Archive for October, 2009
beep the beepers and honk the honkers
Posted by Kay in Irrationality, People!, Society, WTF on October 20, 2009
6:15am wake-up alarm goes off…
I force myself out of bed, brush my teeth and get my things ready for a dreadful drive to work….its not toooooo far but the insanely drivers around me make it a never ending journey, And a difficult one.
I don’t have a clue why our side of the world hasn’t learnt how to drive yet…oh no they know how to start a car, put it into gear and race off but do they know there are other people doing the same on the same route? All morality and ethic lessons are locked in the car boot, refusing to come out as I see the most educated(looking) people doing as bad on the roads as any other wagon driver, khota gaari wala and our very great motorcyslists…whoa I bow to them! If you have ever driven on these roads, you’d know the feeling AND its not a good one.
I struggle everyday amongst the never ending trail of insanely traffic honking the horns for no valid reason and my 5 years old asks everyday, why do they blow the horns too much!?!
We talk about changing the system but who is going to change it…these effing drivers who don’t even want to drive in one lane!!!!
pardon me, if Ive stopped making sense…these are just the after effects!
No Greys, please!
Racism. I’d have thought we’ve come a long way, and this world is a better place now than it was about a decade back when it comes to human rights (unless, of course, you are a woman living in Mogadishu , or something similar to that somewhere else), that racism is predominantly a thing of the past- and whatever of it exists today is mostly limited to a disillusioned, uneducated, closed-minded minority.
In a way, it’s right. We humans have come a long way. We are now more aware and, I’d say, more sensitive- too; or so I thought- that was yesterday.
Today I’m asking the question- are we really much different now? A news has surfaced recently and I cannot help but wonder if I was giving these modern-day humans too much credit.
You see- when in this ‘modern’ times a Louisiana justice of peace in Tangipahoa Parish, Keith Bardwell, denies to marry interracial couples on the grounds of… well… race- all I could successfully do is ‘gulp’.
To quote a few lines from the article:
Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.
“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”
“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.
Shocking!
Those children suffer, eh? Are you sure you did not mean that they become US Presidents when they grow up, Mr. Bardwell? You do seem like one of those who will not like a ‘mixed race’ president running your country!
Also… does he even ‘hear’ himself say those things?! Dude- first it was ‘inter-religion marriage, now you go ‘inter-race’?! Helloooo… Brotherhood! Where have YOU gone now?
To elaborate a little further- as if that wasn’t enough, he then goes:
“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”
That sounds ‘racist’ to me, Mr. Bardwell… ‘very racist’, actually.
Apparently, Mr Bardwell, you seem very smug about the things you ‘let them do’! Seems like you are keeping a list, too. Eh?
Well… all I can say on a positive note is that at least, what he was doing is considered ‘illegal’ in these modern times.
The Bra Boys of Islamic Extremism
Posted by Rugrat in Irrationality, Religion, WTF on October 18, 2009
Islamist hardliners have always gone out of their way to dictate how women should live, eat, drink, sleep and ‘most importantly’, how they should dress up; or dress down or wait, dress is for humans, women should just cover, yes, cover, cover, cover… head to toe, left to right, diagonally, horizontally, vertically… cover, cover, cover, cover… how dare they even be a three dimensional figure…
No wonder, pretty soon the cavemen were bound to be hit by boredom with their utterly monotonous and vapid vogue that is known as burqa, the sole outer garment option for women in their stone age. And yes, they have apparently gone bored… The next ‘logical’ step for them was to dictate undergarments and that’s what they are doing now in Somalia.
Bra is the latest enemy in their egregious quest for male supremacy. But this time it is not about covering, it is rather about removing. They want all the bras gone. Bra is the latest tool of devil in their pea brains as those apparently ‘violate Islam by constituting a deception’ (yes it is confirmed, pea brains also produce signals, very weak nonetheless). Or it might be the case that the Captain Caveman got his lice infested beard stuck in a bra clip while trying to ‘covet’ one of his wives and hence the sudden rage against the brassiere.
