How to Build an Atheist and Other Things to Irritate

I remember, years ago, my ex-husband and I were living in Layton, Utah.  He was Muslim, I was . . . vaguely (dubiously) theistic, mostly ex-Christian, I suppose.  One night, there was a knock at the door.

It was a Baptist.

A rather enthusiastic, "taken by the spirit" Baptist who wanted very much to conquer my poor then-husband and bring him over from the dark side.  A guy who'd spied himself a likely "Islamist" and was bent on saaaaaaving him.

These days, I'd see that for how insulting it is.  Back then, I just found it irritating and somewhat amusing.

Perhaps it was a kinder, gentler time (this was the mid-to-late 80s), but the relationship between the two was actually quite amiable.  The guy kept showing up with his Jesus stuff, and my husband would greet him at the door with the Quran.  They'd settle at the table, drink coffee, eat cookies, and fight faith.  

Did Mr. Prosthelytizing Baptist effect a change in my then-husband?

Oh, gosh, he sure did.  You see, my ex had already rejected Christianity.  In fact, like pretty much ALL believers, he had already rejected EVERY faith but his own.  So, when Mr. Prosthelytizing Baptist, point-by-point, tore the Quran apart, he didn't create a new Baptist.

No, he cleared away that last mythological holdout in my then-husband's brain.  

He created an atheist.  

Something to keep in mind next time you find yourself driven to preach at someone who doesn't believe as you do.  You may be creating the perfect heathen.

Which is just fine as frog's hair with me.

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Speaking of deities and deific-type things, hubby and I were talking the other day.  We were talking, specifically, about prayer and asking whichever big guy in the sky for some bit of divine intervention.

Some bit, but not a HUGE bit.  Ever notice that?  Sure, if Tyson falls and cracks his skull, everyone joins hands and asks their deity to heal up Tyson's poor, cracked head.  Even if Tyson's head is super-bad cracked and his EEG looks awful, they pray because, hey, as we all know, every once in a while, folks recover even from really astounding head injuries.  

Ever notice, though, that when Tyson gets his legs amputated at the pelvis in a tragic "chicken with a freight train" incident, no prayer groups gather 'round and ask that deity to regrow Tyson's legs?  Seriously, nobody sane EVER said, "Oh, dear GOD, please regrow Tyson's legs!"

Ask yourself why not.  WHY NOT?  Isn't your deity ALL powerful?  Can't he make seas part, messiahs walk on water, and incendiary bushes chatter?  Why can't he regrow a couple of legs?  For a kid?

I think, deep down, we all know the answer to that.  

We all know it's bull.  We know there are no big favors coming from some invisible ghostie in the sky, and so we don't ask for things that might actually, definitively establish a deity.  No, we don't do that because we know it won't happen.  Instead, we ask for things that could, conceivably, happen WITHOUT divine intervention.  And then, when they happen, we say, "See?  I prayed and it HAPPENED!"  Not surprisingly, when we pray and it DOESN'T happen, we go pretty mum on the issue.  Else we kick out some trite platitude about "mysterious ways" or "sometimes we just don't like the answer."

We are, above all else, experts at self-delusion.  And the best way to hold tight to a comforting delusion is to suck others into it.  And the way to do that is to claim causation when, in fact, all you have is loose correlation and energetically expressed wishful thinking.  Most folks in these parts don't know the difference.

And it shows.

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And (I think) lastly, because I'm in a "piss 'em ALL off" sort of mood, let's talk about Wyoming.

Specifically, Wyoming and smoking.

Back in the bad ol' days, we used to drive up to Evanston, Wyoming from Utah just so we could sit in a crappy JB's restaurant and smoke.  See, we felt like we were somehow entitled to foul up other folks' air, but Utah's Indoor Clean Air Act disagreed.  So you can imagine our grief and consternation when we drove up to Evanston one Sunday morning to find that smoking was no longer allowed in restaurants.

On Sundays.

Oh, we were SO offended!  So terribly butt-hurt!  How dare they, ONE day a week, decree that the folks who are devastated by inhaling cigarette smoke get to have a shot at dining out?

Oh, the NOIVE of some people!

