Paradise


Hello again.  I know this is a Bible blog and I should try to stay on subject but well… What the hell.  To illustrate the other things that have kept me busy, I decided to offer a photo montage of our garden.  When we bought this house eight years ago we thought we would never have enough room for a real garden.  Oh, my wife has always been into flowers and plants but due to a shortage of backyard space, edible gardening has always been a thing she thought wasn’t in our future.  Then I worked on her.  And worked on her.  And again.  You see I’ve always considered the front yard of most homes a waste.  I’m not sure what it is like in other contries, but in the US an expansive front lawn is simply something to look at, a middle class status symbol ranked by how perfectly uniform it is.  Unbroken by variation it generally sits there unused.  Seldom trod on, rarely played on and virtually never sat on, So much money and effort go into American yards which serve as pristine but useless frames to houses.

I’ve never been a fan.

Now while our backyard is too small for a garden, our front yard had plenty of space that was doing little save for creating a mowing job for Reilly.  He has always resented this too (still does) as we only have a hand-powered reel style push mower.  Can you imagine this? An American kid forced into slave labor without even the support of an internal combustion engine.  Sigh. And we don’t have either cable or broadcast TV… Has there ever been a child so deprived?  Frankly I’m surprised social services hasn’t been called.

Anyway, I digress.  So here is our useless front yard combined with a couple who would love to grow their own food.  All one needs to do is set aside some standard conventions and voila!  Instant garden… well not really instant, quite the contrary actually, but you get the idea.  BTW, click on the pictures to get clearer and slightly larger photos.  Wordpress’s photo compressor has a blurring side effect.

Our front yard garden looking south.

As you can see my very talented wife loves to mix both the astheticly pleasing and practical side by side so we have garlic growing next to Asian Lilies, tomatoes ended by pansies  and the entire garden overlooked by a massive Honeysuckle. Oh, how I love this place.

Here's the middle looking back north.

And south again.

South looking north. Ornamentals at the corner and beans down the east side along with plenty of radish, lettuce and other greens.

Here's the far west looking east.

As you can see from the last two photos, there is a bit of grass left.  Within a couple years this will all be torn up too replaced with some fruit bushes and grapes, perhaps. Maybe just strawberries.   Since I don’t have a tiller and prefer to do everything by shovel and fork, it takes time to get it all done.  I’m looking forward to when the only thing we have to mow is the boulevard.  Secretly, we’re trying to see what the city will allow us to change there too, but they get a little weird about those things.

Peas and cabbage

Our first garden pea... I did have to share it, but it was damned fine anyway. Tomorrow I'll sneak out before Renee gets up.

Which of course, brings me to my favorite plant in the yard, this wonderful Honeysuckle.  Unfortunately, the blooms are mostly gone now but this is an incredible plant, healthy, strong and determined to conquer everything in it’s path.  It’s everything life should be.

The honeysuckle, planted when we moved in and going strong ever since. Awesome.

Backyard with ornamentals and herbs. It's our little shelter.

The reading, writing, eating and relaxing area.

The hammock. Simply the best thing we have ever bought. Ever! I'm not kidding. Laying with a pillow and book in the hammock with a beer to the side... This is what life is all about.

My wife cannot let a corner go without something growing there. Can you believe the color? Isn't evolution wonderful?

Like I said above, every corner. It amazes me what a little junk off the farm and some flowering plants can do.

And to end our little garden tour we’ll give you some rooftop shots.

Our backyard combined with the neighbor's over the fence. She has a great pond with amazingly large fish! Reilly also does the mowing there but she does pay him. Unlike us.

Aerial views of the raised beds. Hands off the peas!

And my son, Reilly. He and I are now convinced that we should build a small deck up here. Great view and we could spy on the neighbors ;) . That's our very art deco capital building in the background. P.S. His mother had a bit of a fit learning he had been up there. Um... yeah.

I was going to end there but upon coming into the house I was presented with this incredible relaxing view and simply couldn’t resist.

Cat's have a great ability to make the most uncomfortable positions look like heaven. This is Granite, a master of her trade, doing what she know how to do best.

