The Atheist Mama

Just when I thought this particular ad campaign was fading into well-deserved obscurity, it has returned with a renewed vigor and vitality. Meet Bob. Bob is a pitch man for, well, pitching tents as we say in the States. Because he’s so very, very happy about his pharmaceutically-induced erections, he can’t stop grinning like a mental patient every waking hour of the day. Even worse than his insipid smile, however, is the diabolically monotonous whistling throughout the entire commercial which very nearly qualifies as a crime against humanity.
Are there commercials that bother you as much as this one bothers me? (Yes, I know I can change the channel. And I do. I just don’t understand why so many people find this entertaining. ) If so, tell us about them.

–Allen

I was in the back room of a church while at a Catholic wedding when I took this picture. I was shocked when I saw that the Body of Christ came in packaging just like saltines would. When I was younger and in Catholic school, I always saw the host come out of a very ornate gold and silver safe looking thing (the name of this storage device escapes me).

They probably have boxes of The Body of Christ somewhere. Have you ever eaten one of these? They’re pretty tasty… I could totally sit down with some Blood of Christ and snack on some Body of Christ while watching TV.

I was shocked at the number of emails and messages I got about hiding the zodiac on Myspace. Since the hack, I lost that file and the link that is out there was broken.

So here it is! Let me know if you run into any issues.

Now here is a petition worth signing! Make sure you read it… It’s very funny!

1) The Holy Bible demands that readers murder hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees.

In Exodus 31:15 the Holy Bible demands: “For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death.� This demand is repeated in Exodus 35:2: “For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death.�

Mr. Scott, you are in a unique position to understand how dangerous these statements are. Hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart’s employees work on the Sabbath. The Holy Bible demands their murder. This threat to employee autonomy and safety should be both repugnant and highly offensive to Wal-Mart’s senior management team as well as Wal-Mart’s employees.

Hattip to UTI, Pharyngula, and the guy in my Ohio Atheists Yahoo! Group.

About 2 weeks ago, I went to Vermont to see an old friend from high school get married. They live about an hour away from Stowe, and even closer to Canada. It’s such a beautiful part of the country, and it was the first time that I’ve been that far north in the United States.

The wedding was held at the groom’s folk’s house. They have a good
amount of land there. I don’t remember exactly… I heard 60 acres and 120 acres being discussed. They had a hog roast, and all of the food and the flowers were locally grown. It was a great experience, and a whole
different life than the one that I lead here in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio.

Oh, and “god” wasn’t mentioned once. Not that I would have minded… I was just there to be with my friends on this special day in their lives. But it was nice that there was no mention god. I know that the bride isn’t religious (despite the fact that her family is). She’s not an atheist. I’m not sure exactly what her beliefs are. But I was glad that they chose to leave god out of their ceremony.

You can pictures of the whole event here!

Today, Mike left me this comment:

Nice 80’s hair style first of all. I wanted to comment on your hate towards god and your love for sexual disease. Did you know 84% of HIV in the USA comes from men to men sexual contact and needle sharing. Oh and if you don’t think homosexual men are rude, violent, and threatning, check craig’s list where you can blog under rant and rave and see the filth you stand up for. Disease disease disease is all I have to say. Maybe you should spend less time spreading hate and more time raising your kids. I bet your kids aren’t in any sports or after school activites as you probably make no time for them. Gooooood job lady. I’d call you a mother if you were.

Yes!! I can feel the love!!

I’m not even going to respond to the 80’s hairstyle comment…

“Did you know 84% of HIV in the USA comes from men to men sexual contact and needle sharing…”
– Link please.

“Oh and if you don’t think homosexual men are rude, violent, and threatning, check craig’s list where you can blog under rant and rave and see the filth you stand up for.”
– What, no straight men are rude, violent and threatening? Hey, you have 1 (maybe 2) out of 3 yourself. Are you gay? (note: sarcasm)

“I bet your kids aren’t in any sports or after school activites as you probably make no time for them. Gooooood job lady. I’d call you a mother if you were.”
– Not that it’s any of your business, but my oldest is in pre-school and they are still too young for sports. But I was THE most involved parent in my son’s pre-school last year. I was also the only atheist. Go figure…

Thanks for coming by Mike! Keep the mail coming!!

I just came across an interesting circle of parody sites on Myspace. These are hysterical!

jesus, lol
Pat Robertson
Jesus - the South Park one
George W. Bush
Reverend Phelps
Another Jesus on Myspace!

This list could go on and on… Check some of them out. Enjoy!!

Thanks to Stardust for this excellent cartoon!!

RR from Rescuing Reason has set up a forum for our Game!! Thank you!!

Make sure you go by and register!!

Just a bit of history in case you are new -

The War on Easter was declared on April 11. I set out on my mission soon after. We then began “The Game.” Since we now have over 160 comments on that entry, RR was great enough to start a message board dedicated to “The Game.”

