Religious folk like to claim that lack of God begets a lack of morals, and to a certain extent they’re right. Only, it’s not secularism that causes the problems but rather instilling people with notions of magical punishments for their actions, hammering into them the import of doing good not for the sake of being a good person, of not doing harm to others because they understand harm, but for the sake of saving themselves from some fantastic damnation. And once that veil is pulled away, what’s the point? Once religion, once God is exposed as a fraud, then suddenly the impetus to do good out of fear is eliminated as well. And when you confuse morality with a system of religion, this can be really dangerous.

It’s similar to the way we approach other things, too: Like how we build up these mythical tales of marijuana use killing you on your first use, and destroying your life, and being so addictive and horrible that you’ll be ruined within months if you ever even think about smoking a joint. And then people actually end up smoking pot at some point in their lives and realizing it’s not even close to as bad as depicted, and in fact quite pleasant with seemingly few side effects with responsible use. And then it dawns on them that other drugs were depicted this way, too, so maybe it’s safe to give, say, heroin a go. Or crack. Hell, why not some crystal meth?

And that’s what the gateway is: Not some intrinsic property of the drugs themselves, but rather the way we condition ourselves as a species to think about things. We aren’t honest with ourselves because we don’t seem to be able to trust ourselves to be adults. (And it’s cyclical, of course: Treat someone like a child and they’ll become one.) We end up inventing all these little tricks to try to convince ourselves that intensely exaggerated and often outright invented repercussions will result from actions we’re afraid (sometimes with good reason — see: heroin) or uncomfortable to take. And in doing so, in lying to ourselves, we never fully grasp what the actual situations are, what the actual dangers are. All we do is prop up a bunch of facades of boogeymen and train ourselves to believe that if we do something “wrong”, they’re going to come alive at night and eat us.

And some people can only be tricked for so long.

When you find out that Santa Claus isn’t real, for how long do you continue kissing ass with your parents? The whole thing was just a device to get you to behave for an entire year for a single annual reward. There was always the threat of no presents at Christmas, because Santa doesn’t bring gifts to bad girls and boys. Only lumps of coal. And then you’re told it’s bullshit, and not only is the incentive to be artificially pleasant and complacent under almost any circumstance[1] throughout the year removed, but you’re also disillusioned with the system as a whole.

So what happens when you suspect that God isn’t real? The same God you’ve been kept in a state of perpetual childhood to believe in, to suspend your disbelief, to exhibit cognitive dissonance to such an extent as no rational adult in an enlightened, mature society would be capable? The same God who’ll burn you for an eternity — a fucking eternity — for something so much as lying to your parents? God doesn’t give heaven to bad girls and boys. Only lumps of coal. Lit. Up your asshole. Forever. What happens when you begin to suspect that maybe this whole system might not be real?

Some people can only stay children for so long.

[1] And this is what makes the whole Catholic kid-rape scandal particularly insidious is that these children are led to be complacent to appease God — who they’re told is represented by these men — and so they’re afraid to do anything out of fear that they’ll make God angry. Fucking disgusting.

Jabberwock

Anticipate being alone on Valentine’s Day? Don’t feel left out! Here’s a gift you can give yourself:

Possibly others to come. Sorry about the lack of posting — extremely busy and generally horribly depressed. I’m planning on making an effort to update this more frequently starting pretty soon, and turning it into an aggregator of sorts for some of the projects I’ve been working on.

Stay tuned! And sorry!

Jabberwock

I find myself here having to apologize once more for infrequent updates. You know I love you guys, but everything’s been so busy and crazy and I think I’ve gotten into another of those lulls where I feel like my rage meter has sort of become all overwhelmed and stopped working properly. I still get really fucking angry about a number of things, but before I can think to write about them it just kind of bursts and sputters out and I can’t bring myself to give a shit about them. There are only so many times you can read about, for instance (among many), people for whatever reason earnestly defending insurance companies before your brain just kind of shits itself and says “fuck it, just play some video games or something for a while, I can’t do this right now”.

This has happened before, and passed, and I feel like this time it will as well, but while it persists my updates here are going to be relatively infrequent, and I’m sorry.

