October 21, 2008

listings

Over the years, I've accumulated a following of various catalogs. Clothes, especially, but there are other kinds as well.

But the catalog I got in the mail today is one of a kind in my long list of order offers. And I don't know how or why they got my name. I can't help wondering if someone put my name on their mailing list just to annoy me.

I mean, this is what this slick catalog is selling:

-- a 20 CD set of lectures entitled "The Hand of God in the History of the World."

-- a read-aloud series for children: "How God Sent a Dog, Stopped Pirates, ande Used a Thunderstorm to Change the World."

-- a book: "Passionate Housewives Desperate for God."

WTF!!! I guess their marketing guru never got a look at the sidebar of this blog.

Oh, and then there's "The Wise Woman's Guide to Blessing Her Husband's Vision."

Now I'm grinding my teeth!

In between all of this, pages of miltary, detective, construction, outdoor, and battle costumes and tools for boys. And what do the girls get? Equal pages of cutsy dresses and dolls, baking sets and aprons, tea sets and crochet gloves AND a book on "How to Be a Lady."

Groan. Nausea. Twitches.

And. AND. This, and I quote from the blurb on "Return of the Daughters":

For the first time in America's history, young ladies can expect to encounter a large gap between their years of basic training and the time when they marry...if they marry. Now Christian girls all throughout our country are seriously asking: What's a girl to do with her single years?

This documentary takes

... viewers into the homes of several young women who have dared to defy today's anti-family culture in pursuit of a biblical approach to daughterhood, using their in-between years to pioneer a new culture of strength and dignity -- and to rebuild Western Civilization, starting with the culture of the home.

I have to admit, the writing in this catalog is good, the presentation skilled. And that even makes it more scary. I am not linking to its website because I don't want to give it any additional visibility.

Finally, the back cover:

A Creation Celebration. ... each episode will build your appreciation for the brilliance of God's design and will teach you how to dispel evolutionary myths...

Evolutionary myths!!!

This is one catalog that I'm going to feel great pleasure in throwing into the recycle pile. That is, after I rip off the address label and stick it in the mail with an order to take my name off their !@#$% list.

Categories: bitchingbooksconspiracy theoriescultureeducationfamilyfeminismnon-beliefreligionsciencestrange world
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May 2, 2008

I don't believe in yesterday

Yesterday was the "National Day of Prayer."

In acknowledgment of the occasion, I quote here from my favorite scientist/atheist's weblog, Pharyngula.

I can scarcely believe my country is officially pandering to such willful stupidity — elevating evangelical kooks to positions of prestige, trumpeting the virtues of sectarian religion, and actually crediting the successes of America to the fact that a subset of deluded, demented fools sit on their asses and beg an invisible man to protect us and help us kill people in foreign countries. What a waste, and what an encouragement of further waste.

I feel like just declaring this the official National Day of Derangement and writing it all off, maybe spit in the soup of people who say grace, or flip off any group I catch trying to do a collective exercise in ritual invocation of nonexistent beings, but the Minnesota Atheists have a more productive idea: they are calling this a National Day of Reason and are setting up to demonstrate in the Minnesota capitol in St Paul today. They actually have a prime position, and all the legislators leaving their workplace to join in the National Day of Inanity will have to troop by them. In my dreams, these politicians would feel a little sense of shame at the foolishness of the official events, but in reality, I'm sure they won't.>
Categories: non-beliefpoliticsreligion
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