And there it is.  My wife and I are a study of opposites in this garden.  She loves the plants.  I prefer the soil.  She arranges the flowers.  I arrange the beds themselves.  She nurtures growth.  I dig dirt.  We are opposite but complimentary.  The thing we both share is an absolute fascination with life in all it’s varieties.  We worship life and how can one not?   We can stare at a single flower and wonder at its beauty for many minutes.

And there has never been a better time to stop and smell the roses.  Think about it.  What an age to live in.  We have plants from nearly every spot on the globe at our fingertips.  Species and varieties that people actually died to bring back and labored to cultivate, I can buy at the grocery store for pennies.  Oh what a life!  I live with a woman I’m devoted to and a child whom I adore.  People, this is truly a golden age, and I live in paradise.

Again, I’m not kidding.

2011
07/09
CATEGORY
Thoughts
Uncategorized
20 comments

Flood Update


Hi.  Yeah… Where the hell have I been?  Hmm.  Let’s just say that parts of my life continually get in the way of the rest.  I have been teaching, studying on what I should be teaching, trying to figure out where our apprenticeship should be going, gardening, landscaping, assuming my new duties as trustee of our local union, applying for the board of our state’s worker’s compensation department, keeping our secular group meeting, and maintaining a decent relationship with my wife and son.    I’ve done fairly well on the last one.  Everything else, including this blog, has taken a lower priority… as it should.

Sorry.

A brief bit of news.  The Missouri River flooding has turned out to be better than we hoped.  There is a tremendous volume of water in the river, over twice the previous record, and no one really understood what would happen.  Turns out that having a mass of water moving at speed through the channel has eroded the 60 years worth of sand bars far more quickly than anyone had thought possible.  This has left us with an overall lower level to the river than had been predicted, about 18 inches lower.  The dikes are holding well and it looks as if only a few hundred houses are going to be severely damaged.  This is good.

Now for the bad.  This eroding of the river bottom has been far more dramatic than ever imagined.  Parts of the river that were 30 feet deep before are now approaching 100 feet.  A few houses along the bank have collapsed entirely and more will likely follow.  One disappeared overnight, and last I heard no one witnessed it at all.  This erosion may have repercussions, some as serious as losing several more houses, some more ironic in that many of the houses built on filled in land and sold for obscene amounts of money may not have backyard river access when normal flow rates return.  A river channel deeper than before and in a different spot may subtract a bit of value from those million dollar houses.  C’est la vie!

Perhaps the worst element of this flood will be the likely death of all the trees in the flood plain.  Although these trees are flood resistant and often were underwater for part of the year before the dam was built, that was always in the spring when they were still dormant and using little oxygen.  This late in the season, most cannot take having their roots submerged for months on end.  We are looking at the deaths of tens of millions of mature trees, many nearly a century old.  This saddens me most of all.  When you live on the Great Plains, trees take on a near mystical preciousness.  In a state where trees are rare, every loss here will be felt.  Next year the river, a wonderful and underused resource, the best thing North Dakota has, will likely be a wasteland of dying and decaying vegetation.  Shit!

And while Bismarck has fared better than we expected, our sister city of Minot in the northern part of the state has done for worse than anyone imagined possible.  They had a spring flood scare and were forced to evacuate a quarter of the town, but that receded and most people had returned and picked up their lives again.  Severe rains in Canada in the upper reaches of the Souris River caused an unstoppable surge of water a month later that they had little chance of defending their homes against.  Their joy at surviving the spring flood, turned to despair when the news hit.  There was nothing to be done.  Sandbagging or dike building was so inadequate as to be worse than useless.   This flood beat the previous high water record in 1881 by nearly 6 feet in places.  It was eight feet over the present dikes. All they could do was to save the most precious and leave the rest.

One quarter of all the houses in Minot were flooded, some 3000 to 4000 of them, many with water right up to their rafters.  No one wants to predict how many are going to have to be razed completely.  It’s unfortunate.  I have several friends who live in this area, and none really know how bad it is yet.

