2006 - the year in review

It's that time of the year again. Yes, the last day of the year, the day when you just wanna look forward and say "screw this year, next year's gonna be way better because I will keep my resolution next year". Always happens to me. And guess what? The next year is always as sucky as the previous year for me.

So this year I'm gonna ditch the ritual of looking forwards to avoid looking backwards, this year I'm gonna look backwards to look forwards. I am gonna celebrate
what I have achieved this year and, in some cases, haven't achieved. How can you define success if you don't know what failure is?

So here goes 2006


2006 - Memorial events

Some general 2006 events first. Do you know that 2006 is supposed to be the year of birth of Motoko Kusanagi? In case you're wondering who the heck that is, she is only the main character in Ghost in the Shell, the best freaking anime series ever.

Yes, I know, that's extremely exciting. Let's get on with what actually happened this year. Well let's see, there were a few exciting moments like when the North Koreans shot those long range missiles into the sea and scare the shit out of the neighbouring countries and then they went ahead with that nuclear test. That was exciting for a while and then as suddenly as it started, it ended. I was hoping the US would really put the "weapon of mass destruction" ploy into actually use this time. There's no need for intelligence of any kind to tell that North Korea has "weapon of massive destruction" (it's not "mass" anymore, it has to be massive, you can't recycle reasons to go to war). Let me just spell this out in case somebody still insists on not enough "intelligence": NUCLEAR WEAPONS KILL MORE PEOPLE THAN NORMAL WEAPON. Maybe a picture's gonna bring the point home?


Not that I'm condoning war or anything, it just doesn't make sense. The US went to war in Iraq without any kind of hard evidence that there actually were "weapons of mass destruction". Actually they went to war because the Bush administration claimed to have intelligence that there were "weapons of mass destruction". Guess what? 2 years later and we haven't seen any such weapons. And now we have proofs that North Korea possesses real "weapons of mass destruction" and the US hasn't move any troops to invade NK. What's the deal with that? Oh yeah, last time I check, North Korea doesn't have as much oil as Iraq even though they're suffering under a dictator much worse than Saddam Hussein. As we're talking about Saddam Hussein I think this is the moment to bring up the topic of his execution. I don't know about you but the moment he was caught back in whenever in that hole in the ground I thought "this guy is dead meat". I don't think any kind of trial can have the outcome of Saddam missing the death penalty.

Other memorable events
Pope Benedict XVI quotes a criticism of the Islam faith, sparking mass protest.
John Kerry accidentally insulted the intelligence of George W. Bush.
The death of Steve Irwin
Beaconsfield
FIFA World Cup
Agassi's retirement
Google bought Youtube and began deleting pirated videos
Xbox 360, PS3, Wii

The North Korean hiatus isn't as bad as the renewed violence between Lebanon and Israel. That was ugly. Has it stopped yet? I know that's terrible of me but it just went on and on and on forever and I kinda lost interest after 2 weeks of bloodbaths. Let's just hope the 2006 Miss Universe Zuleyka Rivera will bring world peace at last.

It's not all bad news however, on November 7 the Democrats kicked the Republicans' collective asses and won control of both houses. Hopefully, something good's gonna come out of this.

Let's get on with the tragedy that's closer to home (ie. Australia) shall we? On March 18 tropical cyclone Larry hit Queensland and since then banana prices has gone ... um bananas in Australia. It's a real tragedy let me tell you, not only for those farmers who lost their livelihood but also for us poor consumers since now we have to put up with the extortion that is banana prices. Not such a tragedy for me though. I don't like bananas and I avoid them especially since fundies can use bananas to prove that God exists.

The most interesting thing from the political front in Australia this year is the near cat-fight between John Howard and Peter Costello. The outcome? Looks like Johnny's running for another election. At least we've got a new Opposition leader that doesn't look like a big bully.

2006 - personal events
Ok, this should be short. Let's see in January I got the uni offer and the scholarship. As it turned out, the scholarship was a heap of headache and worries. I reckon I wouldn't be as stressed out at around exam periods if I don't have the scholarship. However, it does help with never having to borrow HECS so I guess it's a good thing. What I need in the future is better planning so that I won't have to be stressed.
One year of uni has made me realised that uni sucks. Not as much as high school but it sucks. I like how you can pretty much do what you feel like in uni but seriously it just encourages me to slack off. Hence the crazy cramming sessions when exams come calling.
I started this year with 2 simple targets in mind:
- Keep the scholarship
- Read 200 fiction books
And I'm proud to say, I've achieved all 2 of my targets, yay! Actually, I overachieved a bit. I read 229 books this year. Most of them are crap and I think I'm having a kind of reading block right now. I can't concentrate on any books and I can't read anything but blogs and internet boards now. Maybe I read a bit too much this year. One thing is for sure though, no more crazy reading frenzy next year.