Nevertheless, they had to do something to rid the society of this ‘evil’. As usual, an age old proven idea does the trick even with this ‘nouveau overture’: lets harass some women…
Yes, they are now monitoring the firmness and movements of women’s breasts in the streets. If those appear to be ‘firmer’ then those women are whipped by masked men. Then they are told to remove their bras and shake their breasts.
No, I am not talking about a fictional sadomasochistic porn flick, it is indeed happening in Mogadishu. Gone are the days when bra burning used to be a part of feminist movement. The boneheaded zealots have snatched it too from their utmost adversaries.
The donkey in convict’s suit
In a zoo in Gaza, two donkeys were given a dye job… ummm… to make them look like zebras. Well, look here for details, if you’d need some kind of proof.
Believe me now? You just can’t make this stuff up, can you?
What may be the reason for all this… err… fuss, you ask?
They wanted to show their children how a zebra looks like. You cannot get the animal in Asia, which is found mostly, if not only, in Africa. On top of that, they are expensive and Gaza’s Palestinians are impoverished. A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into the Israel-blockaded Gaza via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt.
Rather sad, if you look at it this way, but- if you ask me- it STILL does not make it right.
Poverty is cruel and sad…. but I would still prefer you to not take the path of deceit. I understand that for the children, it was fun of sort sorts, but playing with their trust, saying that it was a zebra they were looking at while it was actually a donkey, is something I just could not justify…. maybe it’s just me.
And also did you think what those zebras went through being taped all over in masking tapes and dyed with a paint brush using women’s hair colour?
I think that there are some things that should be left to only the willing humans. Please spare the animals, will you?
What do you think?
Tale of sacrificial goats
Posted by Pepper in Culture, Irrationality, Religion, WTF on October 12, 2009
An Indian man has recently taken it to a whole new level by marrying a dog. Apparently, he did this to redeem himself for stoning two dogs to death 15 years back.
*Shudder*
I guess this newly developed ‘conscience’ was heightened by yet another little fact that he was suffering from some sort of paralysis and loss of hearing in one ear; and the local pundits ‘prescribed’ that he was still carrying the ‘curse’ of brutally killing those animals and it needed to be ‘made right’ by ‘marrying’ another animal of the same species.
Firstly- how do these two incidents compensate each other? I mean- by what logic you can make a heartless ‘murder’ of two innocent animals okay- by ‘marrying’ another?! What has happened to you? Have you forgotten that you have a ‘brain’? Apparently so!
Secondly- I bet he was thinking that he was doing that poor dog a favour by marrying her despite her being a ‘lower rank’ animal than himself. I mean, what is it with humans and their (sometimes religious) belief that all the animals on this earth were ‘created’ to ‘serve’ them?! Really, what is it with this crap?
Superstitions prevail in different levels in all cultures, I am sure; and India- like many- is oftentimes crossing the limit of sanity or common sense. Unfortunately, this is not limited to the poor and illiterate, as one might assume. This creeps into the lives of the educated, urbanized, rich and famous just the same.
Example? Well… take the Aishwarya Rai incident for one- where Ms Rai, a prominent Bollywood actress and former Miss World was made to marry a tree in order to cleanse herself of the curse (of being born ‘under the influence of the planet Mars’) that brings some sort of bad luck or possible death to the first man she marries.
After all- by this action the tree will bear the consequences of the ‘curse’ (the ‘sacrificial goat’) and her future ‘human’ husband would be safe. Yet again, obviously, wronging the mute and innocent trees is not deemed as a ‘sin’; in fact, it is even permissible. And c’mon- marrying a tree??!! So much for the 21st Century crap! Looks like Stone Age to me.
One last word before I go today- I think it is time these pundits/ those clergymen and mullahs are made responsible for the sermons they produce while playing with the brains of the illiterate trusting idiots. They hold far too much power in their hands than it is safe. I truly think they are like arsonists- mentally ill, power hungry and destructive- and by no means deserves the feverish obedience they receive.
Who is with me on this?
