CBEB’s

I was messing around with Google Webmaster Tools the other day; I rarely do anything with it, although it’s a handy way to make sure the site is running smoothly. In the “What Googlebot Sees” section was this nifty table. I think I’ll print it out, cut out all the words and glue them to little magnets for the refrigerator.

Although I’d have to work around some Möön Längüägë, I’d like to see if I can make a huge run-on sentence out this.

In external links to your site
1. ebola
2. church
3. burnin
4. boys
5. new
6. blog
7. cbeb
8. dna
9. mister
10. cbebs
11. burning
12. org
13. 2008
14. the
15. denyse
16. great
17. leary
18. coolest
19. denys
20. casey
21. comes
22. luskin
23. prediction
24. sherry
25. really
26. blogging
27. discovery
28. does
29. douchbag
30. douchebags
31. gospel
32. hillbilly
33. instituten
34. kuin
35. muassa
36. muun
37. näkyy
38. poster
39. pseudoscientific
40. show
41. silloin
42. tämä
43. urgh
44. what
45. bpsdb
46. here
47. legendary
48. picked
49. sorta
50. true
51. uncommon
52. bfast
53. christianity
54. curch
55. from
56. some
57. this
58. visit
59. website
60. and
61. because
62. been
63. believe
64. blasphemy
65. boycott
66. buys
67. children
68. chuck
69. contest
70. damned
71. desperate
72. douchebag
73. easiest
74. favorite
75. fish
76. ftk
77. generator
78. hail
79. has
80. hate
81. hates
82. hit
83. homicide
84. implemented
85. johnny
86. like
87. moments
88. norris
89. not
90. now
91. overlooked
92. pariah
93. person
94. random
95. recidivist
96. satan
97. science
98. sort
99. suffer
100. tard

I’d love to see the corresponding table from other blogs. Here’s what the top ten might look like at some of our favorite blogs:
Reasonable Kansans:

In external links to your site
1. DARWINISM
2. atheists
3. daily
4. basis
5. piranha
6. energy
7. drinks
8. Vox
9. Day
10. OMG

Post-Darwinist:

In external links to your site
1. like
2. materialists
3. today
4. at
5. Mindful
6. Hack
7. buy
8. my
9. book
10. persecution

Uncommon Descent:

In external links to your site
1. Waterloo
2. no
3. longer
4. with
5. us
6. autodidact
7. engineering
8. houseboat
9. Jesus
10. Designer

I’m going to be doing some routine maintenance on the site; updating the blogroll*, tweaking the sidebars…. stuff like that. If the site is looking weird, be patient; I probably screwed up something, but I’m in the process of fixing it.

*There’s a few sites in the blogroll that are no longer being updated. Rather than remove them, I’m going to create a new category for them. If you have a blog that’s updated on a semi-regular basis and would like to be added to the blogroll, lemme know.

Update: That was a lot quicker and easier than I thought it would be. In addition to the blogroll being updated, I’ve added links to CBEB’s Feedburner feed for those of you who read the site in newsreaders. If you prefer the plain old CBEB’s feed, that option still remains.

We’ve grown accustomed to cdesign proponentsists saying stupid things. Whether it’s DaveScot falling for an Urban Legend, Casey Luskin pretending to be a lawyer, or Denyse O’Leary simply typing anything at all, Intelligent Design has become a perpetual motion machine, producing an endless stream of embarrassing statements.

I was dicking around the web the other day, and found a post about the trailer for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Nothing special, really… but in the comments, Kyle Latino (who’s apparently some sort of comic artist) had this to say:

No, I really love the “Mannish Boy” depiction of Ben Stein, for surly [sic] he is the vision of what Muddy Waters had when he wrote that song.

Riiiiiiight. Muddy Waters was thinking about a fucking Nixon speech writer and game show host when he penned his classic, “Mannish Boy“.

Shit, if Ben Stein had walked into the Chess studios in 1955, Muddy Waters would have held him down while Sonny Boy Williamson stabbed him and Howlin’ Wolf planted his size 16 foot in Stein’s ribcage.

If Ben Stein ever inspired a song, it would probably be something like The Monks’ “Shut Up“, or Run-DMC’s “You Talk Too Much“.

No, this isn’t my new pet. I was going through some old photos and thought I’d share this one.