2006 - a year of blog posts

Blog statistics
Number of posts: 183 (including this one)
Number of visitors: 3000+

It's really strange but out of my 183 posts, the most popular one is this one all because of the "how to be positive" tag. The most searched phrase that leads to my blog is also "how to be positive". Looks like all those poor people being drowned by their own negativity didn't find much help from me. However, I'm researching on the subject. Really I'm actually finding books on the subject and maybe I'm gonna share my journey to positivity one in the very near future.

My blog's got some really strange links from searched terms. Here're some of them: "hairy cate winslet", "ziggy switkowski profile", "blogs with czech childrens pictures and bio" (wtf?), "straight sex videos", "www.do santa have a daughter?.com". See, these terms are just stranger than strange. How the heck does "czech childrens" have anything to do with my blog?

I suppose this is the best time to thank my readers for... um reading my blog. My dear readers, you know who I'm talking about. I can't possibly list all your names coz I don't know it. However, here're the names of some regular comment leavers in no particular order: Nhan, Bert, Bob, several-anonymous-persons-which-I-assumed-to-be-one-person, thanks for taking your time to read my little blog I know this is weird but I feel I should thank Chuck too. He's providing some traffic for the blog anyway.

Comment of the week

I'm being flooded with comments guys, it's unhandle-able and unbelievable, I've never thought I'll live to see a day when I actually receive a comment.

Ok, I've switched off the sarcastic mode now everything's back to normal so we can actually talk about the "comment of the week".


Today I received this comment from Chuck:

Dude, Chuck Norris is gonna kick your ignorant ass.

Mr. Norris' Christmas Message.

Anyone that took on Bruce Lee knows what they are talking about.

It's no wonder why this earn the weekly award for "most stupid comment of the week" which I reduced to just "comment of the week" for promotional reasons. Also, the author of said comment has made it to my list of "people who should be penciled down for a random visit by the Grim Ripper", alright, I'm being a bit too harsh here so I'm gonna rename the above list to "morons who ought to step onto dog shit every time they go for a walk". Happy?

This Chuck is going down for the following reasons:

1. Calling me an ignorant ass. I am not an ass and even if I'll be an ass in the future I will be a freethinking, authority-questioning ass. Ignorant is what you use for people who believe for the sake of believing. Ignorant is what you use to describe people who never spend a second of their lives asking themselves about the logic of their religions. Ignorant is what you use to describe sheep. So never, NEVER make the mistake of calling me ignorant.

2. Nobody can kick my ass let alone my alleged "ignorant ass". Ass kicking is for people who are compensated for their lack of brain tissues with muscle tissues, probably by their alleged God. You're probably thinking that this post is going to be a pompous reply to a comment I didn't want and I'm probably doing it to make my bruised, fragile ego feels better. You are so wrong. I can easily do that by just deleting said comment and never think about it again, but I won't do that. I will even give you the link to the post Chuck commented. How can an "ignorant ass" pass up on the opportunity so show oh-so-wise Chuck more of my "ignorance"?

3. Who the frak is Chuck Norris? Of course I know who Chuck Norris is, I watch movies too. What I meant was: who the frak do you think Chuck Norris is? The intellectual of the universe? A freaking scientist? No. Last time I checked he's an actor. Why should anyone in their right mind take what an actor said about evolution as evidence to refute reputable scientific studies? After reading the article that Chuck gave me I understand why.

Alleged Chuck Norris Fact: "There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live." It's funny. It's cute. But here's what I really think about the theory of evolution: It's not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents. There is a God, a Creator, who made you and me. We were made in His image, which separates us from all other creatures.

By the way, without him, I don't have any power. But with Him, the Bible tells me, I really can do all things – and so can you.

Yes, I see the errors of my way now. Evolution is a lie because there is a God who made us in his image and who we can't see but we have to believe in his existence just because a book, which allegedly is his words, says so. How convenient. Everything makes sense. What do you think about Chimpanzees, Chuck? They're are so similar to humans in their genetic codes. Maybe they're God's failed human experiment?

Also, there is a God because Chuck Norris was created by him, just like you and me. And without God, Chuck Norris wouldn't be Chuck Norris coz he wouldn't "have any power". What power does Chuck Norris have anyway? X-ray vision? Invisibility? Any amazing superhuman ability that's inborn? Oh, you're referring to his martial arts. Correct me if I'm wrong but was he born knowing all about martial arts or did he learn it along the way? If there is a God, Chuck Norris would have been born knowing every single freaking martial art moves in the world.

What I'm talking about here is credibilities. The fact that Chuck Norris kicked Bruce Lee's ass doesn't have any relevance to evolution. Don't bring up Chuck Norris until he wins a debate against Richard Dawkins on evolution. (Yeah right, like that's gonna happen). Still on the topic of credibilities, whose words would you trust:
This ridiculous guy who obviously has no concept of evolution theory:


Or a world renowned ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University?


