The implacable homophobia of Judaism and Islam, and its striking contrast to the vibrant homosexual thread running through contemporaneous Greek and Roman culture, may be as simple as the age-old conflict between desert and city dweller.
In a large, cosmopolitan population, with access to running water and sports facilities (gymnasium after all means ‘naked place’), and with the leisure to cultivate aesthetics and the pursuit of pleasure, the emergence of homosexual behaviour will be more or less smooth and explicable, if not inevitable.
Its emergence in a tent or village, between people who for want of water rarely washed, spent their lives in in the same company from cradle to grave, and whose opportunities for social interaction were next to nil, would represent a risky departure from traditions tailored to wilderness survival, and naturally the tribal god will want to nip it in the bud.
The homophobia of the Christian church is much more hypocritical; sexual ambivalence in the Church runs the gamut from monasteries run as fronts for gay communities, through having to make an accomodation with the skewed cross-section of the community that resulted from the statistical dearth of active heterosexuals prepared to embrace a life of celibacy, to never seeing the upper layer of the priesthood, from bishop to Pope, in recognisably male attire.
Given the prevalence of sexual experimentation among mammals, and primates in particular, it’s hard to imagine an omniscient creator who would not be long beyond shock or rage at the mechanics of sexual behaviour – but let’s not go dragging God into the sorry business of sex and religion. Whether or not it matters to God, preachers have found it a perennial winner in the scare-the-sheep stakes.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire, homophobia has been a reliable rabble-rouser; in general people don’t give much thought to their sexual orientation unless it diverts from the mainstream, so most are ignorant of the practices and sociology of gay experience, and can be spoon-fed pernicious lies about paedophilia, secret social agendas and seduction of heterosexuals.
But it’s mainly reliable because of the maths – in any random crowd, you can confidently assume that any gays will be outnumbered 10 to 1. This may explain why gay love is the causative agent of choice when evangelists attempt to explain away the death toll of hurricanes, tsunamis, September 11th and so on, as the reluctant vengance of a loving God, driven to frenzy by relentless disobedience of laws that, as the preacher well knows, 90% of any audience would never dream of breaking.
In the same way that the rich sound off about the feckless poor, nobody the fundamentalist preacher knows personally is openly gay, likewise his congregation, so all are free to fantasize behaviour demonical enough to draw down the wrath; likewise, abortion fulfils the same role for Catholics. Who is going to pipe up from the back of the crowd on behalf of those portrayed as kiddie-fiddlers or baby-killers?
It’s nothing to do with the sex itself, which nobody either knows or deeply cares about, unless they have their own ‘issues’. In ironic contrast to the propaganda, sexual predation by gays is the exception, and straights know perfectly well that the biggest risk to their children is their fellow heterosexuals.
Like anti-Semitism under the Nazis, homophobia is the poofters’ own fault – for being too few, too dependant on civilized values, and too easy to demonize to an angry and ignorant mob.
Well done! At last, in the haiku you have found an ideal vehicle for your poetic gift. Can we hope that this means you have abandoned your travail with the limerick form for good?
@tGF:
That’s ‘the sorry business of sex _and religion_’ – nothing abject about sex per se, which seems to be one of the few things a Creator deserves gratitude for.
@hotrats:
Not sure we’re not a cross purposes here, my fault of we are. Or that I miss your point. Anyway, I was smileying about “dragging God”, while I still had the context of homophobia in my head from the previous sentence, IYSWIM.
You know, there are dozens and dozens of different varieties of deviant sexuality beyond homosexuality. Let’s limit this just to activities involving consenting adults — am I to assume that the people here would consider disgust to be an inappropriate response to every single one of all the bizarre practices that you can find people engaging in? Is there no sexual activity that disgusts any of you?
And if there is, does that imply that you might be a closet case who is subconsciously aroused by that activity?
@Author — I don’t follow. And I don’t think you addressed my main question: do you think disgust is ever an appropriate response to other people’s sexual practices?
Not disgusting exactly, but religious celibacy has some notably grubby consequences. Pious sexual repression and its attendant mix of desire, frustration and guilt, hinder emotional development and foster pathological personality traits far more than any known form of consensual sexual activity.
Speaking for myself, I can’t think of a consensual act that is disgusting per se, to the point where I begin to wonder what you had in mind; perhaps my imagination is too limited, but the further that sex practices divert from the mainstream, the more they provoke laughter or disbelief rather than nausea.
Of course there are some activities that are disgusting to me which would remain disgusting in a sexual context, but I wouldn’t say that implies that I am interested in the possibility, let alone subconsciously aroused by it.
@jb: I think your question needs parsing a little more. First: Why should we contain this only to sexual practices? There are many things that people do around the world that I might regard as disgusting (liking fish-head soup is one!). Second: There is a world of difference between being *disgusted by* an activity, and regarding the people who do it as *being disgusting*. Third: If it is done without coercion, then it does not matter – ever – whether I or anyone else regards it as disgusting.
It is long past time that we, as a society, accept the Millian Harm Principal as the founding of our society. If it hurts no-one, it is acceptable – what is so difficult about that? (Okay, I am aware that this brings sado-masochistic practices into question, and that then requires utilitarian calculus to be applied). Homosexuality, though, really does hurt no-one except the “I don’t like the idea of it” moralists who always manage to have a voice louder than their nasty, sheltered world-view warrants.