Importantly, few deaths have taken place.   Trees and property are when put in perspective, well,  just trees and property.  Compared to the tragedy that Japan is going through our flood can rank no higher than an inconvenience.  We still have our wives and husbands and children.  You could take everything else I have and I could sleep well that night.  I could burn my house to the ground and still laugh until my stomach hurt over something Reilly had said.  But take those we love?  A worse loss could not be contemplated.

Thinking of those coastal villages and their incredible loss of life will put whatever me and mine suffer into perspective for a very long time.   Loss is only loss if it can’t be replaced.

Be safe all.

Here are some pictures Reilly and others have taken around town.

Flooded houses on the Mandan side of the river

South of town

More mess

A house collapsing into the river. The other one just wasn't there one morning.

This is the area where the housed collapsed into the river. The rest of the people out here are a bit nervous.

This is our favorite park, Pioneer Park just to the north of the city. Most of these trees aren't going to make it.

These are pictures from Minot.

Going home?

Minot from above.

How is the electricity still on?

2011
07/08
CATEGORY
Atheism
5 comments

Beautiful Balls Of Biblical Bullshit ©


I saw these and just couldn't resist. Now we can finally determine who would win the final battle.

Exodus 34

I’m not bragging or anything, but people, this next part is going to be great.  As a Biblical critic working my way systematically through the damnable book I am stuck with whatever dull and meaningless material the particular section I’m going through has to offer.  Far too often useless Bible babble goes on incessantly as with God’s never-ending instruction on how to build his temple.  It’s not that I can’t make fun of it, but when the same bullshit goes on for pages I feel I am telling the same joke over and over with increasingly unsettling results like a child constantly screaming “Knock! Knock!”  This can get tedious.  Painfully Tedious!

Now don’t get me wrong. Many other times the Bible is interesting even fascinating; that is not to say I find it a great moral guide with impeccable logic and perfect ethics.  Whoo… Yeah.  Damn, just thinking about that made me laugh so hard I hurt myself.  Whoo! Let me catch my breath… OK.  What I mean to say is that it is often interesting in that I can poke its flaccid and limp logic with a sharp stick and watch it squirm apathetically out of the way.  These are the good parts, the parts I enjoy.  Nothing I like better than the Bible and a sharp stick.  But now and then come the parts that I live for.  These are the chapters and verses that are so laden with irony and contradiction that I do not understand how anyone not suffering from either congenital idiocy or a traumatic brain injury cannot realize how absurd it is.  These are the parts I love.

And people, here we are at one of those Beautiful Balls of Biblical Bullshit. (© 2011 KKBundy)

Moses, having smashed the original copy of the Ten Commandments in a huge hissy-fit over a certain Golden Calf affair, now desperately finds himself in need of a new set of tablets.  Personally, I understand this for what society could survive long without constantly gazing upon admonishments to not kill each other or to not sleep with your neighbor’s wife.  Myself, I simply can recount all the times I’ve held a huge rock high over the head of my fellow human ready to smash his or her brains to pudding when, suddenly, I glanced up and saw the Ten Commandments. Every time this happens I’m like “Shit! What the hell was I thinking?  This is just wrong!”  At times of these ethical temptations, I find it most relaxing to go over and satisfy myself on all the slave women I kidnapped after slaughtering their husbands and family.  Damned if I don’t love being righteous!

At any rate Moses needs to find the bronze age version of Kinkos and run off another copy of that fantastically valuable set of rules.  So God tells him to carve out another set of blank tablets and meet him, again, on the mountain and, again, don’t bring anyone. So Moses takes his two stone tablets up the mountain to meet the Lord.  This is where it gets good.

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;  who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”

If there is a more fucked up sentence in the Bible, I have yet to run across it, and to me, this sums up all nutless douchebaggery that is the Great Lord Genocide.  How do we know God is loving and compassionate?  Why he tells us so right here.  And if your have the temerity to think otherwise, he will bust a cap in your ass… And your children’s asses… and your grandchildren…, and possibly one or two other generations depending how he’s feeling that day.  In the words of the kind and gracious Ming the Merciless,  ”All creatures shall make merry…Under pain of Death!”

