dietsch ::

Burn Beirut Burn

I'm long enough out of the fundie subculture that when I hear news reports from Israel and Lebanon, I don't think, Hey, what do the born-agains think of this? Luckily, someone at Harper's did indeed ask that question.

Hundreds are dead, hundreds more wounded, and all the fundies can say is .

And people wonder why I'm a misanthrope.

UPDATE: They yanked the thread down, owing to all the attention it's getting. You'd almost think they were ashamed to see their Lord's return!

Who's your distributor?

Like many New Yorkers, Jen and I have gotten pretty good about segregating our recyclables--returnable glass in one bag (or bags) and nonreturnables in another. Pretty much as soon as the recycling goes out, you see older folks with granny carts, collecting the returnables to get back the deposit. I don't care that I lose the deposit--it's 5 cents a bottle--and I figure it's a small pittance of a donation to people who need a little extra money. So we segregate our recyclables, happily.

So this afternoon, I took some bags of trash and recycling out to the curb. In our nabe, the stuff gets picked up Monday morning, so you take it out on Sunday. As I was hauling the bags out, up comes this guy with a granny cart. "Yo! You always drink the imports! Why's that?!"

"Uh..."

Granny man: "Where you get 'em? Where you get those imports?"

"Uh, well, FreshDirect, usually, but..."

Granny man: "Who's the distributor? Reason I ask is, distributors ain't always takin' back the import bottles. If they distribute the Buds and the Coors, they ain't takin' back the imports. Why you gettin' imports, man? I can't do nothin' with them bottles! I have to pick through, and leave the imports here!"

"Hey, listen. I already separate the returnables from the non-returnables. You want me to separate the imports from the domestics as well? No way I'm doing that."

Granny man: "Hey, man, it's cool. Someone else'll come along and pick them up."

So, here's the future face of recycling in NYC: paper in one bin, plastic in another (but only the 1's and 2's ferchristsake! no 5's or 6's!), cans in a third, non-returnable brown glass in a fourth, nonreturnable green glass in a fifth, returnable domestics in a sixth bin, returnable imports in a seventh....

Bullshit.

Perspective, lack thereof

Anti-Christian persecution in China:

"They hung me up across an iron gate, then they yanked open the gate and my whole body lifted until my chest nearly split in two. I hung like that for four hours."

[BBC News]

Anti-Christian persecution in Saudi Arabia:

Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah showed up at President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, to declare that "tolerance must extend to those of all faiths and practices," Saudi police stormed a clandestine church in a suburb of Riyadh and arrested 40 Christians for proselytizing.

[New York Sun]

Anti-Christian persecution in Sudan:

Sudan's militant Muslim regime is slaughtering Christians who refuse to convert to Islam, according to the head of an aid group who recently returned from the African nation.

[WorldNetDaily]

Anti-Christian persecution in the United States of America:

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. "Sometimes it's hard to tell whether this is sinister -- it's the purging of Christ from Christmas -- or whether it's just political correctness run amok," he said. "I think in the case of the White House, it's just political correctness."

Wildmon does not give retailers the same benefit of the doubt. This year, he has called for a consumer boycott of Target stores because the chain issued a holiday advertising circular that did not mention Christmas. Last year, he aimed a similar boycott at Macy's Inc., which averted a repeat this December by proclaiming "Merry Christmas" in its advertising and in-store displays.

[WaPo]

Ironically, one of the whiners that the Post quotes is the editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily, who, having published the story about Sudanese Christians, should really know better than to give a shit about such piss-ant complaints.

Follow-up

Item 1: In the interest of fairness: White House to Seek $950 Million for Tsunami Aid (washingtonpost.com). this aid package, if approved, would make the U.S. the most generous donor gov't. Item 2: Ikea is the new Wal-Mart:

Ikea had not predicted that up to 6,000 people would descend on the new store, in Edmonton, with a stampede to get in resulting in a frightening crush....

The chaos meant the new store - the 12th and biggest to open in the UK - had to close just over 40 minutes after opening because of what Ikea described as the "unforeseen numbers".

Congratulations, consumer America Britain, this is the life you deserve.

Iraqi gov't tortures prisoners

Why did we go into Iraq again? The Bushies, of course, sold us the war on WMDs, which we now know didn't exist. When that excuse began looking thin, they reminded us what a bad man Saddam was. Now, Human Rights Watch reports that the new Iraqi regime employs Saddam's torture mavens to abuse prisoners. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Next up on Ayad Allawi's agenda: gassing the Kurds.

The Romans were right

Feed them to the lions: Jen forwarded me a piece from the Detroit Free Press columnist Susan Ager, who writes:

I heard from Lori Stuit of Royal Oak, who wrote: "God did not cause the recent tsunami to occur. Satan did. While there is an all-good, all-powerful God, there is also a god of this world, a god who is all evil: Satan. I am always surprised at how many people don't take the time to think about this. I feel bad for people who are lost and confused."

Lori, I'm surprised you didn't take the time to think about this: Under this form of theodicy, your God is either impotent to contain Satan or indifferent to Satan's machinations. Either way, your God is a douchebag.

Another reader who did not sign his or her name wrote: "The Bible tells us that countries who forget God will pay a price. These countries that just got hit are almost exclusively Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu, religions that worship pagan gods and ignore the one true God. ... It won't be long until this country pays a price as well, and we will have people like you to thank.

Good one, anonymous coward, blame the victim. If your children contract leukemia, as I hope they will, will you have the moral conviction to stand up and say, "God hates me, too." I don't mean to imply that all Christians are ignorant, compassionless bigots, because I certainly know that such isn't the case. I do think, however, it's time for those Christians who do try to practice the humility and love of Jesus to stand up and tell their self-righteous brethren to shut the fuck up. Otherwise, it'll be the lions for the lot of you.

God hates Swedes

Westboro Baptist Church FAQ "Do you realize that among the dead and missing are 20,000 Swedes and over 3,000 Americans? Filthy Swedes went to Thailand - world epicenter of child sex traffic - to rape and sodomize little Thai boys and girls....We sincerely hope and pray that all 20,000 Swedes are dead, their bodies bloated on the ground or in mass graves or floating at sea feeding sharks and fishes or in the bellies of thousands of crocodiles washed ashore by tsunamis."

Floods and festivities

The New York Times | Arts | Frank Rich: Washington's New Year War Cry: Party On!

Washington's next celebration will be the inauguration. Roosevelt decreed that the usual gaiety be set aside at his wartime inaugural in January 1945. There will be no such restraint in the $40 million, four-day extravaganza planned this time, with its top ticket package priced at $250,000. The official theme of the show is "Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service." That's no guarantee that the troops in Iraq will get armor, but Washington will, at least, give home-front military personnel free admission to one of the nine inaugural balls and let them eat cake.

[emphasis added] New York Times | Editorial | Are We Stingy? Yes

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

[emphasis added]

Priorities

Low Culture examines our priorities and reaches the only logical conclusion: Fuck you, America.