In the meantime, I’ve started a new webcomic that captures at least a portion of that anger. It’s incredibly lazy, and is all basically transcripts of conversations I have (mostly — and all to this point, at least — with my friend Tom who you may have seen in Rocket Man) throughout the day that I basically just copy/paste into the database to be spat out as a sort of pseudo-comic. It takes about three minutes of my time outside of the conversation itself, which would be happening anyway.

You can find it by visiting Human Mammal Dot Com or basically clicking on that link right there. There’s so much content that it’s going to be updated daily simply because if I didn’t I’d get this tremendous backlog of material that would necessitate me eventually putting up like eight posts a day or something just to keep up.

I want to keep providing you guys steady content, but it’s hard when I have to sit there and write out some long essay on top of everything else. So while I muscle through this terrible lull amidst my general existential angst and depressive issues, you can check that out. It’s still in beta and I know there are a bunch of bugs, and I’ll be adding more functionality soon, but it’s there and it wants you to look at it so please do.

MORE TO COME!

-The Mgt.

Jabberwock

I’m going to respond to the following comment on the front page, here:

commodorejohn said: Man, Jabberwock, you’re usually pretty good about being fair, but…damn. Is it that hard to acknowledge that at least some of us just don’t want the government running it? That maybe not everybody who’s opposed to your positions is some sort of capitalist-fetish lunatic who would fellate the corporate world if they could? Is it so hard to understand that some of us would just rather keep our options open than trust the federal government to look after our good health the way they look after our privacy and financial solvency? Christ.

Allow me to put this into perspective for you:

TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE in this country — myself included, along with some friends of mine, one of whom needs prescription meds filled on a regular basis — are LIVING WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE. Which means that we are either GOING WITHOUT HEALTHCARE, or we are BEING BANKRUPTED BY and CHARGED OUT THE ASS for NECESSARY MEDICAL EXPENSES.

Think about the private health insurance business model for a moment: The only way they can make any money is to ensure that their customers get as little coverage as possible. It’s not about actually providing anyone health coverage. The ultimate truth of the matter is that the insurance industry has absolutely NOTHING to do with healthcare — it’s just a middle man that exploits the fact that people need medical care throughout their lives in order to continue living.

Now, if our goal is to allow this particular rent-seeking industry to profit at the expense of human lives, then great — we’re doing an awesome job, and our system should be commended for getting a portion of the population to pay substantial amounts of money for a service where the bulk of what’s being paid goes toward ensuring that the customer doesn’t actually get the service they’re paying for through whatever loopholes are intentionally written into the policy. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! *trumpets* *fanfare* *Romanesque chariots being driven through rose-petal parades*

But if our goal is to actually ensure maximal healthcare availability to everyone, regardless of their income or employment status, then we’re total failures.

So we need to examine our priorities: It’s the insurance industry or it’s our health — we can’t have both, because the former ONLY THRIVES WHEN THEY DENY US THE LATTER. Do we provide healthcare, or do we facilitate the exploitation of human lives by the insurance industry? That’s what this is all about.

And then there’s the issue of workers’ rights. Businesses have a sort of bargaining wild card in that they can control whether or not you have health insurance. During any kind of negotiation for better pay (until they recently raised it, the Minimum Wage actually decreased in value, corrected for inflation, since the mid-1900s) or treatment or whatever else, a business can always threaten to take away employees’ health benefits.

Why should your boss have the power to decide whether you live or die? Whether you can get your cancer screening this month? Whether you can afford dialysis? And why should you be forced to stay at a job that’s unfair or unsafe or uncomfortable or that you otherwise hate just because if you leave, you might either a) not get health insurance at your next job, or b) not be able to get coverage after you lose your current plan because of a pre-existing condition?

And yeah, it’s easy to say “well I have insurance so why should I care?” but in this economy, maybe it’s a good idea to remember that no job is permanent.