I particularly like the “slow to anger” part.  This is a guy who just condoned the killing of three thousand people for the terrible crime of… making a statue.  Making a fucking statue!  Thank Baal none of the Hebrews took up oil painting or he would have wiped them all out. And how can any being possibly forgive “iniquity, transgression and sin” but leave no guilty parties unmolested?  Isn’t the nature of forgiveness that you do not seek retribution?  If I publicly forgive someone for their crimes against me but then gut shoot them with a 12-gauge, people are going to justifiably doubt my sincerity.  Does he forgive them after he butchers them but before sending them to hell?  Oh wait… Hell hasn’t been invented yet.  I guess not.

And someone please tell me what the children and grandchildren could possibly have to do with this so-called crime?  And don’t give that shitball of an argument that I can’t possibly understand perfect justice and therefore, have no right to judge God.  Think about this for a minute.  If someone kills my wife and I ask myself  that common ethical question, “What would Jesus do?”  the answer would not only be to hunt the bastard down and kill him, but Jesus (Remember that he and God are one and the same) would then slaughter the man’s kids and grandkids.  What a dickhead.   This jackass has all the graciousness of an acid enema.

When theists wonder why atheists find the God of the Old Testament such a sociopathic bastard, we should quote them this passage. I am sure it would do no good.  Their ability to spin doctor every irony and contradiction by cherry picking their way around the Bible is legendary.

Then Moses does what he does best.

Remember last time God said this to Moses, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way.”  Now Moses hastens to bow low toward the earth and worship. He said, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own possession.”

Moses is again offering the Hebrews to God as his bitches and this makes God happy because he wants everyone to be his bitch.  Nothing God likes better than his people submitting and humiliating themselves.  Moses, by his own admission, appears to be the only person who can calm the Lord Genocide down and stop him from killing everyone, and the only way he can do this is by enslaving the entire nation, but hey, what’s a guy to do?  Yahweh is undeniably a psycho killing machine that needs his ego stroked and Moses is the only one that can do that and, therefore, the only person who can save the Jews from their loving Lord.

Yeah, I know.  I know! As I have pointed out before there is another way of looking at this.  Much of the writing in Exodus is simply Moses convincing all his people that he is the only man who can save them, and for him to do that they will have to obey his every whim utterly.  Moses spends so much of his energy not persuading Yahweh to spare his chosen people but persuading those people that he, Moses, is the only one who has that power.  Moses becomes invaluable because he has forced people to believe that he is invaluable. It’s a great trick.

This is how all cult leaders work.  It’s an easy path to a great deal of power. When one speaks for God, believers must listen, must obey.  It’s the only path to salvation.

My answer to this is a simple equation.  Bear with me.  Moses = God’s best friend, and God will do as Moses asks.  God = God + great power over believers because they believe. Moses as the only person that can control God is thereby powerful. But… God is imaginary.  The only easy way to use imaginary numbers is to cancel them out.

Moses + God =  Power.  God = 0

Moses = Power

Although not strictly mathematical, it follows that Moses = God. Moses was nothing if not innovative.

It’s kind of a Pythagorean Theorem for cult leaders, or perhaps, a recipe for being a jack off.

I report. You decide.

2011
06/12
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Myth
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
27 comments

Why I Am A 13-Year-Old Atheist


This is Waylon Hedegaard/KKbundy/The Blessed Atheist.  As many know, my wife and I homeschool our son and writing has always been a big part of that.  For a writing project at the end of school, Reilly wrote about what it’s like to be a teen atheist, and  I want to share it with you.  I left the article as written.  It’s in his hand and style and is pretty much untouched by me.  Damned if he doesn’t make me proud.

Here’s Reilly.

My atheism, like many things, has many causes. Thousands of different factors, all thrown at me to produce who I am and what I believe. One of the biggest things that played into my atheism was exposure to everything. I was exposed at a very young age, to church. We never actually attended a Sunday service, but I went to a Bible day camp. Now one thing I must get straight is that my parents are just as atheistic as I am. However, I didn’t find that out until i was seven.  I think that they wanted to let me make my own choice and expose me to everything. Every summer for around three years, I went to the church next door every day for a week. It was fun, I had a good time, and never got the subliminal messages about God. Never really knowing too much about religion, I just thought that it was a big game. However, one thing I did notice was the fact that all of these people were a little odd. I later found out, that this oddity is called religion.

