Here we go again, a little less achy this time—please.

Ick.

Totes.

IN LOVE.

Made me puke. You?

I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS!

Thanks to Carol Adams’ Facebook for this ridic link.

Thanks to the THREE! friends who posted this on FB! So not surprising, and another reason to eat real food, duh.

Just because you’re an atheist, dude, doesn’t mean you’re not a fucker. UGH.

Check out this rad litttle interview with yours truly over at The Jew and the Carrot, a Jewish foodie blog! No Ziony Jews have jumped on my “Zionism is racism” comments yet—where’s the fight? Bring it on! Israel out of Palestine!

Am I the last person in the world to be turned onto the greatness that is (was) Moral Orel? Wow. My friend Randy (he of the fantastic bike-buying advice) turned me onto it, and I am everlastingly grateful.

That such a show was on TV at all, even Adult Swim, which I understand is some sort of late night part of the Cartoon Network, is pretty mind-blowing. Its brilliance is it’s simple-mindedness: it is ostensibly the story of a sweet-cheeked kid, Orel, trying to be a good Protestant. The dark corners of society this takes him to and the hilariously insane (yet logical!) lengths he goes to live up to the letter of the Christian law perfectly exemplify the ludicrousness that is Christianity.

Its takedown of religion is so adorably vicious that at times I felt guilty for good Christians watching the show—I know a few sweet Christians, and I know they feel that their religion helps them be a better person. I find this idea saddening and incredibly weak-minded, but at the same time I’m all for people doing whatever they can to become the highest version of themselves they can be. Do those people see Moral Orel as harmless entertainment poking fun at beliefs incredibly close to their hearts? I don’t see how they could. Does this make me love the show even more? Yes, of course. (For the record, in this Onion interview, one of the writers says that “the show is not against religion: It’s against mistreating religion or using it for your own ends and convenience and bending the lessons of religion to suit what you already believe.”)

If you are free from thinking about Christians in your life, which is a wonderful thing of which to be free (might as well be grammatically correct if we’re getting on a giant moral high horse here anyway, right? But can that bizarro grammar possibly be correct??), you are free to joyfully enter the deep dark satire of Moral Orel, which is incredibly fucked up in the best possible ways. In post-Bush America, it’s a little harder to shiver at the accuracy of the society we could easily become if the religious right gets their way, but Moral Orel certainly provides a bone-chilling vision of what that society would look like. (For one thing, we would be stop-motion animation characters.)

Holy hell, my darling! It’s our anniversary already!

Where are you? SXSW, still?

Happy twelve year anniversary! I’m off to buy you some linen.

TWELVE YEARS!!! Remember when we first got together, and we would talk about how we couldn’t wait until we’d been together forever so people would understand how awesome and hardcore our relationship was? I think twelve years is officially forever.

Oh, before I forget: Sula & Cleo & Noodle gave me a message to give to you: They don’t really care about the aniversary. Please come home and allow them to indulge in the only thing they really love in life: sleeping on you.

As a continuation of the awesome godfight I provoked recently, I am going to copy and paste an IM exchange a pal and I had while we were both goofing off from our separate work/housecleaning tasks by reading this thread:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homesteadingchristians/message/5530 —which I will merely copy and not make into a link because, honestly, I am tired of godpeeps and their comments.

It’s a pretty silly exchange, and before you call me infantile, here’s the deal: it’s such a small simple thing, the thing of not believing in god. It’s so infinitesimally small compared with everything else in the world, all the real issues like people not having enough to eat and our tax dollars buying Israeli guns that are killing kids in Gaza. Those are things that matter. Believing in god shouldn’t matter at all. It’s just a fairytale, it’s just so silly—we should have evolved past it ages ago. So it’s fine to make fun of it and be childish. I’m so beyond it that I can’t do anything but laugh about it when I see people who still care about it, instead of caring about what matters.

Thus:
Me: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homesteadingchristians/message/5530
fucking awesome
the mystery of how the jesus crew found me blog is solved: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homesteadingchristians/message/5605

J: “atheist group” wow.
i love that these people are going to your site, awesome.

pretty hilarious.
oh MAN the house is SO clean!!

Me: Yay for clean house! I’m getting tons of work done, despite also spying on my blog readers.
everything is all coming together.
do you think it’s because i have people praying for me that today is going so well in the kitchen?
J: It must be.
the house smells fucking jesus awesome so that must help too.

Me: totes

thanks jesus!

ok, back to work, my heathen love.

J: btw, you’ve got to post about about their blog talking about your blog!

now you’re a pagan

oh–there will be a head of coals poured on your head!!

Me: they call me a pagan?
cool, I’ll take it. I loves the pagans.

J: this shit just gets better
“Just stand tall in the Lord, let your light shine, and love her…it will pile heaping coals on her head. “

Me: HEAPING!!

J: HEAPS!!!