Sex: the dread of the religious lot
Posted by Rugrat in Irrationality, Religion, Society, WTF on October 11, 2009
Sex. Calling it an anathema to the religions will not be much of an exaggeration. The religious lot has always demonstrated an incessant need to curb and control human sexuality. In a religious society, they can turn blind eye to terrorism, abysmal corruption, hunger, poverty etc… but one should not be able to have sex freely. Who cares if hundreds die in an act of terrorism or thousands perish of hunger; but people having non-marital (I have reservations in using ‘pre-marital’ as a general term as it fallaciously presumes marriage as an inevitable and necessary eventuality in one’s life) sex must be kept in chains, if not killed. It comes hardly as a surprise that in the epitome of a theocratic hegemony called Saudi Arabia, a man has been sentenced to five years of incarceration and a thousand lashes for merely boasting about his sex life in public. How is it even remotely justified to take 5 whole years of life out of a ‘braggart’ (along with this inhuman corporal punishment) who at the very most is just a nuisance? His actual ‘crime’ was that he had some sex and was stupid enough to brag about it.
Well, what is there to expect really from this country? This is a kingdom where sexual segregation is a way of life, women are deemed inferior, human rights are every so often abused. Some megalomaniacal God rules this petroleum fuelled monarchy via proxy of some obscenely rich ‘royal’ nitwits. This is where human rationality is often regarded as an alien concept. They would rather read, reread and reread and then read again a 1400 years old book than give their brains a chance to think rationally. They would have no qualms about funding a medieval madrassah to preach their intolerant agenda where students would only learn to hate and kill, but they would do their utmost to control and subvert someone’s wish to have consensual sex freely. And yes, then they would read the book again.
I do not want to generalise and I am sure there is a significant number of sane and progressive individuals in Saudi Arabia. And I do empathise with their agony and frustration.
Anyhow, this sort of close-mindedness isn’t really limited to Saudi Arabia (although no other can surpass the Kingdom in the severity of it). Sex without marriage is a taboo that dwells the religious mind in every part of this planet. Fornication is the pet-word that the religious orthodoxy has been using to denote sex without marriage; the reason behind obviously is to give it a pejorative connotation which doesn’t really effect a liberal mind; if Jack wants to have sex with his girlfriend Shelly and she with him, they wouldn’t really care whether it is being called love-making, having sex or fornication; while the local clergyman may bump up his blood pressure, condemning them to hell with a pale blue shuddering face, ruminating over the ‘diabolical ills of fornication.’
This brings me to a discussion thread entry by someone obviously pious that I’ve read few days back. And it is not the first time I came across this, “Fornication is a root of evil in the society!!!”
Really? Care to elaborate? How does an unmarried couple having consensual sex construes as evil? Do people explode while having sex? Do they die of hunger because of too much sex? How exactly? No seriously, tell me?
Forget sex out of wedlock. This sanctimonious bunch even shudders at the mere mention of the word ’sex’. Try uttering the words like ’sex education’, ’safe sex’ etc. on their face; they’d jump like they are stung by a jellyfish, some might leave your presence and immediately perform an ablution in order to cleanse their ears of the ’sinful’ utterance. I guess if one sadistic individual is to torture them, one of the most effective ways would be to record the word ’sex’ and play it in an infinite loop (hence one must never do that). Then comes the clergymen, the most pernicious and the most sly of the bunch across all religions; they wouldn’t talk about sex education or the necessity of having a good sexual health, but rather exert their repressed desires on the weak by the means of rape and paedophilia.
This makes me think, why? Why such dread of sex in religions, especially non marital? In my opinion it comes from the chauvinistic patriarchal misogynistic attitude of old times (which is unfortunately residing in the mental psyche of many even to date) when these religions were in their inceptions. Needless to say that all religions have been engineered by men. In their own narcissistic chauvinism, men have considered women vile, unclean and villainous. And the union with women have been considered a treacherous act that men couldn’t abstain from. In this sordid guilt-ridden affair of men, sex has become a matter of angst along with women. It would be fair to mention here that the status of women has improved with each subsequent religions but it has never been even close to be good enough, let alone rightful. Same can be said about sex.