Thanks to the South Texas humidity, we’ve got tons of cockroaches down here. In the summer, if you’re outside after sundown, they’ll fly straight at you from out of nowhere. I know several people who are terrified of the little suckers; they creep me out, but I don’t think I could live down here if I was phobic of cockroaches.

You won’t be seeing this guy at Cute Overload, but someone
from AtBC will inevitably be putting him through the Lolcat Builder.

I found this little guy on my front porch a couple of years ago. At first, I thought it was some sort of cocoon, but then it started crawling… I got this photo before I busted out the can of Raid. Roaches are bad enough, but I didn’t want this bastard breeding. If you let one mutant cockroach slide, the next thing you know, they’re developing opposable thumbs.

Stinky, a.k.a. Stench Joseph the Third

This is going to be my only post today, as I’m in mourning. Yesterday we had to take our cat, Stinky, to the vet after he was found collapsed on the sidewalk. It turns out he had leukemia, lymphoma and a host of other problems. Rather than let him suffer, we opted to euthanize him.

I feel like shit about this.

No one knows how old he was. Stinky was full grown when he showed up Christmas day, 1999. We didn’t take him in; it was more like he chose us.

Everyone loved him. He was indifferent to the multitude of small dogs that reside in the area, and he liked being petted by young children. Stinky preferred to live the life of a stray. He would come in to eat, and when it was cold or rainy he’d sleep inside, but his favorite pastime was lounging in the flowerbeds, eyeballing the grackles and squirrels.

We have a serious stray cat problem in the area, but Stinky was always exempt from the numerous “sweeps”. Since he was fixed, he wasn’t contributing to the problem, and the neighbors liked having him around.

We knew Stinky was getting old. He had lost his fangs a few years ago; it took him a long time and several ass-whippings at the hands of younger tomcats to realize he was no longer cut out to be the Alpha Male.

What we didn’t know is that he was so sick. To the very end, he was the same old Stinky. In a sense, I’m grateful for that. That’s the Stinky I’ll always remember.

I have photographs of Stinky, but my favorite image of him has always been the drawing above, which was done several years ago by the daughter of a former co-worker.

It’s times like this that it’s difficult to come to terms with the finality of death, but no amount of wishful thinking is going to change the fact that Stinky is dead. That doesn’t mean he is no longer with us, though. He gave us a lifetime of memories, and he will always be fondly remembered.

Rest in Peace, Stinky.

<grumpy old man>

You atheist kids have got it so easy these days. When I was your age, we didn’t have some new-fangled Blasphemy Challenge. We didn’t have no fancy YouTube, neither. If we wanted to watch a video of someone using a Bible to clean up a pile of dog shit, we had to order some shitty 8mm film out of the back of a porno magazine. The dogshit and the Bible were usually fake, and the actors would be speaking either German or Swedish. What a gyp.

When I was your age, if I wanted to piss off Christians and scare the beejesus out of my friends, I had to do it the old-fashioned way by cranking up the stereo and blaring the Feederz’ “Jesus Entering From the Rear”.

</grumpy old man>

In 1981, my older brother brought home the classic (and now long out-of-print) Alternative Tentacles compilation, Let Them Eat Jellybeans. Featuring some legendary punk bands (Dead Kennedys, Flipper, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Bad Brains, and more) the Feederz track always got the biggest reaction, which usually went something like this: “TURN THAT SHIT OFF! DO YOU WANT TO GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING???” We couldn’t even understand all the lyrics, but the parts that mattered were perfectly audible.

A lot of the early punk bands went for shock value, but the Feederz went the extra mile. If you don’t believe me, listen for yourself. This is the original version (from vinyl) of “Jesus Entering From the Rear”:

The original recording featured Art Nouveau (a.k.a. John Vivier) on drums; Nouveau would eventually go on to join Killer Pussy of “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” fame. His replacement for the Feederz first album, Ever Feel Like Killing Your Boss?, would be none other than Dead Kennedys drummer, D.H. Peligro. Here is the cleaner-sounding album version of “Jesus”:

Personally, I prefer the original recording; it’s raw and rough, just like a good punk song should be, although I do like the little “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” intro of the album version…

Though they went through a lot of personnel changes, it never mattered much, as the Feederz was the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Frank Discussion.