Me: OH MY GOSH!!!

J: and you have to see the websites these people run, oh WOW

Me: ¨loving¨me is what will pile the coals?

J: http://scriptures.cc/3752/
that’s the coal guy

“Hey, some of my best friends are atheist.  In fact, you know one of the ones that WAS an atheist when I met her. Fortunately, that’s not the case today. “

phew, fortunately, god forbid!

“By the way, I left him a comment”

Me: oh man! Names that end with an A are feminine, GRRRR!!!

oh my oh my this site is amazing!!! [ http://scriptures.cc/3752/]

christian pyramid scheme??

oy vey!!

J: “Well, I think we should really keep this person in prayer. But for the grace of God, there go I. In fact, 20 some odd years ago, that WAS me. “

everyone’s praying for you! i’d post a little message asking them to stop!

or at least pronounce your name right when they do

Me: Whilst cooking, I’m watching a documentary about Sacco and Vanzetti that is all about…well, how people get put to death because other people are close-minded.
J: “Now we should band together in prayer for this person and her followerers”

your heathen followers

Me: I think now I’m just going to post about how all this good stuff has been coming my way since they started praying for me: orgies and stuff like that

MY FOLLOWERS!!!

J: ugh, that movie sounds crazy but it’s so awfully true.

Me: Sacco was so nice to kittens!

J: “Hopefully, it won’t be peppered with such foul language. I imagine it will be…I need to look up that quote concerning cussing…”
Me: …but they sentenced him to death because he was an anarchist.

J: oh boy.
Me: oh yes!!! fuck yea, bring it on!
I SHALL PEPPER

J: you’re a chef after all

Me: totes.

Let freedom ring, I say. That´s what kills me about these people. I just want freedom, truly!
They pretend to want freedom but really want everyone to be the same.

My new truffles slogan, courtesy Mr. Christian Pyramid Scheme: “MOST IMPORTANT: Order Products you are already using from us rather than from a secular company that may be using their profits  to support ungodly principles. Think About It!”

Think About It!!!
Jacob: this is an odd one, weird on so many levels:
“We talk about those with whom we have relationships, our parents, our spouses, our kids…. why not talk about our Lord? Atheists should be no more offended at that than the childless are when we talk about our children. Would you be apologizing about talking about your children? Or about talking about your husband to a single woman? Then do not apologize about mentioning our Lord to someone who does not have a relationship with Him.”
Me:

W
O
W
for the record, all those things offend me! [Note to friends of mine with cute kids---not really!]
this thread goes on for forever!
J: “Someone has obviously rammed religion down her neck, why stir that up again by proclaiming an apology is not deserved. Her only sin is being lost and we all were at one time…..”

now they’re ganging up on each other for almost apologizing for their faith and everyone is saying don’t!
crazies!!
Me: wow, my parents and grandparents are all atheists!!
except for my one grandmother, but we get along! Religion has never rammed me!
infighting, oooh yes!
J: “Yep….. We are all friends… I was thinking about doing very ugly things to her but then I had to repent.. I think everyone is wounded like I have been so I have a tendancy to stick up for angry people as I have been one for many years”

i am so glad she repented.

Me: man, who the fuck says shit like this?
I don’t even think of “doing ugly things” to people like Cheney!
I just hope he will fall off a cliff, which is not exactly the same thing.
J: so long as you don’t push him

Me: on that bizarre scriptures page ponzi scheme thingie, one of their page titles is “TESTIMONIES”

J: the sad thing is that the Katrina person you originally talked about is actually the sanest of the group.

all about the testicle money!

Me: please peep the pic of this “master stylist”

http://www.scriptures.cc/cgi-bin/d.cgi/3752/founder.htm

J: yeah, that guy is incredible. if he was working in williamsburg to do retro styling then I’d believe it!
Me: oh, poor katrina. i think of all these christian housewifey ladies trying to do the right thing, and just not being happy with their lives but not knowing an alternative, or what real life is as you and i know it.

it kinda breaks my heart. They need good old 1970s Betty Friedan-style feminism.

As does master stylist, who, yes, would make tons of money in williamsburg!!!

J: yeah, they talk about god giving them patience with their kid and their husbands
they just want to feel part of a group

Me: Aww.

I bet they all wear Crocs though.

The very best part of that weird scriptures scheme page [ http://scriptures.cc/3752/] is that you also get:  “FREE Conference Calls” when you buy the weird package thingie…

I’m sure that’s going to make you sign up in a second, because i know how you loves the conf. calls!

J: hm, tempting…which is against the lord of course
Me: one of the testicle-monials:
“By the way, I have been working with an employee of mine from a spiritual standpoint. She had a great AHA! experience listening to your Monthly Teaching Tapes on Salvation. Her husband was born a Jew but was not brought up “religiously” (I happen to think of this as a plus). He is beginning to understand the concept of salvation and is now excited to attend church and is open to reading materials I pass along. Pray for these folks”
i love how ¨religiously¨is in quotes, because everyone knows that Jews can’t really be ¨religious.”