So yeah, you might have health coverage right now, but that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed it for the rest of your life. Under a single-payer healthcare system, you WOULD BE, whether you got laid off tomorrow or you were born with cancer or you just found out you have lupus or whatever else. And under our current system, that’s very much not the case. So why perpetuate it? Really, why?

Why pay deductibles? Why get less pay because your employer’s taking a cut out of it to pay for part of your insurance plan? Why pay for a service whose primary business model is to deny you that service?

Why?

So, yes, it really is “so hard to understand”. Especially when what you’re basically doing is condemning me and millions of others to death should we happen to not remain absolutely healthy until we hit our sixties and Medicare kicks in.

I completely respect your right to your opinions. I just don’t want them to kill me and tens of millions of other Americans is all.

Hope your job lasts forever, by the way. Good luck with that one. And if you do happen to get laid off or fired or too sick to work or your employer decides it has to cut back on your coverage or the myriad other things that can (and do, I’m sorry to say) go wrong, I really do hope that you and your then-uninsured family remain perfectly healthy until you can either find another job that offers health insurance or we can actually pass a plan that would guarantee you (and everyone!) healthcare.

Jabberwock

Hey, I just had the best idea:

How about, in addition to health care, we tie the ability to BREATHE AIR to employment status? And for the people who ARE employed, we can have a private industry built around deciding whether or not people are worthy of breathing. But the catch is, the breath insurance businesses will have a disincentive to allow people to breathe because the more people inhale the less money they’ll make, somehow.

Holy crap, this is GENIUS!

And then we can have situations like:

“Sorry, your lungs are too big. BREATH DENIED!”

Or:

“You have air in your lungs already.”

“But I’m exhaling. In fact, I’m speaking to you right now, meaning my lungs are putting out the air that’s inside them.”

“Sorry, you already have air in your lungs. My hands are tied. BREATH CLAIM DENIED!”

Or:

“You have asthma? I’m afraid your breath isn’t covered due to a pre-existing breathing condition. Maybe if your breaths were more efficient. BREATHING DENIED.”

I mean, seriously, fuck, why not, right? This is what conservatives and morons seem to want is private industry controlling whether we live or die, so why not let’s just go right ahead and make it a quick and direct process, huh?

Jabberwock

This was originally written in response to a Facebook post made by someone with whom I went to high school:

“God will never tempt you, Satan does. Will you choose to sin when you are tempted? Or will you turn away? God always offers a way out.”

And her subsequent response to my initial reply (which I’ll refrain from posting for the sake of brevity and because the rest of my response renders it redundant):

“I believe that there are demons (Satan) working against believers in Christ everyday. Satan knows when and where we are weak and will take every opportunity to attack. God has set eternity in hearts of man, and I believe that there IS more than this life. Revelations is VERY differnt than that of the rest of the bible..however it does reveal some about what is yet to come. Eternity of punishment=death=sin. Eternity in Heave=life=obediance…..

“Which is Which? Thats a battle believers in Christ struggle with everyday…Is this God speaking to me? or is it my flesh? (Sata) the deeper the relationship with Christ, the clearer it becomes..”

I liked my own argument so much that I wanted to share it with all of you. (Also, she appears to have deleted the entire thread instead of replying. Thanks, Sally. Guess that means I win the argument.)

I’ve modified it slightly for flow/conciseness/etc. Anyway:

The problem lies with authentication: How do you identify the tricks when you see them? If God is giving you some kind of signal, how can you be sure it’s not a forgery? That is, if Satan is truly cunning, it should be possible for him to fake God’s signature sometimes.

Everything gets so oversimplified that God and Satan are reduced from omnipotent or nigh-omnipotent super-beings to these caricatures that can barely pull off cunningness at the level of which humans are capable. It’s all cartoonish and blatant, like the depictions of Satan as a rascally pitchfork-wielding red guy, always causing childish and puerile mischief. But if he’s really such a threat as to necessitate this big, long battle over human souls — something some would argue is one of the most important things we could concern ourselves with — he HAS to be capable of tricking us into doing or believing just about ANYthing.