Go check it out! But don’t forget about my blog! :-P

Can I have all of your stuff? Please sign up here to leave me your cars, your money, and your house. I’d really like an acoustic guitar, some furniture in excellent condition, and I’ll take your house plants. After all, who’s gonna water the plants??

I got this idea after reading a post on Jason’s blog about Rapture Letters.

Come on now… Talk about signing someone up for SPAM!! I can’t tell you how many emails I get for “Christian re-financing,” “Christian singles,” and “Free Bibles.”

Anyway, back to the point of this post - I want your stuff.

:-)

I came across this comment from this post last night:

>Meantime, on a practical and realistic level, congregations should take whatever legal means are available to stop trespass, defacement, vandalism or whatever covers these acts, as needed. Use hate-crime statutes if necessary - turnabout is fair play, no? Public exposure and ridicule of the “perps” might be useful also.

(emphasis mine)

The War on Easter being a hate crime?? Come on… Can you imagine?
Tresspassing? Is a church a public place? Don’t my tax dollars support the property that the church sits on?
Vandalism? What vandalism?

I think that a lot of people would support this though. My husband warned me about the hate crime possibility before the mission.

The state of Washington is getting a new quarter. I came across this and thought I’d see what everyone else thinks. Voting is open until April 30, and they’ll show the results of the poll on May 1, if you’re interested.

So, which one do you like? I think that #3 is pretty cool.

Unfortunately, changing the other side of the quarter isn’t up for a vote.

April 17th is tax day!!

Added: Ok, It’s not the 15th like I originally said, it’s the 17th. Thanks for the head up Nicholas, and thanks for commenting!

Well, first of all, I have no doubts that they have found the DVD. My most recent visitor was from the very church that I paid a visit to yesterday. They found me by googling “www.theatheistmama.com.” So I’m sure that they know exactly where the DVD is by now.

I’m seeing negative comments all over the place. That’s fine. I see a lot of your points. But like I said before: It was a prank. A joke. It wasn’t done with any intent to harm anyone. I’ve seen “use your time and effort to do good.” Well, I do. All day long. If anyone here knows me at all, they know that I don’t spend my time trying to think up ways to hurt or attack people.

I’m also seeing a lot of threatening comments from Christians.

“If I found one of my boys picking up one of these pamphlets or movies that one of these scumbags left in the pew, they would have confirmation extremely quick of the existence of God…”

Comments are being left by “the last guy you want to bump into while planting your hate propoganda” on the War on Easter site.

This one isn’t a “threat” but still interesting:
“And since when did being a Christian mean I cant tell you to go fuck yourself. You may take this as implying that Im not a perfect Christian. Oh well. Go fuck yourself.”

“I hope next time you try to put one of your hate mongering propaganda DVD’s in a church you are caught by another sort of extremist who will give you a taste of your own medicine.”

Wow.

You know, in Colorado Springs, they once included a Bible in with the Sunday newspaper? It went to everyone who had a subscription.

When I lived in Colorado, I had a box FULL of the Watchtower from witnesses. They came to my house once a week for 3 years.

I get people knocking on my door right now a few times a month with a Bible in their hand, ready to read to me.

I get junk mail all of the time from churches in the area trying to get me to come in.

It’s interesting that when the favors are returned, we are called “Nazi” “Hate Monger” “Animal Killers” and “Perverts.”

Ok, not really. It actually began about around 9:30 after I had dropped my oldest off at school, and cleaned out my car.

The reason that I picked the this church because of all of these little green signs that are popping up in lawns all over my neighborhood:

So I pull up into the gigantic parking lot. I had no idea how massive this place was.
(Note the FSM emblem) :-)

I walked in and talked to the woman at the front desk. I told her that I had seen the green lawn signs around and I was wondering if I could just take a look around. I should also mention that I had my 19 month old with me who was busy trying to go into every open door in sight. The woman at the desk was very friendly and helpful. She told me that everyone was in a prayer meeting so I wouldn’t be able to see anyone, but I was more than welcome to walk around.
I had my flyers folded up in my purse, and I began to place them in random spots on my way down the hall. Taking pictures of this wasn’t easy, especially since I was trying to keep up with this guy.

We walked around the lobby area. Unfortunately, the “sanctuary” was locked. I was told that this was due to frequent vandalism and theft. So I walked around and planted flyers while my little one climbed all over the furniture.

Then it was time to plant the DVD. I placed it among pamphlets and information on things like pregnancy decision, pro-life resources, ministries, and missions.

Can you find Jesus?

On my way out, I managed to get a few flyers into the windshields of cars parked in the lot. But only a few, because a lot of cars began pouring in to the parking lot.