Many Christians are very good people. They live good lives, and have fun. Almost all of my friends are religious. However, stubborn, mean, overly religious people fall into three categories for me:

* Bible thumpers: These people bring up God or the Bible up anytime they can! They constantly praise Jesus for allowing the turkey to be cooked properly, or for having the people they don’t like being struck down with the sniffles. These people think that ‘God’ does everything, and that if they praise him enough, he will forget about that one time in college, when that thing happened with that girl.

* Hardcores: This is the class of people that will go to church every day except Tuesday, when they will write on their Blog about god. These guys usually tend to be rather nice (Or tend to act like it), pretending to not care what your beliefs are, as they bombard you with church meeting invites.

* Zombies: The final, and worst, class of overly religious people. They seem calm, mellow and boring at first. You talk to them for a bit, and notice that they have a lot to say about God. They go on and on about how great he is, centering every conversation on religion. And when you can’t stand it anymore, you let on that you are an atheist. Then they go insane. They freak out at you, talking about how deep in hell your going to go. They attack everything you say, with the tried and true arguments that make them feel as if they’ve won. And if you wonder why I call them zombies, replace God with human flesh. You’ll understand.

Now one thing that I have found out, is that many people simply don’t care. A lot of people will accept you, no matter what you believe. Other people, however, freak out on you and never speak to you again. I know this may sound corny, but these people aren’t worth befriending anyway. I used to never tell anyone that I was an Atheist. It was horrible, because if people don’t know your beliefs, they will assume that you have the same beliefs as they do. With most people, this is actually a good thing. However, with the right-wing, Bible thumper-hardcore-zombies (yes, they do exist), it gets pretty bad. And then you start getting invited to ‘Jesus camp’ and the Element.

Another thing that makes it hard being an atheist, is that I am a homeschooler. The reason that I am is that I know that I can get a better education this way. But the reason that many people do it, is that the schools aren’t religious enough. That one statement should give you a good impression of the average homeschooler. Well, I went to the homeschooler Physical Education meeting, Tuesdays and Thursdays, every week. We played a random assortment of sports, ranging from track, to open swim, to sitting on the floor and rolling a volleyball around. Like P.E. everywhere, it was kind of dull, but I became friends with the people there. They were very nice.

Well one time, one of my friends asked me if I wanted to go to the Evangelical-free youth meetings (I know Evangelical-free seem like it would be free of evangelicals, but no, quite the opposite). It didn’t come to mind that it might have been religious, because usually religion wasn’t a big thing with me and my friends. Little did I know that my homeschooler friend’s lives revolved around it. So we went to the E-Free mega-church and went into this low ceiling room, full of people doing various activities. I looked around, thinking that this was going to be awesome. But about fifteen minutes into it a tall man, dressed all in black, came into the room and ushered us down some steps. We sat in a blindingly white room, chattering Quietly, until another man came in and handed us each a Bible verse. We all got up, one at a time, and recited our verse. I was getting a little weirded out, when the first man came around and started answering our questions about God. When it was my friend’s turn for question time, his one question was “Where is the proof?”. I gave a little smile when I heard this, but that smile quickly faded at the response. “The proof is the Bible, the word of God” So the proof of God, is something God said? That was the moment when I fully became an atheist.

Due to the highly noticeable lack of atheists in Bismarck, not many of my friends have the same beliefs as me. Many of my best friends are highly religious, going to church every Sunday, attending the Element and taking part in all of the religious events that they can. I really don’t care what their beliefs are, as long as they don’t shove it in my face all the time. I even help with some of their church-based-charities. Not only that, but all of my friends know that I am an atheist. It would seem like this would be something you would tread lightly on, but no, its actually a bit of a joke to us. We point out ironic moments, like when we played Clue, and I get stuck as the Reverend. That is how I know that I am hanging out with good people. They don’t care what I believe, as long as I’m nice about it.