I suppose I can rest my case here but I'll present one more argument. Some people usually use something along the line of: "I prayed to God for (such and such) and I got it so God must exist". What is so wrong with this argument? I used to pray to God too and I didn't get anything. True I might have asked some very trivial things like a million dollars for my birthday present or please let me pass the end of year exams or something like that but people ask for trivial things all the time and some of them get their wishes. I did ask for world peace once and as you know nothing yet. People in other religions ask their Gods for things too and it all comes to this ratio: 50:50. 50% of all the people who prayed for something get what they want, the rest don't. It doesn't matter which deity you prayed to, it's all 50:50. How about this Chuck, try praying to Chuck Norris for a sunny day tomorrow. You might get your wish, you might not. However, praying to Chuck Norris does have an advantage over praying to God though. You actually know Chuck Norris exists.

The fantasy movie of the year!

If you know me, I like fantasy. Books, movies, TV shows. I like them all. Well not actually all of them. I hate Eragon both the movie and the book. The book is full of fantasy clichés and a movie made out of a book full of clichés has got to be bad. Add wooden acting and horrible castings you'll get something like Eragon. The main character is supposed to be a young boy, not a guy who looks like he's at least 25 years old. I've gone to the conclusion that Eragon is the movie I will definitely miss the first time I saw the trailer. John Malkovich or not there's no way I'll see it and judging from the reviews the movie got so far, I decided right.

Ok, let's get on with the best fantasy movie of the year rather than lose ourselves in, possibly, the worst fantasy movie of the year.


So you're probably dying to know what it is? Well it's this little movie called "Pan's Labyrinth" from writer/director Guillermo del Toro. The movie is set in fascist Spain in 1944. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) has to moved into the house of her tyrannical stepfather who is trying to snuff out the rebel forces in the region. Ofelia hates her new life and becomes immersed in the magical world of the surrounding forest where she encounters fairies and a faun who tells her that she is the long-lost princess they have been waiting for.

I know the synopsis doesn't sound that good but the movie is so much more than what I've written above. It's a mix of history, fantasy, horror, suspense and drama. It is as original as "Spirited Away" was in 2002. Forget those boring movie based on popular fantasy books. This movie is so stunningly made and so imaginative that it hurts.

The cinematography is great, the special effects are topnotch (not so surprising since it comes from the director of Hell Boy). The score? It's so simple, in the form of a lullaby, both sweet and sinister at the same time. The acting leaves the wooden actor from Eragon eating the dirt. I'm not kidding here. All of the actors in the movie are so good. I think I've found the worst villain ever. Forget Sauron or Voldemort, the villain of the year is Captain Vidal.

One thing though, this movie is definitely not for kids. It's more like a fairy tale for adult. There's blood and gore and terrifying characters, which are what you should expect from a movie with a civil war backdrop.

"Pan's Labyrinth" has been nominated for quite a few awards and I wouldn't be surprised if it's nominated for one or two Oscars. In fact, I'm gonna be very disappointed if it doesn't make it to the nominations list. We'll have to wait and see then. In the mean time, here's the trailer. Enjoy!

various ways to explain evolution to the masses

Let's see, there's the fundie way to explain evolution that went something like this:

EVOLUTION DIDN'T HAPPEN, GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING ELSE WITH A SNAP OF HIS FINGERS. DON'T THINK, DON'T ASK QUESTIONS JUST BELIEVE ELSE YOU'LL GO TO HELL.


That's quite a short, easy and boring way that explains NOTHING. Of course various year 12 text books can actually be more accurate and informative on the subject that that's also boring and I'm not here to bore you with text books.

So if you're looking for a non-boring way to explain evolution, you can always look at South Park. I'm not gonna guarantee that it's very informative and accurate though at least it's better than what fundies say.



If you don't like that explanation (what's wrong with you? that was funny!). You can always try The Family Guy's take on the subject. Again, I'm not guarantee anything but fun. If you don't find this funny, I have nothing else to say but "your sense of humour sucks"

everything about the bible sucks

I know I kinda said that before, somewhere, in my mini-jungle of blog posts in one way or another. Mostly by pulling out ridiculous quotes from the Bible.

So you're probably wondering if I'm gonna do it again today. The answer is "NO", thankfully. I'm having this huge headache (from listening to music nonstop since morning with my brand-spanking-new, ass-kicking-cool headphones) and frankly bible quotes just make my head hurts more.

No, I'm not gonna pull out quotes, I'm pulling out a video. I used "everything about the bible sucks" as the title because, really it does suck but video games based on Bible stories, man they suck even worse.



Maybe the motivation behind this video is because JamesNintendoNerd hates ripoff games but hell, I'm gonna use this for the Atheist cause anyhow.

Boxing day

Do you know what's the best thing about Christmas? Boxing day.

I'm not one of those shopaholics. In fact, I hate shopping and I usually spend the least amount of time possible to shop. I love online shopping though since you don't have to spend that much energy finding things. My approach to normal shopping in 3 easy steps is:

Step 1: walk around. This is the most time consuming steps and I hate it but it's an essential step since the rest of my shopping are based on this.
Step 2: pick what you like. This might include try whatever it is on to see if it fits.
Step 3: pay for it. That's it, just pay and get out of there.