I’ve never bought into the whole “Smash the State” rhetoric behind a lot of punk music. I can appreciate the sentiment, but I always preferred the gloom-and-doom of Discharge to the Utopian leanings of Crass. However, one can’t help but to be impressed by Frank Discussion’s conviction to the cause. Though not many people have actually listened to Ever Feel Like Killing Your Boss?, the album is famous for its packaging: the original vinyl release had an actual piece of sandpaper glued to the cover so that it would fuck up all your other album covers. The CD reissue has the sandpaper glued to the jewel case.

Discussion’s lyrics are richly influenced by Situationist politics. If you’re not familiar with Situationists International, I’m afraid I can’t be of much help. I’ve read a lot of Situationist literature, but like sex, I’ve found it’s something better experienced than discussed. Two classic examples of Situationist philosophy can be found in the slogans from the Paris Riots of May, 1968 and the music of Negativland.

Even before the year 1984 had arrived, I got pretty sick of punks singing about it; especially after watching that shitty movie, Breaking Glass. The Feederz, however, did one of the few decent songs on the subject with the aptly titled “1984″:

During the infamous PMRC hearings, the record industry was also engaged in a plan to put a tax on blank cassettes in order to recoup losses caused by the insidious activity known as “home recording”. Long before music piracy became cool, Frank Discussion proudly displayed the following statement on the back of the Feederz’ albums:

HOME RECORDING IS KILLING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

It’s not just lip service, either; after a long absence from the music scene, the Feederz returned in 2002 with the album, Vandalism: Beautiful As A Rock In A Cop’s Face. Like a true punk, Frank Discussion made the entire album available for download at the Feederz website. (Note: I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Official Feederz Website is NSFW, unless your boss is cool with the suggestion that he be brutally sodomized.)

There’s also a video from the album for the song, “Taking the Night”. Even if you don’t like the song, the video is excellent. Did you know that there’s beer hidden in the walls at your place of employment?

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

As a bonus tribute to Frank Discussion and the Feederz, here’s their cover of Olivia Newton-John’s smash hit, “Have You Ever Been Mellow”:

Below the fold you will find the lyrics to “Jesus Entering from the Rear”. Trust me on this: you don’t have to be a Christian to find the lyrics offensive. Consider yourself warned.
(more…)

I got a flyer in the mail today from a neighborhood church. On the front was a picture of Jesus hanging on the cross with the words, “an Easter Love Story”, below the image. On the back of the flyer was this:

For God SO loved the world… We’ve probably all heard the start to that verse, but what does it really mean in our daily lives? Come join us this Easter at Parkdale Baptist Church as we discover the type of practical, everlasting and sacrificial love God has for us. It’s a story that offers guidance for life’s challenges, encouragement in life’s difficulties and hope for eternity. It can be your story too!

As Tina Turner would say, “What’s love got to do with it?” Seriously, I just don’t get any sort of “Love Story” vibe when I read the Bible, especially the crucifixion stories. Instead of your typical “Boy Meets Girl” story, we get this:

• Omnipotent Being meets girl
• Omnipotent Being uses magic to impregnate girl
• Thirty some-odd years later, child of Omnipotent Being and girl gets nailed to a cross
• After being dead for three days, child of Omnipotent Being and girl comes back to life and ascends to Heaven

I guess one might say that’s a happy ending… if one is willing to overlook the whole “everyone who doesn’t believe this shit gets thrown into a Lake of Fire in the sequel” angle to the story.

I realize I’m grossly oversimplifying the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but the details don’t really help. The whole “Jesus died for your sins” concept doesn’t sound like love to me. In fact, it reeks of overkill. It’s really arrogant to think you’re so important that you’ve done something which merits a human sacrifice in order to make things right again.

Furthermore, “Jesus died for your sins” doesn’t make much sense in light of the fact - according to the Bible - He didn’t really die. I guess “died for your sins” carries a little more impact than the more truthful, “Jesus gave up Spring Break for your sins”.

Christianity has always been one of those things that the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. I feel I’m not alone in thinking that way, seeing how so many youngsters are getting disillusioned with the Jesus Fan Club.

Some of you might think what I’m about to do is tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but I’ve been reading a lot about young people leaving the church, and I’d like to offer Christians some friendly advice on how to get the kids interested in Jesus once more.