The Christian concept of ‘Original Sin’ is another revolting piece. Saying that human birth comes with company-manufactured-box-packed-sins is very disturbing. In a multitude of religions many of the ‘pures’ were needed to be born by virgins or non sexual means: the most popular one being Jesus who was born from the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of Virgin Mary, Krishna (ironically, who himself was a philanderer) was born of Devika via some sort of ‘mental transmission’ as Bhagavad Purana recounts. All the Pandavas of Mahabharata were essentially gods’ children by Kunti and Madri as their husband Pandu was cursed to death if he ever had sex with his aforementioned wives. Even Buddha was also of a miraculous birth who is said to have been conceived sans coitus. Seems like in order to be great, one must not be a product of sex.
Abrahamic religions do their best to regulate sexuality more than anyone else. Setting aside their vociferous prohibition of sex out of wedlock, they even go on to prescribe on how to have sex as a married couple. I wonder why these sort of explicitly detailed diktat isn’t given in matters of abolition of slavery, poverty alleviation, corruption etc. All these come to me as telltale signs of anthropomorphic roots of these religious texts that demonstrate the attribution of significant ‘real estate’ to typical human psyche within the confines of our human imagination. Even the prized heavens of Islam are filled with promises of debauchery and indulgence that are so heftily prohibited on earth. So essentially you get a cookie for not eating the cookie. I often wonder what is the use of these bodily, earthly, material indulgence for the ‘pure souls’ that would ramble around in those opulent heavens? Couldn’t God come up with a bit more out of the box originality? Well, of course not…
Human is a sexual being. Sex is a perfectly natural and normal process. There is nothing to be ashamed of it, no reason to dread it or feel guilty about it. Other than serving as the instrument of our survival as a species, it is also an important tool for our mental, physical, emotional wellbeing. Repressing this completely natural biological drive is unhealthy and immoral. The prevailing hush-hush and obscurantism (and many a times unabashed sophistry) with regards to sex and sexual topics is risky, detrimental and utterly imbecilic.
So a request (in all likelihood a futile one) to the exemplars of piety: Please, please, please, do away with those shudders, broaden your outlook, educate your children about sex (please don’t read ‘abstinence’ here; that doesn’t work), discuss sex freely just as you’d discuss the weather. And while you never miss a chance to utter how great your God is, it wouldn’t hurt to let one talk about how great sex is…
This era of Facebook-ators…
Facebook; a modern day tool for keeping in touch with everyone who may or may not be interested in every minute detail of our lives. It’s good… really, except perhaps for the second by second status updates.
I’m not a fan of that. Not at all, no.
But then tolerance and a little extra knowledge cannot hurt. After all, it does not hurt to know that Sammy went to Vegas on a vacation, or that Timmy there is having coffee, or that Stevie is drunk.
Useless information that you’d give a rat’s ass for, true, but still okay. I decide to chill out, take a deep breath and tell myself that it’s all good, worse things have happened after all.
That’s when Liz goes personal… say… she brings the bedroom to her status update. Ummm… okay. Liz, did you just write… umm… THAT..!!
I laugh… and life goes on. I laugh a bit more. I decide Facebook has good entertainment value sometimes and is a ‘keep’!
That’s until Nelly poses a question in form of yet another status update: Do I have stop being a daughter when I am a wife?
Since you asked- no Nelly- you do not. No, and no, not even when you are the sicko who is the daughter and wife for the same man! Eww… lets draw the line at incest, shall we?
But of course, I don’t say that. Mommy taught me to be civil, after all. I fail miserably at times. This post is a burning example of that fail- as you see. Instead, I check Nelly’s number of friends.
250.
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY!!!!
It does seem too many to be receiving this question. Hell, even 5 seem too many! But, is it just me?
It does not stop there unfortunately. Sometimes Nelly, sometimes Stevie, sometimes Nikilesh- a page full of personal stuffs look at me in form of status updates, and I keep feeling like the proverbial fish-out-of-water:
“I have hernia”
“Am I the sacrificial goat in this relationship?”
“I pine for Sally. I love you so much, Sally-kins. Ummmmmmah…”
Hmm… these seem personal, more personal than what Liz shared- to be honest. And I wonder what am I missing?!!
I guess these are shouts for attention…. ‘LOUD’ shouts! And, it seems like I am not alone in this thought, others are having similar thoughts too. Some experts say that Facebook statuses say a lot about who you are as a person. I think I agree. I think Nelly is obsessed with herself and a miserable whiney attention freak, so is Liz- less whiney and just as miserable …. and Stevie, Timmy and Sammy are just plain boring….