Please note, there's no thinking involved in here. I hate going shopping with people who think too much and just keep changing their mind, before you know it, half the day is over and they're still in the same shop agonizing over what to buy.

Boxing day is the best time to shop really. You can't stay anywhere long enough since people will actually PUSH you out of their way. It's a wonder the Myer building in Melbourne City didn't crumble to dirt today with so many people flocking into it. I almost became the victim of a stampede by a horde crazy girls trying to find the shortest route to the reduced price table. I really should give credits to those girl, they did figure out the shortest route to that table: over my body. Too bad I succeed in getting out of their way in the nick of time by stepping onto some old lady's foot. It seems that the new fashion this summer is stripy t-shirts. I expect I'll see hordes of girls wearing those. Why would you wear something that make you look like a zebra? Albeit a very weird zebra considering the colour combinations like green and red, blue and gray, orange and white stripes.

Apart from that incident in Myer, my shopping trip went relatively incident-less. I got myself a late-Christmas present: a pair of kick-ass headphones. It actually blocked out everything. I really appreciate not having to listen to some girl bragging about a pair of G-strings she got for a song from some adult shop, thank you very much. People just talk about all sort of weird things on trains.

Christmas Day (yawn...)

I know I should be more excited on Christmas day but I'm not. There's no presents to be opened (they're already opened about 2 days before Christmas day and no they're not from my parents or anyone else, they're from myself and I).


I found that people don't usually give you something useful or something that you want for Christmas. Let's get a run through with 2 brilliant Christmas present ideas I've encountered:

1. Candles. This is the present that wins my "most sarcastically practical present of the year award". What possible use can you have for candles in this century? Please don't tell me they're relaxing because every time I have to light up a candle scented or not it's because there's something wrong with the electricity line and the power is cut right when I'm doing something important on my laptop. So every time I light up a candle I'm stressed about losing what I was typing. And that's not the only thing I have to worry about. Do you know how easy it is for houses to be on fire especially in Australia in summer? The damn candle can fall, set the carpet on fire and then the whole house's gonna be on fire. I can really do without these worries. Scented candles are worse and nowadays people only give scented candles. Not only I have to worry about losing data and setting the house on fire, I have to deal with the nauseating, supposedly "relaxing" scents. Relaxing my ass, they set my sinuses on fire and give me sneezing fits.

2. Bath stuffs. You know the, again, scented bath stuffs like bath salts, bath oil, etc... Again, they're supposed to be relaxing and again their purpose just fails me completely. I don't take baths. It takes at least 20 L of water to fill the bath and frankly that's a waste of water.

Those are the big no-no when it comes to buying Christmas presents for me and luckily I didn't get any of those this Christmas. Maybe you're wondering what I got. My family are a practical bunch and we don't usually give presents. If we do it's usually money or gift cards so people can get what they want themselves. It saves time and energy. You don't believe me? First you have to have an idea about what to buy, then you have to go buy it and it doesn't stop there, you have to wrap it in preferably Christmas wrapping papers, which are sold at heavily inflated prices. With gift cards, you just have to buy them and then pop them into an envelop and Voila! a present to please anyone, albeit a very lazy present.

Ok, back to my family, we don't usually give presents. Birthdays: definitely, Luna new year: definitely, Christmas: nah. There you have it, I don't get any presents from my family. It's not that devastating anyhow. I've never gotten anything on Christmas and I don't expect to get anything. This year however, I decided to start a new tradition. I got myself presents and am I happy. So these are what I bought:

1. Books. I bought Sam Harris' "The End of Faith" and Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion". I've been looking for them in Australian book stores for a while and they're actually available at Christmas. From what the bookstore cashier told me, many people bought them as Christmas presents for their friends. That's actually a good idea. I might even do that next year.

2. An USB flash drive. It's not just any USB flash drive. It's one of those new released Toshiba flash drive. It was quite a stressed experience buying flash drives from eBay. After I paid for the drive and was waiting for it to arrive by mail, I found this article: "Beware of fake flash drive on ebay". While reading that I did a mental check list: Toshiba - common counterfeit brands on eBay: check; misleading slogan - new product not yet available in your country: check; high capacity flash drive: check; low price: check. So chances are I bought a fake and I was worried coz I paid more than a hundred bucks for that USB flash drive. The drive arrived 2 days before Christmas and it wasn't fake. I'm just too lucky, aren't I? From now on I'm not gonna buy USB drive from ebay.

3. Battlestar Galactica pins. These are also bought from eBay. I think I'm gonna start a collection of these, they're quite rare maybe one day I'll sell them for ten times what I paid.

Yup, that's it I think. May be I bought a new Xbox game but I can't really remember now, I think I did. It's really quite hard typing a post off the top of your head while you're still recovering from a mini-hangover. I'm still recovering from my Christmas Eve dinner. I think I drank too much beer + wine. Anyhow, Merry Christmas everyone, maybe I should say Merry fictional character's birthday, that's more fitting.