So, in conclusion, Atheism really doesn’t affect my life that much. Many people talk about how depressed they would be if they were an atheist, but I feel quite the opposite. I feel like I lead a great life. And I do lead a great life, because I feel like I do (This, unlike proof of god, is an acceptable use of circular logic). I don’t lead a good life because of what I believe, but because of my actions.

I suppose this last paragraph could have been summed up in four words: Don’t be a dick.

Reilly Hedegaard

2011
06/05
CATEGORY
Atheism
Homeschool
Religion
Thoughts
42 comments

Quick Update And A Little Self-Glorification


The newspaper photo of Reilly and I sandbagging.

Hey all.  I just finished my 8th day of sandbag filling.  The news is approximately the same.  The Corps of Engineers is still going to release the same ungodly amount of water.(or should I say godly… Hmmm…  Dilemma.)  They have only adjusted the time frame of its release.  Some time this weekend they’ll start the 120,000 cubic feet per second and some time next week they’ll up it to 150,000 cfs. In short, we are still screwed. To give you an idea about the amount of flow that is the previous record release since the dam was finished in the early 1950′s was 75,000 cfs in 1975.  We will double that in the next week and a half.  I’ll keep you posted.

I’m somewhat surprised that this hasn’t hit the national news yet.  Bismarck is just the beginning.  There are towns downstream where all the people are going to be evacuated.

But as a bit of self-glorification, my son and I were interviewed for the paper because we were out there so much.  Here’s a link.  Unfortunately it reveals my secret identity, but as most of you know that anyway it’s not a big deal and past time to come clean anyway.  For those of you who do not know me, my name is Waylon Hedegaard.  I’m a union boilermaker living in Bismarck, North Dakota. I’m married to the single greatest woman on the planet, Renee Ewine and my 13-year-old son, Reilly, is my soul mate and the apple of my eye and whose super power is a unique ability to drive me batshit insane on rare occasions.  I am truly a blessed atheist, albeit, a tired and sore one.

It’s nice to meet you.

It is a nice article.  The other young lady, Liz Mizell,I found particularly impressive.  She’s a nonreligious 16-year-old and has come out there nearly every day on her own for about six hours a day.  That is an impressive amount of dedication.  In addition, there were about 125 teenagers from a town 200 miles away who volunteered to take a bus down and sandbag all day.

Every time someone gripes about the youth of this country not giving a shit, I’d like to slap them.  Obviously, the same goes for church as the only way to instill morals.

 

2011
06/01
CATEGORY
Atheism
Thoughts
Uncategorized
11 comments

The Great Bismarck Flood


As many of you realize, I have been a little busy lately, first with work 14 hours a day then with the flood preparations. Yes, flood preparations.  You see for the first time in its history Bismarck is going to have a major flood, an all-out-holy-shit kind of flood, the kind of flood we only thought happened elsewhere. Oh, we have had minor ones before and there are a few river areas that habitually flood a little, but for the first time in memory, the Army Corps of engineers is rapidly building dikes down our streets.  People are sandbagging individual houses and entire blocks.  Entire main thoroughfares are closed down just so the dirt hauling trucks can get to the dike construction areas faster.  Yet even if the dike will be finished in time and even if it holds back the waters, there are about 5,600 people in 1300 homes outside the dike’s protection.  These people will have to fend for themselves against the rising waters.  The unofficial word is just take what you value and leave. This is likely going to be the worst disaster in Bismarckian history.

This started out as a potential major disaster that we thought we had plenty of time to prepare for, but has rapidly turned into an unbelievable mess with which our time to prepare is coming to an end.  Every day the Corps of Engineers has raised the projected flow rate of the water they have to release from the Garrison Dam, 60 miles to the North, and has moved up the date when they are to do this.  First it was 105,00 Cubic Feet per Second towards the end of June but now with all the rainfall in Montana and the snowpack beginning its thaw, they have now stated that by the 2nd of June (just 4 days away) the flow will be 120,000 CFS and 150,000 CFS a week later.  By Yahweh’s fossilized shit, we are screwed!  If you doubt this check out this map.  All that blue area is the area that will be flooded.  All the checkers area will be protected if the dike holds.  If not, paint all that blue also.  To give you an idea of the scale of this, the rivers normal width is less that a tenth of what is projected here and that other 9/10 that is projected to be the river is currently inhabited.