I'm not exaggerating--we were the worst kind of entitled smokers.  We were of the "if you don't like it, go somewhere else!" variety.  Because, when you're so addicted to a substance that you have to dose 50-60 times a day (the number of cigarettes I was smoking), you HAVE to convince yourself that you're in the right and everyone else sucks.  Otherwise?

You just might wind up seeing what a mess you are.  And then?  Well, then you'll have to stop.  I mean, really, what else is there?

Now, don't mistake me--I would ask someone if they minded if I lit up, I would even offer to walk ten feet away.  But what I never realized until I quit is that ten feet away doesn't help at all.  Twenty feet doesn't much help.  When I sit in my back yard, watering my flowers, the guy three places up can light up and the smoke ruins my morning.  And THAT'S what I refused to believe, that's what I claimed was "militant non-smokers" exaggerating.

Hey, I'm sorry.  It's all I can say.

Anyway, Wyoming. Read a story today about how the bustling cow town of Casper, Wyoming has repealed its own ban on smoking in bars.  The Libertarian contingent was shouting about the evil New York City nanny state-ism kicking the proud, independent Wyomans in the yellowed teeth.  The bar owners were crying that they were losing business.  

Another BS argument I remember that turned out not to be true.  Bars survive smoking bans just fine.  But Wyoming has this "don't you tell me what to do" thing going on, and they take their "rights" very seriously.

Wanna make someone squeal and swear (like I did this morning)?  Explain to them that smoking isn't a RIGHT.  That just because something is LEGAL doesn't mean you have an unqualified RIGHT to do it.  Driving is legal, too, but you don't have a RIGHT to drive.  No, you have a PRIVILEGE, and that privilege comes with a broad array of restrictions and regulations.  Same with drinking alcohol--all sorts of rules and laws about where, when, how much, by whom, and what you can be doing when imbibing.  

Smoking isn't a "right."  It's a behavior that is legal within certain boundaries and with particular restrictions.  Your "right" to smoke ends where everyone else's lungs and sinuses start.  

I won't lie--it is incredibly embarrassing to hear smokers scream about their RIGHTS, see them point their angry, tar-stained fingers at non-smokers and say, "If you don't like it, stay home!"  Because I was that desperate junkie.  I was that miserable, scared (yes, SCARED) person who lashed out at any suggestion that my smoking might in any way interfere with another person's comfort, safety, or happiness.  To my (very small) credit, I did start smoking back in the late 70s, before there was much uproar.  But by college I knew I was lying to myself and lying to others.

And by the time Evanston decided to give the poor, shell-shocked non-smokers ONE day a week to eat in peace?

I knew I sucked, my addiction sucked, and they were right.  But it took me another six years or so to admit it and do something about it, because I was SCARED.  Scared I wouldn't be able to quit, scared it was too late to make a difference anyway, and scared half to death that, without that neurochemical crutch, I wouldn't know how to operate.

Turns out I operate just fine.  

So smoke on, Casper.  Drag those Tony Lamas in the dust.  You're on the wrong side of history, and eventually you'll have no choice.  But for now?

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

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Oh, hey, one last thing, just in case I missed anyone.  Let's talk about "seen."  You know, like, "I've seen a narwhale" or "she's seen Russia from her house?"  That is the proper use of the word "seen."  I have, they have, we have seen.  Heck, even she has and he has and it is they are and it shall be seen.  Let's get everyone in on it!  The magical, necessary component?  

"Have/has/is/shall be."  Without those, you haven't (and she hasn't) seen.  So please, don't say, "I seen it," or "he seen it."  I SAW it, he SAW it, they SAW it.  

If you don't have a have, you haven't seen.  You saw.

Here--like THIS.

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I have hardly any pictures today.  I may wander in and work on a photoshop of some sort later, should I feel particularly creative.  

Gay Baby Feet Abortion . . . AND ENGLAND!

So, this garbage came across my Facebook feed today, drew from me an immediate and strong response.

The garbage:

"If most of my Facebook friends are going to support people who are gay by posting the red equal sign, I am going to post two feet, the feet represent the millions who never get to breathe the air of this world, who never feel love let alone get married, those who never have the chance to have children or go to school or do anything many gays are afforded the privilege to do. They are never given this chance because a human decides that their life is unimportant because of a defect or being an inopportune time for the person who conceived them. This is for the millions of children aborted yearly. Talk about rights being denied."