For the atheists out there, here are 2 links I think you would enjoy if you haven't stumbled upon them already:
10 ways to qualify your atheism this christmas
Religion does more harm than good - poll

So long big-ass apps!

It has recently come to my attention that my tinkering with the template has made it impossible to load my blog on the blasted Internet Explorer. This is, of course, unacceptable. After all, 90% of my readers use IE to read this blog. So after some more tinkering the blog is now compatible with IE again.

From as long as I can remember, I've hated IE. It's one of those big-ass applications that eat resources for snacks, another one of those is Acrobat Reader. Opera used to be my favourite alternative to IE until I discovered Firefox. I think Opera was the first browser to come up with tabbed browsing and it's a better browser than Firefox.

So you might ask why did I switch to Firefox? Well, first Opera is slightly bigger than Firefox, it's got an integrated off-line mail client which I don't need. Secondly, back when I still used it, I couldn't get Java or Flash to work properly with Opera even though I installed the version with Java built-in. And then there's the big attraction with the totally FREE Firefox. Opera was free too but back then the free version got this huge ad panel that just irritated me.

I think everybody's into tabbed browsing at the moment. Don't you just love tabs? Anyhow, I think everybody loves it so much that even Microsoft has to integrate that into the new version of IE. Sneaky bastard went behind my back to install IE7 on my computer when I used Windows Update. It even updated WMP to version 11. The result? It took half and hour for my laptop to start up after Windows Update rebooted without my permission while I was typing a post. I was able to salvage the post all thanks to Blogger auto save function. No more automated Windows Updates from now on for me. Everything has got to go through me first!

I must say the new IE is a complete ripoff of Firefox. New features in IE7? Not so new if you ask me. Tabbed browsing and search box built in? They've got Firefox stamped all over them. Granted the original skin of Firefox doesn't look as attractive as the new IE but you can choose from a wide range of skins for Firefox. I would love to remove IE completely but sadly, I need it for Windows Update.

The other famous infamous big-ass program in my book is Acrobat Reader (AR). Just download the installer is exhausting (especially when you have to do it on a dial-up connection). 70MB? That's just too frakking big for something you can't use all the features. I've got to restart my laptop so many times because AR crashed it while opening a file that's got way too many pictures. I don't have to tell you how much I hate AR do I? I hate it so much that when I found an alternative to it I kicked its ass out of my laptop.

The alternative and, might I add, much much smaller and better program is Foxit Reader which is available FREE of charge and full of features AR charged you a fortune for. Yup, I'm talking about annotating right on the pdf file. If you're a uni-student who's, like me, too stingy to print out all the lecture notes you can bring your laptop to lectures and type notes right on the lecture notes. Here's a screenshot of Foxit in action.

I'm just terribly confused!

It's not everyday that you catch me terribly confused. I can be mildly confused on a regular basis when it comes to statistics calculations or whether I have to use the mortar and pestle or a beaker when mixing solids and semi-solids or when it comes to paradoxes like "I always lie".
Anyhow I found myself terribly confused today all thanks to a fundie.


Since getting broadband internet Youtube's become my favourite site, true you can find weird stuff on Youtube like this Japanese game show.

But then you can also find quality stuff like the entire Jonathan Miller's Atheism series from BBC4. And let's not forget my favourite ABC show at the moment: "The Chaser's War on Everything". Yay, Youtube rules.

Ok, I think I've gone off the topic considerably. I was terribly confused about this. Back when I was still a Catholic I've always take comfort from the fact that "God loves everybody". Really, that particular fact was instilled in my mind since forever. I think if you ask any Christian they'll tell you that. What get me confused is how someone, who's a self-proclaimed Pastor,can say with absolute certainty that God hates everybody (with the exception of said pastor and his family).

The pastor I'm talking about is Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church. My "terrible confusion" started when I saw this Chaser segment a while back.


At the time it just seemed funny coz that's what the Chaser gang do, they make fun of politics, religions and everything else especially Naomi Robson hence the name of the show: "The Chaser's War on Everything". So strictly speaking my "confusion" didn't start then, it started when I read a post from Deep Thoughts featuring an awesome interview with Shirley Phelphs Roper.

Yup, that was the exact moment when it started. What do you mean "god hates everybody"? So all those Catholic nuns were lying to me when they told me that God love everybody including me and especially me if I make it to confession at least once every month and say at least 50 Hail Mary's every night? My goodness! My childhood teachings from the nuns are lies. Who could have known?!

So to resolve my confusion, I researched this extraordinary claim made by the Phelphs. Where could I go? Where else but their own website Godhatesfags.com. I'm gonna be completely unbiased here and say this, the site is one of the worst badly designed site I've ever seen. If you know anything about the web it's that graphics attract. That site is just full of words, it's just a big turn-off. And that is before I even read the contents of what's actually there.