With this flood, we stand to lose 500 houses if everything goes right and the dike holds.  If the dike doesn’t hold, and remember this is a hastily engineered and constructed dirt dike that will have to hold up to two months, if it doesn’t hold we stand to lose a quarter of the city.  The damage is projected to be in the hundreds of millions of all goes well and into the billions if not. It boggles my mind.  I grew up with the infallability of that Dam’s protection as a article of faith so-to-speak if such a phrase may be used on this site, but now, I have learned a great deal about the fallibility of the infallible.  I have been sandbagging for 8 hours a day for the last five days.  My body aches every time I move, yet there are weeks of work left.  We have filled 850,000 bags in the last five days.  They now say we need 4,000,000 more in the next four days as a start.  I fear the future here.

As a clarification I must say that the Blessed Atheist’s house is wisely built on a hill, but I have dozens of friends who are on the flood plain below and have met dozens more bottom dwellers while loading sandbags onto their trucks for them to fortify their houses.

And what do we do about it?  Read as much of this as you can stomach then turn to the discussion tab at the top.  You’ll notice the first commenter had a something interesting to say.  A rather suave and persuasive commenter at that, I must admit. Then you’ll see, of course, what the rest of Bismarck consists of.

Sigh.  The city’s in desperate trouble.  We simple can’t get enough sandbags filled, but we’ll sit around talk to our imaginary friend begging him to stop the flood which he created.

What… the… fuck?

I love these people here, but Jesus Christ in a piece of toast, sometimes I swear this town could use an enema. There’s a certain constipation in their thinking.

My son and I were going to go on a two week vacation/work trip to New Jersey but have cancelled in light of the approaching doom.  I just couldn’t bear to be away from my community in its time of need.  I will be spending at least eight hours a day from here on filling sandbags.  Me and the National Guard… and a couple of others… and Aleve and caffeine…

Wish me luck!

2011
05/29
CATEGORY
Atheism
Thoughts
8 comments

Moses and Yahweh, Lost In Translation.


Moses, now having The Lord Genocide’s precise instructions on how to live and more importantly, how to build great altars and temples to He Who Shall Not Be Named ( I am just Shittin’ ya. It’s God.) is instructed by God that he should move on. Unfortunately, like a cuckolded lover, God is still pouting from the Hebrews affair with that Golden Hussy from the last few chapters. We all know the old saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” which — I’ll try to be diplomatic here — may or may not be true, except for God. No one can throw quite such a dumb-assed hissy fit quite like Our Lord God when people aren’t falling all over themselves in adulation. That shit-ass takes every perceived slight way too seriously and gets worked up over the smallest of things. Eye just one golden bovine while walking through the mall and Bam! All the sudden, he wants to kill you and everyone you know. Shit dude, lighten up a bit. I was just looking for Baal’s sake! It’s not like you caught me in a Motel 6 rubbing oil on her udders.

So God wants the Hebrews to move on. I’m not really sure why as he doesn’t actually want them to get to the Promised land for another 39 years, but nevertheless, he demands they move and wander around for another few decades, and they do. Have you ever noticed how Yahweh’s not into just giving gifts but instead makes people suffer for everything they get? So they go, but he refuses to go with them. I told you he was a pouty little bitch. Just look.

“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way.”

Now I’m not sure I know what that means but it sure sounds to me like Yahweh has a bit of a temper, and like a mother who has had a very bad day, he doesn’t trust himself around his children. “If I gotta stop this caravan, your all going to be sorry!” You ever think that there are some beings, divine or not, who should never be parents? This entire concept is reinforced by the next line.

When the people heard this sad word, they went into mourning, and none of them put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are an obstinate people; should I go up in your midst for one moment, I would destroy you. Now therefore, put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what I shall do with you.’” So the sons of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

So not only does he doubt his self control– notice how it changed from “might” to “would” –but takes away their ipods and jewelry. Apparently, he’s using that old parental maxim handed down through the ages, If dad’s pissed, everyone suffers… and perhaps, dies! His feeling are hurt and he’s not ashamed to let everyone know… then threaten to kill them for it. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for getting things off your chest, but that seems to take it a wee bit too far. Seldom do my crying jags end in bloody rampages.  Well, um… Yeah, seldom.