For instance, maybe Satan wrote the Bible, and every time someone worships the God depicted therein — a God who would commit genocide against humanity when it disgusted him, or who created two people with no sense of right and wrong and expected them to understand the significance of obeying rules and then punished not only them but every one of their descendants forever when they didn’t use the facilities that they didn’t actually even POSSESS until AFTER they’d eaten the apple — every time you align yourself with this petty, irrational, arbitrarily cruel entity, you’re worshiping the REAL Satan — the one who was so devious, so deceitful that he masterfully wove together this elaborate and effective framework of religion and faith, manufacturing and demonizing bogeyman opposition, so that people would eagerly throw themselves with the best of intentions and hopes right into his trap.

And sure, you can say “well I know the difference, I have the clarity that God has given me to recognize the truth”, but that’s exactly my point: How can you be sure? How can you know that that feeling you have, that understanding you feel you possess, is the genuine article and not just a forgery intended to keep you obedient to the REAL Satan?

Maybe the real trick is to get you to think that something is a trick when it’s not. Or that something else isn’t a trick when it is. And whatever clarity you might think you’ve attained is also just deception.

Jabberwock

So will 500 Days of Summer be as good as (((12 Chairs + 12 Monkeys + 12 Angry Men) * 28 days later) – 8 Mile) / 10 + (25th Hour * 4 Weddings and a Funeral * Fantastic 4)? Or will it fail to live up to the hype?

James Urbaniak wonders, “Does 500 Days of Summer satisfactorily resolve the story begun in 300 and The 400 Blows? Or is it Godfather III all over again?”

I’m just hoping they manage to tie up all the loose ends that have been dangling since 200 Cigarettes.

Jabberwock

(Forgot about this — was going to post a while back. A long while back.)

Alternative Twelve Steps

1. Admit you have a problem.
2. Tape a mother bear to another mother bear and their respective cubs to the other side of each.
3. Handcuff yourself to a radiator, then regurgitate a key you never swallowed.
4. Depression.
5. Completely cover two elephants in Vaseline, climb on top of one, get a friend to climb onto the other, and race.
6. Dandruff.
7. Shotgun wedding to your preteen first cousin.
8. Legionnaire’s Disease.
9. There is no ninth step.
10. Kneel before Zod.
11. Kevin Smith writes a convincing lesbian.
12. Depression.

Jabberwock

So because I’m a total egotistical whore, I created a fan site for myself on Facebook. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you can find a link to it down there, just below the intentionally obnoxious ad for my Twitter feed.

Become a fan! Feed my gluttonous, high-metabolism ego! Maybe something fun will come of it. Or maybe not. You’ll never know if you don’t join up.

Jabberwock

This discussion came up recently and I wanted to share my thoughts on the issue.

Obviously, a woman should have the right to her own body and the right to choose whether a fertilized embryo or a fetus inside said body is actually carried to term or not or et cetera, regardless of what the father or elected representatives or anti-abortion protest movements would rather she do. It belongs to her, end of story.

This of course means that the father has absolutely no say in the matter. And rightly so, really, since again it IS her body, and the alternatives are either forcing a woman to carry to term a child she doesn’t want or forcefully and nonconsensually removing from her body a blastocyst/embryo/fetus that she does want, both of which are effectively worse than rape.

Anything less than giving a woman complete control over her body effectively removes her choice entirely, since there is no way that any kind of compromise can actually be achieved. And giving men equal say just because “it’s his baby too!” basically reduces everything to primitive property law that treated living things as belongings. We’ve evolved beyond that.

Given the inherent imbalance of the situation — which is (and I feel I need to stress this) as it should be, with the woman in complete control of the offspring until it leaves her body — there are certain factors we need to take into consideration. I’m referring specifically to a father’s parental obligation.

If we don’t allow a father to absolve himself of parental responsibility if his partner wishes to carry to term a child he doesn’t want, we’re forcing an individual who has absolutely no choice in the matter — and again, rightfully so — to be burdened with a (not in any sense trivial, and likely lifelong) responsibility for something that’s entirely another person’s decision. And while this isn’t by any means tantamount to forcing a woman to do something or have something done with her body that she doesn’t want, it’s still wrong. A different, substantially less severe level of wrong, yes, but wrong nonetheless. It’d be like if a person somehow had the legal authority to sign someone else’s name to a mortgage on a house they don’t want to live in.