And my Response:

No need to consider the rights of women who are told that they must bear children against their will, their bodies used and their lives torn to bits because a bunch of people seem to think it's their right to impose their faith on others, though.  Right? Even if we accept that a fetus is "a human life" (and I don't--it's a human life like an acorn is an oak tree or an egg is a chicken), since when do we force one human being to support another human being, against their will, using their own body? What next? Blood "donation" squads grabbing you off the street and forcing you to give blood because someone needs it? How about organs ala Monty Python? Seriously, you don't need that WHOLE liver, you don't need BOTH kidneys, so FORK OVER because someone else NEEDS it to survive! What, that's not okay? That's wrong? The government shouldn't be allowed to require you to use your body against your will to sustain someone else? Hmmm. Maybe you're not so "pro-life" after all. Maybe you're just "pro-fetus." Or, taken at its most basic, most obvious, maybe you're just "anti-woman." Or "pro-slavery."

Okay, the crappy "gays have a lot more rights than ABORTED FETUSES" stuff aside (I know, it's hard to push aside, practically need a bulldozer it's such a weighty pile of manure), and the sickening "I'm going to hop on this bandwagon both to push my agenda AND to lessen the impact of the original movement" thing notwithstanding, what the hell, you know?  I seriously question the stability and psychological wellness of people who spend their days crying over aborted embryos and fetuses when there are real, live PEOPLE all around us who are suffering.  Who need our help.  There are tens of thousands of REAL children in our foster care system who will never know a loving family.  And you want to boob about the imaginary lives non-people might have had, had they actually developed normally in the womb and become humans? 

You need to grow up.  I mean, I support your right to FEEL that way, but your right to enforce your religion or wonky idea of what is and isn't a "person" ends when it forces women to carry unwanted pregnancies.  And shut the heck up with that idiotic "if you want to play, you have to pay/if you didn't want to get pregnant, you shouldn't have had sex" garbage!  One, that is totally woman-hating--proposing that women who are sexually active somehow "deserve" the punishment of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.  Two, that's like telling your wife that, if she hadn't wanted her daughter to die in a car accident, she shouldn't have bought a car.  Or telling your neighbor, "Hey, if you didn't want that lightning bolt to blast apart your home, you shouldn't have built a house."  It's disingenuous vomit, and you know it.  

And speaking of vomit?  "What if Einstein's mother had gotten an abortion?"  Goodness.  And what if Hitler's mother had gotten an abortion?  What if a runaway milk cart had taken out Abraham Lincoln or a shark had meandered miles upstream to take a chunk out of Mark Twain?  What if, what if, what if?  It's a stupid question, and it doesn't mean anything.  

Sorry, sidetracked a little there.  Fact is, I support your right to FEEL however, and also support your right to then LIVE as you BELIEVE, i.e., don't ever terminate a pregnancy.  But that's where it ends.  Just as MY being pro-choice shouldn't result in YOUR being forced to terminate a pregnancy, the reverse is also true--just  because YOU don't think abortion is okay doesn't mean *I* should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.  

*** A small note for the small number of slow, cowardly folk whose courageous defense of "the unborn" goes exactly so far as leaving anonymous comments on a blog?  ANONYMOUS!  There's not enough laughter in the world, so thank you for bringing some my way.  

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Alright, enough of that.

Our boy's oral surgeon appointment went . . . disconcertingly.  Scarily.  The only spot we've been so worried about?  No change, doctor says he's not worried.  But the new spot near the lower right wisdom tooth?  It's not new--it's on last year's x-rays, too, but it's markedly larger this year.  He wants to take a "watch and wait" approach because, again, it's down near that nerve canal.  There's another spot up near the wisdom tooth in the left maxilla.  It's small.  

What a mess.  Not sure how I feel about waiting another full year before having it checked again.  Seems . . . stupid.

Here are the x-rays for comparison:

Oh, there's also another spot, can't see it well with the scans, between the left mandibular bicuspids.  It's got that "radiolucent with a radiopaque halo" gig going on.  Whatever it is, you can see how the teeth have angled/grown around it.  He says he's not worried.  I'm worried.  I'm thinking I'm worried enough to wait six months, then seek out a second opinion.  