So what is on that site? A lot of bullshit of course. Take "God loves everybody - the greatest lie ever told" for example. While I was reading it I couldn't help but wondering is this guy nuts? All he succeeds in doing is presenting a picture of a malevolence God who hates everyone except for the members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Seriously, I thought the "good" pastor was trying to persuade people away from God. And I must say, he's quite persuasive. If I was a Catholic still I would have renounced the Christian God after I read the first 5 pages of the file. Who can believe that such ghastly individual can claim to be a Christian? Ok, I know, bad rhetorical question. It's not like every Christian is a peace-loving person, the majority of them are anyhow.

Fred Phelphs picks a fight with everyone not just "fags". Let's see, his other websites include GodHatesAmerica.com, GodHatesSweden.com, GodHatesCanada.com and coming up very soon GodHatesEveryoneButMeAndMyFamily.com. I'm just wondering why he hasn't pick a fight with Muslims yet maybe he did learn something from September 11. Something like the cause of 9/11 isn't "the wrath of God on a perverted country" but it's just a plain simple hate crime on a massive scale. Here's Fred Phelphs picking a fight with televangelists.

I must say here, he's quite right to some very small extent though. Televangelists and faith healers are just ridiculous. How can giving money to someone who's already rich get you into heaven? And what's with the touchy feely stuff to cure people of incurable diseases? I'd say it's ridiculous anyone would believe that but I wouldn't go as far as to say "you're pastor is a whore" though.

Fred Phelphs isn't the only one who's sprouting bullshit like this. All of the people from his "church" are like this. It's quite understandable really since there are only 70-something people in this so-called church, it's more like a hate inciting club than a church if you ask me, and I suspect they're all his family. See, the thing is the "good" pastor has 13 children, 54 grandchildren (to date) and 5 great grandchildren (to date). Yeesh, 13 children! Have these people heard of birth control? You know the plastic thingy you slip on so that your wife doesn't have to get pregnant every year?
So 13+54+5 = 72. Wow, I don't know why he bothers calling it a church. It's a family, why not call it a "family"? How do I know there are 70-something people in his church? Well, I got it right from the horse's mouth, or in this case from the horse's daughter's mouth.



That video is just too damn funny. What else is better than people yelling over other people? the whole time I was watching that I was hoping for a cat fight, wouldn't it be fun watching 4 women fight it out on TV? I myself wanna strangle that Phelphs woman. I would have if I was the host. Ok, I'm getting serious now. That video is just sad. I feel sad for the daughters. They said it themselves, they don't have friends outside of their "church" which consists of their psycho grandfather, their equally psycho mother and their various uncles, aunts and cousins.

So there I think I've resolved my "confusion". God doesn't hate everybody, so everybody who believes there's a god can relax now. It's just a psycho family inciting hate. For the atheists out there, I don't suppose it would make any difference if god does or does not hate everybody. What I get out of this is frustration. How can people stand by and let psychotic fundies like these terrorising grieving families of dead individuals? I don't have to tell you how pleased I was when I watch the guy from the Chaser gang flirting with Fred Phelps' son. We need a round of applause for that performance even though it's original purpose is to make fun of weird people.
If you're not from Australia or you've never heard of the Chaser, Micheal Moore took on Fred Phelphs too and I must say it's really really REALLY satisfying to watch this video.

geeky gifts for the devoted

Fresh out of ideas about what to buy for your slightly geeky fundie friends? No worry, you've come to the right place.




Let's go with the really cheap stuff first. Let me introduce you to the iBelieve. It's a replacement cap and lanyard for your iPod shuffle. This thing will turn your sucky gum pack iPod shuffle (old version) into a still sucky iPod shuffle that looks like a cross. Woohoo, we can bring our shuffles into churches and listen to them instead of the service now.
The next item is a real cross-shaped mp3 player. And it even comes in glossy black and chrome plated. I wonder if it comes with preloaded Hillsong songs or an unabridged audiobook version of the Bible? Even better, they should make the Bible audiobook non-removable so that people have to sit through the whole bible before they can listen to their music. That should make the thing much more appealing to the fundie population.

Have this ever happen to you? You download a big-ass 20-something-MB file on a dialup connection, cut and paste the file to your USB drive then your computer refuses to eject the drive safely. Since you refuse to accept that the stupid computer refuses to eject your USB drive, you just pluck the drive out. The result? You have to reformat our USB drive and lose everything. Now you don't have to worry about it anymore, there's a new type of USB drive with a fool-proof plan to prevent just that. Behold, the Virgin USB

See? With just one sentence "oh Maria keep my data safe" you can throw your worries away.
I haven't any luck trying to find this particular USB drive on eBay but if I can get my hands on this I'm gonna try to remove it unsafely to see if I'm gonna lose any data.

sick and tired

Today was one of those days when I'm sick and tired of EVERYTHING. And I mean everything. Here's a short list of "everything": stupid shopping centres with Christmas music on 24/7, public transport with seats that smell like piss, bittorrent downloads with slower than dialup speed, media coverage of the bush fires, more media coverage of the bush fires, Iraq "civil war", books (*shock*, me? sick of books?), this blog...
So, what did I do? I set out to bring peace to the world.