The solution is not only simple, it’s Biblically sound: Zombies.

Something on which we can all agree: Churches could use more brains.

It’s a well known fact that kids love zombies. If you’ve got children, ask your son or daughter which they’d rather have at their next birthday party: clowns or zombies? If your child says “clowns” (or even worse, “a magic show”) memorize this phrase: “I had no idea my child would grow up to be a serial killer”; it will come in handy someday.

It’s beyond me why churches haven’t latched on to Zombies as a marketing tool. Some Christians might deny there are zombies in the Bible, but it’s right there, in Matthew 27, verses 45 through 53:

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Those are just about the coolest verses in the Bible, but you never hear preachers talking about zombies running around Jerusalem. I realize some Biblical literalists might point out that the word “zombie” doesn’t actually appear in the Bible; my response is, “so what?”. The word “dinosaur” doesn’t appear in the Bible, yet Ken Ham built a multi-million dollar museum dealing with Dinosaurs and the Bible. The word “homosexuality” occurs exactly zero times in the King James Bible, but to listen to some preachers, you’d think that’s the only subject the Bible covers. If creationists can extrapolate the word “plesiosaur” from the Biblical Leviathan, then surely Christians can agree that Dead People Coming Out of Their Graves = Zombies. This is ain’t rocket science, people.

Even I might consider attending this church.

Even one of the great minds of the Enlightenment, Thomas Paine, knew the zombie issue warranted more investigation. In The Age of Reason, he wrote:

The writer of the book of Matthew should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what became of them afterward, and who it was that saw them — for he is not hardy enough to say he saw them himself; whether they came out naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-saints; or whether they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses; whether they went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they were received; whether they entered ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers; whether they remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or working; or whether they died again, or went back to their graves alive, and buried themselves.

Strange, indeed, that an army of saints should return to life, and nobody know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have anything to tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say. They could have told us everything and we should have had posthumous prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses and Aaron and Joshua and Samuel and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the time then present, everybody would have known them, and they would have out-preached and out-famed all the other apostles. But, instead of this, these saints were made to pop up, like Jonah’s gourd in the night, for no purpose at all but to wither in the morning.

Chances are, at least one church in your town puts on an annual Passion Play (except when YHWH sends unfavorable weather), but do they include Zombies in their production? With Hell Houses becoming a popular method of “witnessing” these days, adding Zombies to your church’s Passion Play only seems like the next logical step.

For that matter, any filmmaker wanting a prefab “cult” audience can kill two birds with one stone by making a new, improved “Greatest Story Ever Told” by adding Zombies to the mix. As The Passion of the Christ demonstrated, the MPAA has no problem at all with snuff films, as long as Jesus is the star of the picture. That means you could make the goriest Zombie movie ever made, and not only would the diehard gorehounds be lining up to see it, church leaders would command their flocks to see it as many times as they can.

The really cool thing about a Zombie Jesus Movie is that they didn’t have guns back in the Bible days. Since it’s a scientific fact that Zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain, Bible Zombies would be especially hard to kill, bringing a fresh perspective to a genre that’s gotten stale over the years. Plus, Bruce Campbell would make a badass Jesus.

Christians love to parade one of the central contradictions of their religion with silly “Buddha and Mohammed are dead, but Jesus lives!” arguments. If Jesus lives, how could he have died for our sins? If he died, but now is no longer dead, then he’s a freakin’ Zombie. There’s no need to explain away this paradox; it should be celebrated and exploited.

Via Yahoo News:

A former drummer for the Swedish pop band ABBA was found dead with cuts to his neck in the garden of his house on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Police said Monday an autopsy showed it was an accident.

Alas, it wasn’t a “Bizarre gardening accident“. Apparently, Ola Brunkert hit his head on a glass door in his dining room before stumbling into the garden.

Anyway, rest in peace, Ola Brunkert. The next time William Dembski says “Waterloo!” (which, according to my calculations, should be about 10 minutes from now), I’ll bust out the ABBA Gold CD in your honor.

It’s not often a genuine celebrity shows up at CBEB’s. In fact, it’s never happened… until today. Sorta. I mean, if making an ass out of oneself on The Daily Show and getting pwned by Frank Zappa on Crossfire qualify one for celebrity status, then yes, we have a confirmed celebrity sighting.