Just to see.

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Since I'm on a roll, let's talk about marriage equality.  Or, rather, let's talk about some of the memes going around promoting marriage equality.  Here's one in particular:

Okay, straight up, flat out--who cares?  I mean, I get the sentiment, but who cares?  Whether you embrace the particular mythology or no, religion has no place in our government.  So who CARES if Jesus or whomever did or didn't wax whatever on whichever subject?  Doesn't matter.  What does matter?

That homosexuals are.  That's really it, the central thing--they ARE.  And therefore, they should be entitled the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.  

And I KNOW that's not in the Bible.

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I saw a really, REALLY horrid wallpaper-carpet combo yesterday--let me go find it!

Ta Daaaaaaa!

Oh, and I nearly forgot--I just wanted to say I LOVE ENGLAND!  I do, you know?  I love England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales.  Just love the living daylights out of them.  And yes, I absolutely recognize the differences, issues, and histories of each.  So, while I love England, I also think maybe she needs a bit of a serious dressing down for being such a bully for so long (good thing the U.S. stepped up to accept the "World Bully" mantle, huh?).  I adore Llewelyn Fawr, Robert the Bruce, and Brian Boru.  Oh, and Simon de Montfort.  That would be Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester and 1st Earl of Chester, not the other Simons de Montfort who came before.  What a guy, huh?  Sure, flawed as all get-out, but what a guy.

Mostly, I'm just pandering here.  It's not that I don't love the "British Isles."  Oh, I do--so much so that we have, more than once, tried to figure out how to move there in the long term.  But I'm writing this for a baser reason--I want more readers from that part of the world.  I would love to make that "leap across the pond."

So, was that butt-kissy enough?  Will you give me a read?  Come on, you know you want to!

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ

The Problem with Menopause/ICKY GIRL STUFF/AWFUL ATHEISM

You were warned.

*****************BEGIN ICKY GIRL STUFF***************

The problem with menopause?  Is that it's unpredictable.  It's pissy and dodgy and comes in fits and starts.  I'm not happy about "perimenopause."  There are a lot of things I regret in life, but only having one child has got to be top of the list. I always wanted a second, and even now, at 47 years old, I have to work very hard not to think about it too much, else my heart breaks.  Just another for the pile, I guess. 

Anyway, menopause.  To put it delicately, my "cycles" have been a bit less than reliable the past few months.  Skipping here, barely there there.  You know.  This month, I'm making up for it.  Epically.  Like, "At what point do I need an ambulance?" epically. 

****************END ICKY GIRL STUFF*****************

Add that that?  Lice.  Blew my back, hand, and shoulders out yesterday nit-combing our boy.  Took over an hour, and my hand still hurts.  Then hubby nit-combed me, and I him (as well as I could--his hair is very short).  Then the long, pain-in-the-ass process of washing all the bed linens (and rewashing all the clean clothes that had been next to the bed waiting to be put away) began.  We were going to wait until today on the fitted sheet and mattress pad beneath, but our Cairn Terrier Charlie made that decision for us.

He pissed on the bed last night.  No idea why.  No straining or behaving like he doesn't feel good, none of the behaviors I would expect from a dog with a UTI.  No, he just pissed on the bed.

Twice. This has never happened before.

It's happened nowhere else.  Only on the bed.  And only last night.  I don't know what's up with that, if the Christmas tree and the stink of permethrin have troubled him, or if the fact that the bed is where the permethrin smell is strongest has something to do with it.  First piss, he got the fitted sheet and the mattress pad.  Sadly, the second piss (which was much smaller) came after the mattress pad and sheet were in the wash.  In other words, he got mattress.  We do have enzymatic cleaner for just that purpose, but I'm now scared to death this is going to become a habit.  Considering that he's my heating pad when I'm napping cold, that's a tragedy for me.  If anyone has any ideas, I'm open.  I've read that it might be a weird show of submission or a statement of who the boss is and where she sleeps.  It's not a marking thing--he's not cocking leg to do this.  And, like I said, he's not doing it anywhere else--he's not abruptly squatting and pissing on the carpet or kitchen tile.  Only on the bed.