Sadly, before my noble thought of changing the world was put into action, said thought was abandoned. Firsly, it wouldn't suit the image of a True Evil Genius I've been created this past year. My aim should be world domination not world peace. Secondly, how can someone succeed at something countless Miss Universe winners had attempted and failed before?

However, I couldn't afford to do nothing so instead of changing the world (which, in truth, is out of my reach) I changed my blog template. Now, before you start laughing at me, let me tell you that was no easy feat.

Template tweaks
lable cloudlink, Peekaboo postslink,

I've been thinking for a while now that my blog is a bit bland. I haven't really tried to muck around with it much. Last year I spent a week mucking around with the old Blogger template and Photoshop and produced something that just barely worked. When I changed from Blogger to Blogger Beta I made myself a promise that I would never ever poke my head into those CSS codes again.

Like my other promises I made to myself, e.g. stop reading books, stop spending too much money,..., I didn't keep that promise. Well I did, until I got sick of the template that is. If you're in my shoes you would be sick of my template too. The Labels side-bar was overflowing (all thanks to me inventing too many labels), the blog roll and links list are in a shamble. The combination of all of those made my side-bar way longer than my posts.

So I did a bit of Google-ing and came up with the codes to make Label clouds. If you don't know what that is, take a look at my labels on the right side-bar. Isn't it awesome?

Hearten by my success with the Label cloud, I declared a pox on the no-mucking-around-with-the-template rule and did a mini overhaul of it. The result? 3-column blog! However, putting in the second side-bar literally squeezed my posts. Now the posts are longer than the bars!

No matter! After some more google-ing, I came up with the peekaboo post thingy. Now everything is taken care of. I don't hate my blog template any more. One thing's still bugging me though. I should bring the banner back, maybe a new banner?

Irony

Yup, Irony is definitely the theme of this week for me. Why else would things like this happen to me?
1. I received a 20% discount voucher AFTER I bought the last book I'm gonna buy this year
2. I keep running into blogs by pastors when I use the damn "next blog" button
3. I stumbled upon a blog by a person who claimed to an "evil genius". The irony is Barb is a Lutheran. So much for the "evil" part

Blasphemous Santa

Don't bash Santa

Kelly Ryan

December 08, 2006 11:00pm

Article from:

A PASTOR has slammed Santa as a counterfeit God who teaches children to be greedy and selfish.

New Life Christian Church's Pastor Steve McNeilly has accused Santa of being a blasphemous stand-in for God who makes liars of parents and causes confusion among children.

The Santa story creates commercial rivalry and encourages materialism and selfishness in children's hearts, he said.

"Santa has usurped the love and devotion and faith of little children," the Warrnambool pastor added.

Mr McNeilly's comments have sparked a storm of protest.

Senior church leaders and a child psychologist described the attack on Father Christmas as absurd and undeserved.

The Catholic Church's Monsegnieur Les Tomlinson said Christmas was a time for parents to teach children the joys of gift-giving.

"What we are celebrating in the birth of Jesus is the manifestation of the infinite love of all humans which is reflected in our concern for the needy and the sharing with others," Monsegnieur Tomlinson said.

Psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said Santa was a crucial part of a child's Christmas celebration.

"These claims are an absolute outrage for the vast majority of children who are healthier and happier because of their vast memories of Christmas," he said.

But Pastor McNeilly said Santa detracted from the "true message of Christmas that God sent his son to save us from our sins".

Remember my post on how Christians should boycott Christmas tree? I think Pastor Steve McNeilly is either reading and taking the Bible literally or is being nagged to buy a 1000-buck Playstation 3 package for his kids (if he has any that is). The latter reason is, certainly, more understandable to me. I have this problem with Christmas, ok, make that 2 problems. First, Christmas music. They're ok in small doses but every Christmas I get this massive dose of Christmas music everywhere I go and on every channel on TV. There's just so much Christmas music you can take. Second, presents. I'm fine with buying presents and shopping in general. However, I tend to buy more presents for myself than for anyone else. Maybe it's a combination of boredom (from having nothing to do since Christmas coincides summer holiday in Australia) and the urge to spend for Christmas.

What's not so understandable is the fact that the pastor can say with absolute certainty that Santa Claus doesn't exist and God does. I mean, Santa Claus is just as real as god himself. In some aspects, Santa rocks the socks of god. You see, there's no "words of Santa", Santa doesn't tell you to go and kill all those people who don't believe in his existence, there's no Santa's hell and he lives on the same planet as us. What makes him so certain? True god was invented before Santa but that doesn't constitute existence!

I also have to disagree with Monsegnieur Les Tomlinson.

The Catholic Church's Monsegnieur Les Tomlinson said Christmas was a time for parents to teach children the joys of gift-giving.

I suppose children do learn a joy during Christmas but it's not the joy of gift-giving. It's more like the joy of being on the receiving end of gift-giving.