The one and only John Lofton showed up in the comments of my John Lofton for President! post to, predictably, say something stupid.

The comment almost didn’t see the light of day. It’s only because of this post at Bitch Spot that I checked my Askimet filter; something I rarely do. It turns out that even non-sentient spam filters think of Lofton as an insufferable douchebag.

Also, an apology to commenter Iggy - Askimet prevented one of your comments from getting through, but I marked it as “Not Spam”. I think it was your choice of homepage that caught Askimet’s attention…

“B.O.L.O.” is law enforcement jargon meaning, “Be On the Lookout”. Seeing that Denyse O’Leary just loves to trot out analogies using the field of criminology to prop up the non-starter known as Intelligent Design, she might already know about the B.O.L.O. acronym. Then again, she might not.

Another common law enforcement acronym is “MMO”, which stands for “Means, Motive & Opportunity”. Judging by Granny Spice’s latest episode of CSI: Imaginary Kingdom, it’s pretty obvious that she thinks “MMO” means something entirely different.

In an awkward attempt to show there’s some sound reasoning behind the vacuous enterprise known as “design detection”, O’Leary uses an example of a man stabbing his dinner companion:

Harry and Jack are having a somewhat tense conversation over a beer and steak at the local pub.

Harry seizes a steak knife and tries to plunge it into Jack’s ribs.

Pub regulars overpower him and the police are called. He is charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

That’s intent.

I’m fully aware that saying “Denyse O’Leary is wrong” is entirely redundant, but in this case, she is wrong on so many levels, it hurts to even think about it. Most damaging to her premise, however, is the fact that intent can really only be established once the suspect is identified. In some cases - for example, a body is found with its head blown off by a shotgun blast - the intent is obvious, but it’s useless in determining a suspect. This is where “Means, Motive & Opportunity” come into play. Since Intelligent Design is a science-stopper, Denyse O’Leary is apparently satisfied with the outcome of her little mystery. Being such a super-duper writer and all, maybe she’ll pen an Agatha Christie-style thriller utilizing her amazing crime-fighting know-how.

I can see it now… Private Detective Michael “Bill” Behembski cracks the cases that the materialist cops are afraid to touch. In Chapter One of “Pinched, Purloined and Pilfered”, gumshoe Behembski arrives at the mansion of real estate mogul Arnold Tromp, who has had his collection of rare jewels stolen.

Behembski: It looks to me like the burglar’s intent was to steal your collection of rare jewels.
Tromp: No shit, Sherlock. I’m interested in finding out who stole them.
Behembski: I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this investigation. After all, it’s obvious those jewels were designed in a manner that would attract thieves, so it could be anyone. There might even be those who say that aliens stole your gems, but that’s mere speculation. Judging from the way your elaborate alarm system was disarmed, I’m guessing it was someone reasonably intelligent, but that’s the most I can say.
Tromp: You’re fired!
Behembski: Case closed. Another satisfied customer.

Being colossally mistaken has become the norm in Denyse O’Leary’s career as an ID apologist. Her articles touting the truthfulness of Intelligent Design are often nothing more than Mad-Libs, the blanks filled in with the ID talking points du jour: Blah blah blah “materialism”. Yadda yadda “design inference”. Boo hoo hoo “buy my book”, and so on.

Just in case readers are unconvinced of how utterly wrong she is, O’Leary hammers the point home, adding:

No one knows his motive, but no one needs to know his motive. What he intended was obvious. And it is a crime

In O’Leary’s example, the perpetrator’s intent could mean the difference between 15 years in prison and 15 to life. Regardless of motive, was the man’s intent to merely see his victim bleed, or did he want to kill him? What if the heated discussion involved the victim bragging about how he was going to set off a bomb in a densely populated area after he finished his steak? It doesn’t matter to Saint Denyse of Leary; a roomful of witnesses saw a guy stab someone in the ribs with a steak knife. End of story, no further investigation needed. We all know that ID is a science-stopper, but it doesn’t look like “design detection” would ever be of any use as a crime-stopper. Is it any wonder that the field of criminology still relies on good old-fashioned science?

I’m sure Ms. O’Leary doesn’t want anyone to consider the subtleties - or lack thereof - of her analogy. After all, if she doesn’t spend more than two seconds thinking about the validity of her arguments, why should we?