I’m just sayin’.

What we need here is a kind of Divine Prozac, a Mega Marijuana, or perhaps, a Holy Hashish, anything to get Yahweh in a better mood. Hell, while we’re dreaming lets’ get him something for all those obsessive-compulsive, bi-polar and schizophrenic traits too. Wow! That’d be the drug to end all drugs. It’d make heroin look like a placebo.

The only problem is that with that asshole, I’m sure it have to be administered hourly… as a suppository.

Any volunteers?

Anyway, Moses has built a special tent where he meets God on a regular basis. This is a particularly funny part.

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp. And it came about, whenever Moses went out to the tent, that all the people would arise and stand, each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent. Whenever Moses entered the tent,the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent; and the LORD would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship, each at the entrance of his tent. Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

I think this passage says much about Moses and the writer’s need to show him back in control. The rebellion is over, beyatches.  Moses won.  The people all obey him for he is the only one who remains in God’s favor. Don’t believe me? Just ask him. God actually listens to him. Somedays, he and The Lord Genocide just sit around shooting the shit and getting high. “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.” Yeah just like a friend… Who appears in the form of a cloud… and who’s mere visage can be fatal… and who regularly threatens to kill everyone you know. Yeah, I got a lot of friends like that.

The old saying has never been more true. With a friend like Yahweh, who needs enemies.

BTW, anyone else notice the young man who would not leave Moses tent. Can you say Boytoy? I knew you could.  Seemingly, Ted Haggard was just following an ancient tradition.

But to further the idea that Moses and the priesthood in general are absolutely essential, Moses is constantly finding it necessary to intercede for the Hebrews to change God’s malevolent little mind for Mister Pouty Lip is constantly wanting to kill them. The writer of Exodus tries so very hard to show how essential the priesthood is. Shit like the following litters the pages of Exodus.

Then he (Moses) said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. “For how then can it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?” The LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name.”

Sheesh! I know that the common consensus today is that Exodus was not written by Moses himself and was likely written much later, but some of this positively smacks of a great degree of self-aggrandizement as if Moses was padding out his celestial resume.  1354 BCE — Became God’s best friend.   1356 BCE — Cured cancer  1357.  BCE — Saved the Hebrews… Again!  These pages are so full of conceit that a part of me screams that a man named Moses must have had something to do with it’s writing. A chorus of voices in the back of my head demand that this asshole has pulled off the greatest scam of all-time. Just read the self serving propaganda through these chapters and judge for yourself. It reminds me of all that shit Stalin used to personally write for Pravda regarding himself.

“Should you feel tired at a time when a man should not be tired, think of him — of Stalin – and work will become easier. Should you be at a loss as to how you should act, think of him — of Stalin – and your decision will be the right one.”

Yeah. When I have a difficult personal decision to make I always use the old “What Would Stalin Do?” wisdom which, of course, mostly boiled down to “Kill the fuckers!” Then again is it any different from using the wisdom of the incestuous son of another mass murderer? At any rate according to themselves, both Stalin and Moses made life better… um?; they both had violent purges of dissidents; they both ruled by terror and fear and they both thought they talked to God. That is Stalin thought he was god and talked to himself in the shower every morning, and Moses thought he was God’s best friend which, when referring to imaginary beings, comes out to be pretty much the same thing.

It brings to mind other possible similarities. Most people are aware that Stalin is not his birth name. He was born with the fine sounding handle of Yosif Vissarionovich Dzugashvili. Understandably, he realized early that to go far in politics and genocide, he needed a name that didn’t sound like someone pissing on a fence. He required something that would bolster his image, something manly, “steel”. Stalin is Russian for steel, the Man of Steel. In light of their other similarities, I’m sure that “Moses” is really an archaic Hebrew word for “He with the Large Dick”.

That or it could mean “I am a huge Prick”.

Translations can be a bitch.

2011
05/18
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Myth
Religion
57 comments
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