Guess who's back? Back again? Pauline's back, tell a friend

So I've got the shock of the week today when I heard that Pauline Hanson's gonna come back to politics. I was eating (what do you call a meal that's like the equivalent of brunch but instead of between breakfast and lunch it's between lunch and dinner? - Linner?) when the 4.30 news came on on channel 7 and I almost choked to death. Ms Hanson really does have a plan for a come back. This time not as a member of the One Nation party though. She's gonna be an independent member. Hell, she might even found a new party. I wonder what's it gonna be called? One Colour? One Race? One Religion? All are quite possible.

Last time she's got anti-immigration policy and this time she's bringing in fresh new ideas on, guess what?, more anti-immigration policies. Last time she waged a war agains Asian immigrants, this time it's against Africans and Muslim. Why no Muslim has planted a bomb in her fish and chips shop I have no idea. What people learn after 9/11 in one very short sentence is "don't frack with Muslim", granted not all Muslims are fundamentalists, it just pays to not be on their bad side.

I can't stand the woman. She's not only ignorant, she doesn't want to learn. Take a look at her remarks:

"We're bringing in people from South Africa at the moment, there's a huge amount coming into Australia, who have diseases, they've got AIDS," Ms Hanson said.

"They are of no benefit to this country whatsoever, they'll never be able to work.

"And what my main concern is, is the diseases that they're bringing in and yet no one is saying or doing anything about it."

Ms. Hanson, you really should take a look at the Australian Immigration policies. Before anyone can get into the country they have to go through at least 2 health screenings. It doesn't matter which country they come from, EVERYBODY has to have health checks and I'm sure as hell no one who's got AIDS or any transmissible disease can get in. Hell, even those Japanese horses got monitored and checked before they get into the country for Melbourne Cup.

What diseases are you talking about Ms Hanson? The disease of having the skin colour other than that of yours? The disease of having a religion other than that of yours? Maybe you're the one that's diseased. You have a disease that's called Racism.

What's more dangerous than a racist trying to get into parliament is an ignorant racist.

holy banana or how to prove God exists with a banana

Yes, fundies can prove that God exists with nothing but a banana. Bear with me, this is a very short video and it's worth it, not like the pseudoscience crap I had on yesterday.



Gee, I think I'm gonna have nightmares which are gonna feature bananas exclusively from now on. To tell you the truth, I've never liked the taste of bananas. I don't suppose God create banana to suit everybody's taste then. And how about this, the stupid banana fits in the hand of monkeys and chimpanzees too. Are you sure we're God's intended recipients of bananas?

An update for "6000 year-old earth"

Remember that boring post I did a few days ago about people believing that Earth and the Universe was created 6000 years ago and all the proofs are provided by the Bible?
Well here are some more proofs that the Earth is created 6000 years ago and they don't all come from the Bible. It's one long video so I suggest you find something salty to eat while watching. You seriously need more than a pinch of salt with this. Maybe a ton of salt should be just enough.

I suppose you're probably bored out of your mind by the pseudoscience-sprouting, lab coat-wearing, self-appointed "scientist". Here's a shorter, funnier video. No it's not gonna turn you into an atheist, it's just gonna try to persuade those creationists out there that they're more or less idiots. Try to incorporate some science into religion if you don't want a massive amount of followers to start asking logical and legitimate questions about your dogma.

brutish, foolish and vain

That's what you are if you're a Christian and you have a Christmas tree in your house.
Hey don't go leaving hate remarks for this post, that didn't come from me. That's the "word of God" taken right out of the Bible.

Jeremiah 10:2-8
Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.... They are altogether brutish and foolish.

Christians should boycott Christmas tree since having one in their house is against the will of God already. However I suppose no one takes the Bible that seriously.

There's a good reason for my absence...

...and a few not so good reasons. They're the usual reasons, they mostly have something to do with books or DVDs. I've just found the best non-fiction book of the year, the best documentary I've seen this year and possibly the best TV show ever and they all have something to do with Atheism. However, this post is about why I've been non communicado for 4 days when I don't have anything to do.

Well, it was because my laptop, my beloved laptop, decided that the feeling isn't mutual and wanted to die.

OK, I overstated that a bit. It didn't decide to commit suicide or anything remotely like that. It did acted up and I felt like strangling it with its power cord. All I did was trying to clean up the hard drive and permanently delete some junk then all of the sudden Norton Internet Security crashed and wouldn't work again. Hence operation "clean up hard drive" turned into operation "get rid of Norton Internet Security".

Now that's not the end of the problem. Since I was without any proper protection from virus and adwares I decided to install a newer version of NIS. Everything went well until NIS interfered with my bittorrent download. No matter how many times I told it to allow all activities it wouldn't do what I told it to and just crashed my laptop almost every time I started a bittorrent download. When it didn't crash the laptop, which was quite rare, the download went at dial-up speed.

So out went NIS and my laptop was alright again, albeit without Antivirus and internet security. The stupid built in firewall in Windows SP2 doesn't provide enough protection so I have to find an alternative to NIS. And I found it. From now on I'm gonna stick with McAfee Internet Security Suite. It's good and it's fast. Plus it works fine with bittorrent. Now I have to get back to operation: clean up laptop hard drive.