins was absolutely convinced that there is no God. Yet he thinks that the theory that aliens came and “seeded” the earth, and that creatures then evolved, is a very possible scenario.

What the?!

I think it just shows what a dunce Dawkins and others like him really are. It just shows where they are coming from– they don’t WANT to believe in God, because God and all His rules and expectations interfere with the “sexual morays” of the atheists.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, I hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. Thomas Nagel

I have to agree with C. S. Lewis (once an atheist himself), who said (in his book, Mere Christianity):

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

…Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. . .

So some people may not LIKE the fact that God exists. Why can’t they be honest with themselves and others and just confess this? There is no proof that God does not exist; as a matter of fact, there is ample proof that God does indeed exist. But if one already has the determination to disbelieve, then facts will not interfere. But like Lincoln said (I must be really into quotes today!):

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Like a little kid behind the draperies– he thinks because he cannot see his parents, that his parents cannot see him; but the parents can see the kid clearly, whether the kid thinks they see or not.

So back to aliens– I don’t get it. I’m a plain-speakin’, plain-thinkin’ woman. If you refuse to believe in God, in particular as God as the Creator of the Universe, how can you possibly believe in aliens who came to earth and “seeded” the planet with lifeforms? Moreover, how can you swallow a camel to believe in evolution (no evidence) yet not swallow the gnat to believe in the Creator?