The computer is being increasingly stupid and bad.  Really laggy, really glitchy.  Shockwave and a couple of others crash frequently, sometimes within hours of a restart.  Yeah, I dump the cache.  Just too many competing programs, I think.  I fear it may be time to reformat and start from fresh.  Especially with the new game our boy's getting for Christmas. 

Speaking of Christmas, my present came yesterday--from Amazon, but delivered out of the back of a Budget Rental truck (?).  A big (3.3 ounce) bottle of Boucheron.  See, I got a very small bottle (maybe 1/5 of an ounce) a couple of years ago and fell in love.  I've made that tiny little purse-size bottle last because Boucheron is around $115.00 for a 3.3 ounce bottle.  Last week?  I found it marked down dramatically--40 bucks!  With free shipping!  So there it is--my bottle of Boucheron!  It's very sweet, very romantic and flowery, unlike the scents I normally go for.  But I love it--I've loved it since I first smelled it, though my "Unforgivable" (the really wonderful perfume with the unforgivably bad name) is in no danger of being bumped from its favorite slot.

Boucheron, Big and Small

Gonna wander back to religion for just a little.  Hey, I'm an atheist, so atheism comes up now and then.  I'd venture to say I don't dedicate nearly as much of my blog to atheism as many religious folks do to their particular faith. 

Okay.  Here we go.


******************BEGIN AWFUL ATHEISM********************



Remembering a discussion with a friend years ago, one that featured him insisting that it's not possible for him to be GOOD without EVIL.  In other words, if there weren't EVIL in the world, there would be no good, because everything must occur with opposition (?).  He went on to talk about how, without some deity, he can't be happy because . . . oh, heck, I don't remember what his point was.  Something about how, in order to be happy, we must also be sad and otherwise how can we know it's joy if we don't have sorrow or some such thing.  And then he said it.  You know.

IT.

"How can you know not to do bad without Jesus?"

You know, folks who say things like that scare the daylights out of me.  Because I'm left with the idea that there are bazillions of people out there who are one thin Gideon's Bible page away from murdering their neighbors, raping their daughters, and plundering every shop they walk by.  Are you SERIOUS? 

ARE YOU?

Are you really suggesting that, without a Bible, I won't know not to kill my neighbor's toddler or torture his poodle or rob banks?  Are you kidding?  What about people who've never read the bible?  Are they just murderous, raping, pillaging fools who have no morals?  And if that's so, why is the U.S. so highly religious AND so violent?  Why doesn't someplace like, say, Great Britain, with its hordes of godless atheists, have a murder rate that leaves ours in the dust? 

And do you really, really need religion to tell you what's right from wrong?  I ask because . . . because I don't believe that.  I can't--like I said, that's just too scary.  I don't do bad, cruel, violent things to other people because that's hurtful, and it's harmful, not just to them but to all of us.  I don't hit people or shoot them because I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that same thing.  I don't steal from others because it sucks to be stolen from.  I don't lie about others because it sucks to be lied about.  I don't cheat on my husband because it sucks to be cheated on.  Call that "the Golden Rule" if you wish, though it seriously pre-dates Christianity (Confucianism was saying "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others" centuries before the advent of Christianity), call it "the Silver Rule," but recognize it for what it is--not some supernatural edict from the sky, but rather a common-sense idea that arises from our natural propensity toward empathy.  I don't do "evil" upon others because to do so is hurtful; if I wouldn't want that hurt coming down on me, why on earth would I do it to someone else?

If some holy book is the only thing standing between you and mayhem, if the threat of divine punishment is the only thing that keeps you in line, you've got some terrible issues and you scare the wits right out of me.

And that's that.  I've been kicking around writing an entry about how everyone is so sure their religion and their deity is the right one, and yet the overwhelming majority of people are of the faith predominant to their geographical area.  In other words, where you're born almost always determines your faith.  Which means that if you'd been born in Punjab instead of Pittsburgh, you'd almost certainly be of a different faith.  And you'd be proclaiming just as fervently that Sikhism was the true religion.  But now it looks as though I've already written it, so never mind.

*********************END AWFUL ATHEISM**********************


That's all.  I'm going to go scrub some toilets now, because there isn't much that makes me battier than dirty toilets.  Seriously, it's a "thing."