J: it always comes back to jew bashing!

So I’m on this Wild Edibles Yahoo group thingie and it’s generally pretty interesting. The grammatical errors on the site are truly terrifying, but apart from that I really enjoy it.  Sample question:

When picking edible mosses, is there anything I should watch out for?
Any poisionous ones I may get confused with?

Does anyone have any good info on foraging mosses. I only know a
handfull of mosses and a couple of sites I found on google.

I live in the mountainous regions of northern Ireland, its mainly all
bog, mosses, lichens and heather.

Thanks all, keep spreading the knowledge.

WTF? Edible mosses? Who knew, right?

But a bizarrely high number of these wild foodies are Jesus freaks, and that super freaks me out. Today the queen of them all asked a question about dandelions that I could answer, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Her email signature is:

His Servant Forever,
[Queen Jesus Freak]

I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there
isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t, and die to find out there is.

Every single time I see one of her emails I have to bite my nails and my tongue and my fingers to keep myself from informing her that Richard Dawkins debunks all of Pascal’s Wager, as that bizarre idea is called, in The God Delusion, and perhaps I should scan in the relevant pages and send them to her.

Why? Why live your life under all these weird ideas and assumptions? Be bold! Live the way you want to live! Stand up to your fears of the afterlife! Get a fucking grip, freak!

O live and let live! It’s so insanely hard!

(The other bizarre thing about her signature is that when I first saw “His Servant Forever” I thought to myself: “There are some kinky people on this list!”)

Oh dear, I am having fun with this.

I don’t have the heart to tell this dude that he is using “meme” wrong, because if you already believe in all the shit he believes in, any amount of knowledge dropped on you at all might just make you keel over, you know? And also: how sad would your life be if you had a blog devoted to how shitty things are? I know my blog dips into those waters once in a while, but I also revel in the joy that moving through the world as a godless faux-lesbian vegan chef anarchist jew affords me. Fuck yeah!

(Full disclosure: I know this dude will find this post through the magic of the blogosphere, and I just can’t help throwing in just about every triggery word I can think of.)

Shameless friend-of-a-friend plug alert: Here’s a cute little essay from the New York Times, written by my rad pal Mary’s BFF, Joanna. Neato!

I just realized that in the past six months I sent over 3,000 emails. Is it normal for people who do not work in an office to send an average of 17 emails a day, every day, or do I have some sort of disease? A productivity disease, perhaps?

I really enjoyed this Vegan de Guadalupe zine (hooray for zines in 2008!) and bet you would too. It’s sold out, but maybe if you beg she will do a second printing?

Speaking of reading, I stayed up until 5 AM last night reading A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman. It wasn’t as technically well done as, say, Fun Home or Persepolis, but there is absolutely something to be said for the graphic biography format. I always assumed that any additional information I had on Red Emma would only increase my love for her, but I closed the book with a vast sadness and uneasiness. She accomplished a lot and has of course inspired generations, but her sympathy for violent methods of revolutionary action really bothered me, as did the last 15 or so years of her life, which seemed to be all about how the world she worked for was never to be. (Being a nonviolent anarchist, I tend to forget that the vast majority of the world only knows about the violent anarchist faction.) But it was a good read. And you get some juicy “if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution” details on her complicated and wild not-so-private life.

Speaking of revolutionaries, the always right-on John Robbins (who I’ve been in love with since I was 14, yo, for serious) has a great article on Weston A. Price Foundation and the Nourishing Traditions crazies. The best part is the end:

“I regret to say that those running the Weston A. Price Foundation today seem to have their own agenda. They are proponents of the philosophy that in order to be healthy, people must eat large amounts of saturated fat from animal products. They insist that only with the regular consumption of lard, butter and other full-fat dairy products, and beef, can people derive the nutrients they need to be healthy.

Toward that end, the Foundation has widely publicized an article written by a former member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, Stephen Byrnes, titled “The Myths of Vegetarianism.”

The article is harshly critical of vegetarian diets, and concludes with an “About the Author” section which states: “Stephen Byrnes… enjoys robust health on a diet that includes butter, cream, eggs, meat, whole milk, dairy products and offal.” In fact, Stephen Byrnes suffered a fatal stroke in June, 2004. According to reports of his death, he had yet to reach his 40th birthday.”

Yikes.

Full disclosure: I like that the Weston A. Price Foundation people have good things to say about fermented foods and coconut butter. I’m not at all above admitting that crazies can be right about some things.

Local folks: The New Paltz Green Party has some good events coming up, won’t you please go to some of them? Like that talk on septic systems? I’m going to go not only because I am the head of the group and don’t always go to the events and this is a very bad trait, but also because I have a septic system and should know more about it. Maybe you do too? Please go!