Of course, in order for this to make sense, there needs to be an established structure with a reasonable window of opportunity for the decision to be made so that guys aren’t just bailing in the delivery room, and beyond that window absolution of responsibility would require the mother’s consent. I also feel that the action should be a matter of public record so that the guy can’t just go around ditching pregnant women without any potential future mates knowing about it. And of course there would need to be limitations on absolution in cases of frequent or repeat or multiple petitions for absolution, and it would be absolutely impossible for absolved fathers to regain parental responsibility/rights without the mother’s consent, etc, etc.

The thing is, if we’re truly working toward genuine sexual equality — which is what I’ve always believed the goal of feminism to be — then women can’t be the only ones with the right to decide whether or not they want or are ready for parental obligation or responsibility when a pregnancy arises.[1] There’s simply no other way of defining “equality” without, well… treating all equally.[2]

Further Thoughts:

I’ve seen arguments to the effect that giving fathers the freedom to absolve themselves of parental responsibility is effectively implicitly pressuring women into having abortions because they won’t be able to afford the baby on their own, and that this is just as bad as removing choice entirely.

But, well, a couple things:

a) If the only reason a woman has decided to carry to term and keep the baby is because she expects that she’ll be able to rely on the father to pick up part of the expense of raising the child, she probably ought to go with the decision she’d have made in the event he unexpectedly died. All this really does is force her to factor into her decision more possible contingencies (which should include things like unemployment, birth defects, death of the baby’s father, abandonment of the baby’s father, her own death, etc.) and change her mind accordingly.

It’s hard to buy “but more women might feel they have to have abortions if they take into account that they might end up having to raise the thing on their own than would if they remained ignorant to the possibility” as a valid point.

b) This argument could just as easily be made to support a law saying that no pregnant woman could ever be fired from a job or evicted from an apartment regardless of circumstance or context, because such a change in her situation could railroad her into getting an abortion, effectively removing her choice.

I’ve also seen arguments to the effect of “shut up until men have uteruses” and “if you’re not having it, you don’t get to decide”, which, well, are little more than just insultingly dismissive. However, I’d like to address a couple ideas, mostly in the forms of some questions I have:

a) If you support this concept, then how do you feel about women who carry to term with the intention of giving the subsequent baby up for adoption? Should they be able to do this? Why? Why do you feel fathers shouldn’t be allowed to do the same?

In a case where the mother carries to term with the intention of keeping it but then changes her mind after she delivers, and the father wants the baby, should the mother be able to absolve herself of parental obligation without the consent of the father? Should she be required to pay child support?

b) (A ridiculous hypothetical:) Let’s say it’s the future, and blastocysts/fetuses can be painlessly teleported from a woman’s body directly into a uterine replicator, which is a device that will bring the fetus to term outside a human body. Let’s say the transfer had to be made within one month of conception, and that a couple that had just accidentally conceived was unsure whether they wanted to actually keep it, and had it transferred into a uterine replicator before the deadline in case they did. Ultimately, the father decided to keep the child, but the mother doesn’t want it.

Should she be able to absolve herself of her parental obligation, or should the father be allowed to force her pay child support even though she wants nothing to do with the child and had absolutely no choice in whether or not it came into existence? Why?

[1] If this whole idea seems icky, by the way, or like it’s just deadbeats wanting to shirk responsibility, remember that there are plenty of guys who actually want to become fathers who still have no say in the matter when their partner chooses to terminate the pregnancy.

[2] And while we can’t actually treat everyone equally with regard to the pregnancy itself (and again, rightly so), we can treat everyone equally with regard to obligation to the pregnancy. That is, if a mother isn’t obliged to keep it (which, again, she shouldn’t be), then a father shouldn’t be obliged to either.

Jabberwock

So, if you’ve received one of those “malware warning” reports, I honestly have no clue what’s going on with that. Someone reported that they were getting it on one of their computers but not the other, and that it showed up once but then went away the next time they visited. It’s totally unreproducible — I’ve never seen it, try as I might — and thus impossible to debug.