I guess that makes me a judgement passing stalker.
May be it’s time the FB-world should look up the word ‘Personal’ in the dictionary? And while that happens- I can give a good ‘once over’ to my list of friends.
And you? You, meanwhile, can have a look at this. I thought it was a good read.
Faith and Knowledge
Posted by Pepper in Atheism, Irrationality, Religion on October 6, 2009
I like Richard Dawkins.
I know it comes as hardly a surprise.
Even though I think it needs clarification that I have been an atheist since much much before I read Dawkins, Dawkins just gave me some answers that I can give to the theists when they ask questions that they think proves that there is a God.
Questions like:
‘How can a creation as complex as this universe be created without a creator?’
‘How can something come from nothing?’
‘How could humans have evolved from apes?’
It surely helps that Dawkins is a zoologist… and a damn fine writer. It helps me to grasp what I find more believable- ‘science’… something testable, provable, solid, and believable.
Yes. As I said, I like Dawkins. Very much.
But, I have very strong objection in him being referred to as the high priest for atheists.
It makes atheism sound so much like a religion- any religion- whereas what it actually is- is a ‘way of thinking’. Logical thinking. I will be much dismayed if atheists, of all people, start to look up to someone or something, for idolizing or for believing blindly.
I will hate to see it happen.
I will hate to see atheism turn into a ‘religion’.
Mannequins with hijab to curb some hormonal bubble-dance
Posted by Rugrat in Irrationality, Religion, WTF on October 5, 2009
Let’s not kid around. Women do get a tough time on this planet that we call earth. One might think, how hard would it be to be a female wooden/fibreglass doll? Well think twice… it isn’t a rosy path either. Say for example, in Iran, now mannequins are being forced by the authorities to wear hijab.
There’s this growing tendency in the Muslim world to categorise everything in just two mutually exclusive categories: ‘Islamic’ or ‘Un-Islamic’. It is the latest good/evil, yin/yang, light/dark in the current Islamic zeitgeist. Just a while back in Pakistan some so called top Islamic clerics issued a decree stating theft of electricity a sin; funny that there was felt a need to issue such decree where common law and above all common sense sufficiently covers. Nowadays, every debate tends to float around this very branding with every sect, denomination or authority coming up with their ‘highly investigated’ arguments (of course within their self imposed constraint of Quranic injunctions). The ever-growing shroud of this utterly myopic and vacuous branding is like a voracious monster that doesn’t know where to stop.
Keeping true to this latest vogue, now in Iran (if not in some other countries), mannequins without hijab over the head are branded as ‘Un-Islamic’ by the authorities. Ironically, mannequins without a head are spared, even though they are still not allowed to show their bodily female curves (how uncannily similar to what is often expected from the human females).
I wonder why? Were those inanimate mannequins donning those artificial locks and curls giving the males in the Islamic regime some hormone infused bubble-dance (I didn’t mention females as Ahmadinejad claims that there are no homosexuals in Iran :p, while the truth lies somewhere here)? Or, have they taken the tacky 1987 Kim Cattrall movie ‘Mannequin’ (where Kim is a mannequin that comes alive) too seriously and are afraid that hundreds of cheesily dancing Kim Cattralls would be too much handle in the cities that forbid any affiliation with sex? Apologies for my lame attempt of a pun at ‘Sex and the City’. However, Let’s take a glimpse:
If this video is what prompted their decision, I wouldn’t hold it against them.
We Are Legend
As a white person growing up in a western, Christian country, surrounded by American TV shows, Mattel toys and Legos, my formative years were spend surrounded by devout Catholic friends clutching crucifixes and being forced into attending thrice weekly masses by their religious parents and various Protestant demonimations – my own family included – who weren’t quite sure what their schtick was regarding God, but that they were quite sure he existed and had a son – Jesus – and that he was busy preparing an eternal place for us in heaven, while watching over us at all times. Well, except maybe when you’re in the bathroom, because Presbyterians and Lutherans are a little prudish when it comes to matters of religion being tainted with those of bathroom doings.
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