I know that I may get some negative comments over this one. But I didn’t do anything illegal. It was all in fun. I was very polite and I have no ill feelings towards anyone there, and was very welcomed. The woman at the front desk actually suggested that I was sent by God because she was just praying that she would meet women from my side of town for her new Women’s Group. Besides, I can’t count how many times Xian tracts have been left on my doorstep.

Visit The War on Easter.

OHIO: Successful attack by Atheist Mama

For the last two mornings, I’ve noticed these green yard signs littering ther lawns in my neighborhood. The writing on the signs are a bit to small to see except for the part that says “Easter 2006.”

UGH… So I’m beginning to see them everywhere I go. Finally, I see one on the corner, near my grocery store and I end up at a red light right next to it. It’s a sign that lists the service times at this local church for Easter. I won’t be linking to them, so feel free to Google it if you want.

Then I came across this. That’s right. The War on Easter starts tomorrow.

>A total of 666 DVDs will be hidden like “Easter eggs” in sanctuaries, church yards and other holy areas by Beyond Belief Media’s national team of volunteers. The DVDs will be slipped into hymnals and other locations where they are likely to be discovered by unsuspecting worshippers.

Oh yes. I think I know exactly where my copy of The God Who Wasn’t There will be going.

Thanks to GifS for the tip!

My husband just sent this link to me. If you are familair with Linux and Windows, then it’s a must read. I’m not sure if it was a joke or not, but I can’t see it being a real post. Make sure you read some of the comments too!!

>Unix is too hard

>I tried Solaris 10. I tried Linux. I tried FreeBSD.

>Unix is too hard. Why is that? The Unix versions I listed above were
installed by my friend on my computer and yet I wasn’t able to connect
to the internet. My friend is a computer Wiz and he couldn’t figure
out how to get my computer on the internet. In fact all the
secretaries at work have my friend work on their computers and he is
thinking of going back to college to get his MCSE.

>I do have to admit that I tried OpenOffice and liked it a lot. The
export to PDF feature is really nice and the quality of OpenOffice is
somewhere between MS Office 97 - MS Office 2000 minus the VBA
functionality. This makes it good for home use although at the company
I work my friend tells me OpenOffice cannot run our VBA code. So it
will not work for most workplaces. My son uses it for school since it
is free and he would rather have new Nike shoes than an office
application.

>My friend is trying to get Unix to connect to the net still even
though I am telling him to put windows XP back on my PC. He tells me
that getting Unix connected to the net is one of the greatest
challenges a computer Wiz has to encounter. He tells me he is at the
point of almost making it work. He downloaded a bunch of DTrace
scripts off the internet at work and burned them on a CD. He brought
the CD home and was trying them out to see if he could DTrace to google
but he got no response. He ran this command:

> dtrace www.google.com.

>It didn’t work! I told him to go and get his MCSE and then Unix will
be easier to understand once he has the degree. He then tried using an
Apple emacs editor to edit some hosts files following some printed
instructions he got from google. Apple emacs was too hard and it kept
on beeping and there was no way to quit so we pressed a bunch of keys
until the emacs became really buggy and gave us this message:

> Debugger entered–Lisp error: (void-variable +)

>I had to pull the power cord on the computer to reboot it. By this
time I had convinced my friend that MCSE degrees were offered to give
training in computers and he agreed that in order to become a “hacker”
level computer Wiz, he would have to get that degree. So he went to
put windows XP on my computer but he told me it didn’t recognize the
partition. We googled solaris unix and found “ZFS” on google at work.
It said that the file system is indestructable and never goes away.
According to one website it was like this: “ZFS protects all data with
64-bit checksums that detect and correct silent data corruption.” That
means it fights Windows XP and Norton Ghost when trying to get rid of
Unix.

>By this time I really needed to be connected to the internet at home so
I could get email. I went to an Apple store and told them that I
needed a new computer but not an Apple Emacs because I already tried it
and had to pull the power cord to make it stop beeping. He led my to
an Apple iMac which he said was better than an Apple Emacs because it
was newer and based on OS X.

>I got home and got on the internet right away with my iMac. I am so
glad I’m done with Unix. My apple gets things done like unix where
unix couldn’t.

Did anyone see South Park this week? (If you have it recorded and are planning to watch it, don’t read any further)

There was big controversy in this Colorado town because “The Family Guy” had an episode coming up that was going to show the prophet Mohammed in support of the Danish newspaper!! Fox censored Mohammed out, but there was still rioting and violence all over the Muslim world.
Then, the producers of “The Family Guy” demanded they re-air the episode censor-free. Fox caves in and again, there is chaos.
South Park wants to show the Muslims that they are not taking part in this horrible event and they decide that the best way to show that they aren’t involved in seeing and hearing about Mohammed is to bury their heads in sand.

South Park was to be continued… Will Mohammed be shown in the next episode??