I’m running the latest WordPress and a friend and I have scoured any custom files for anything suspicious and found absolutely nothing. You’re welcome to view the source of this page and take a look for yourself, but the only scripts are from Google and Twitter.

In fact, McAfee’s web scan thing found no problems, and I’m sitting here on Google’s Webmaster Tools site and it’s saying it’s clear as well, so I have no idea at all why people are getting those warnings and honestly it’s getting just a bit frustrating. So, well, if you see those errors, I’m going to say just ignore them because it’s apparently some kind of false alarm, as verified by Google’s very own damn analyzer even.

By the way, here’s what Google’s site checker has to say as of right now:

Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for www.enterthejabberwock.com

What is the current listing status for www.enterthejabberwock.com?

This site is not currently listed as suspicious.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 6 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-05-25, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS30496 (COLO4).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, www.enterthejabberwock.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

Next steps:

* Return to the previous page.
* If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

Baffling.

- The Mgt.

Jabberwock

For some reason, I just threw together a rough page for Some Kind of Advice Column or something. I seriously cannot fathom why I just did this, and can only vaguely remember even putting it together (I think I may have finally gone insane), but go ahead and ask away! I’ll try to help you with your problems! What the fuck?

Jabberwock

So, who here has interesting or entertaining stories about dealing with religious kooks of one variety or another? Did your parents join a cult? Have you gotten into a heated and serious argument with a fundamentalist only to find out to your embarrassment that they were actually schizophrenic? Were you ever forced to go to one of those “Gay Cure” camps? Did your religious friends put a bucket of holy water above the door and keep a priest or pastor handy so that they could baptize you when you walked in? Ever find a Chick Tract rolled up inside a condom? Any Catholics out there ever need the Heimlich because you choked on the communion wafer?

Well, I want to hear about it.

The best, most amusing (and most believable — and trust me, I’ll probably be able to smell bullshit when I read it) stories will be featured as posts (with all due credit, of course, plus a link to your website if you have one or a sketch of your favorite pony or whatever you want to accompany it). And, as with FMyLife and other such sites, don’t be offended if your story doesn’t make the cut.

For right now, e-mail them to me using the “Contact” page over on the left (or if you have an account on the site, log in and submit them as posts) — I’ll try to have some kind of form up by the end of the week.

Tell your friends. Seriously this time. I know some of you actually are, and I really appreciate it, but you other guys… it takes thirty seconds. Only slightly more time than it takes to *cough ahem* click an ad on the side of the page and then close the browser window *choke cough ahem*.

Speaking of telling your friends, only TWO MORE DAYS to the END OF MAY 5TH, the HOG CALL DEADLINE. I’m still 249,879 Twitter followers away from my goal! Let’s get on this shit!

Jabberwock

Via Dyna Moe.

Current Twitter follower count: 109.

COME ON, PEOPLE! SPREAD THE WORD! LET’S GET ME 250,000 FOLLOWERS BY MAY 5!

Jabberwock

If I get over 250,000 Twitter followers by May 5th, I’ll go out and actively try to catch swine flu, documenting my experience along the way. I might even go to Mexico! (The deadline is, after all, Cinco de Mayo.)

Tell your friends to subscribe to Twitter user jdcrowley. Details, logo, and marketing materials to come.

LET’S DO THIS. Only YOU can make this social networking/information distribution experiment work!

Current Twitter follower count: 102

Only 999,898 to go!

4PM Eastern Update: 105 Followers

4:16 Update Lowering the goal to 250,000 after it was pointed out that not even the great and powerful Sockington has 1,000,000 followers.

8:00 Update We have a logo of sorts! See how the body kind of forms an “H” and the head forms a “C”? Hog Call! It looks a lot better larger, but I can’t save it as anything but .png without losing the transparency and I can’t save .png at too great a dimension without it being enormous, file-size-wise. I’ll work on it.

Still only 105 followers — come on, people! Spread the word!

Jabberwock