Please forgive me if I have misread the intention behind your question, but it seems that you are suggesting that it is OK to feel disgusted by homosexuality in the same way as others might be disgusted by, say, activities involving faeces. You also seem to be suggesting that, if it is OK to be disgusted by something, then it is OK to want it banned or otherwise controlled. The first point is, to my mind, wrong because there is a world of difference between sexual orientation and fetishism. One is who one is, the other is a means of getting gratification. Or, to put it another way, regardless of sexual orientation, there is going to be an overlay of fetishism in what helps a person get their jollies. The second point is wrong, again in my opinion, for the reasons I outlined above.
I do have another question, though – is it OK to be disgusted at someone that wants to stop an activity they find disgusting?
Haiku: 17 syllables, arranged 5,7,5. Although, that would be in the original japanese. I usually stick to 17 English syllables but have been known to stretch a line here and there
Hey Pat, doing a little bit of research before speaking ensures less chance of looking like an idiot. Moses is a frequent visitor to these shores – which you could have easily discovered by glancing at random back issues of J & M.
So — maybe the author is actually a Jewish agnostic (or a Jewish humanist, etc.) but doesn’t want to acknowledge being Jewish. In that case the author could respond (as s/he did): “You’re half right.”
I’m just asking a simple question — is the author Jewish?
Rather than a simple direct answer…
1) I’m called an “idiot” for not looking up enough “random back issues”…
2) I’m assigned “homework for today”…
3) My real name is mocked (by someone hiding behind a pseudonym).
Your juvenile evasions suggest the author is Jewish. Don’t worry, I won’t call out my storm troopers.
No haiku, hotrats,
two too many syllables:
poetic licence?
.
Poetic licence
is a poor excuse, we think,
for ineptitude.
For ineptitude,
compounded with ambition,
makes fools of bigots.
.
“Makes fools of bigots”?
The argument’s circular:
a dog, and a tail.
A dog, and a tail,
a self-indulgent pairing:
the wag, and the wagged.
.
But, to be serious, hotrats, a lot of what you say is very interesting. But I’m not happy about this bit:
.
“Given the prevalence of sexual experimentation among mammals, and primates in particular, it’s hard to imagine an omniscient creator who would not be long beyond shock or rage at the mechanics of sexual behaviour”
.
because an omniscient creator ought not, by its very nature, to be shocked by anything that its creation gets up to. After all, would it not foresee all eventualities as implicit in the very act of creation? To create a world must imply to create all eventualities of which the world is capable. The “mechanics of sexual behaviour”, by this reckoning, would be the creator’s own invention, the product of its mind, its will, its very powers of creation.
.
My own view is rather different from yours. Christianity is determined to interpret the will of God to all mortals, and it derives much of its method from Aristotle and from the Platonists. The will of God must represent “purpose” (because we represent God’s will to ourselves as “purpose”), so one of the things for which “purpose” must be found is sex. As sex is an emotionally fraught subject, the purpose is naturally found to be one which removes emotion as much as possible. My views on why this is seem to be contentious, but in essence they are to do with the urgency of male sexual desire and male resentment of the emotional vulnerability that this urgency implies. The “purpose” of sex is found in procreation, so any form of sex which is not aimed at the intention to procreate is contrary to God’s supposed will. I say “intention”, and not “desire”, because will and intention are paramount in this view: desire, contrary to fact, is seen to be not a natural part of the world but something which departs from God’s order. Instead, the idea is that we must make our wills — our intentions — conform to God’s will. Of course, God’s will is determined (sorry, “interpreted”) by God’s specially chosen representatives, and they are very keen to tell us who they are and why we must do what they tell us.
“Is there no sexual activity that disgusts any of you?”
jb, to what purpose is this question asked? What is the nature of disgust? Is it, that disgust is a natural reaction and therefore must say something true about the nature of what disgusts? That what disgusts is by nature disgusting? Here’s a job for Plato, perhaps. But why are we to take your question seriously? Are you saying that disgust is an objective interpretation of some event in the natural world, or are you saying that the fact that I may not like something constitutes a moral imperative?
Pat, I think your take-offence-a-meter is set too high. If you can’t tell the difference between mocking and a gentle pun (loved it hotrats) then you need to turn down the dial.
Your continued assistance to know the racial/cultural background of an author who satirises all religions while refusing to explain why you would like to know, is somewhat fishy. I smell a set-up on the way.
Come now Pat, no need to be coy. You must have evidence of this anti-semitism you seem to be accusing the author (or myself, can’t really make that out) of.
Disappointment comes to those who expect.
The term is “take offence”, thus you know who to complain to if you’re daft enough to be offended.
Personally I couldn’t give a toss what planet the author comes from, that’s not what counts, it’s what’s said that matters (“Oh my name it is nothin’ My age it means less”, With God On Our Side by Bob Dylan).
Finally, can you really mocked 😉
@Pat Kittle:
Personally, I find some of the thoughts (free or otherwise) expessed here really make me think. OTOH, some stuff appears to be utter rubbish (including some of my own) but I am never sure if I haven’t missed the point and that it’s actually brilliant.
As for being dissappointed it’s a bit like being proved wrong, and therefore a good thing to happen every once and a while – it’d be a boring universe otherwise (it must be awful being any sort of god)
You’ve rasied a question in my mind, “Does integrity guarantee godlessness?”
@ Pat Kittle
Contributors use pseudonyms for practical and security reasons – using real names attracts spammers and trolls to email accounts and social network pages. Unlike aliases, few real names are unique, and there is more opportunity for misidentification. Accusing us of hiding behind anonymity is like accusing you of hiding behind a sexually ambiguous first name – are you Patrick or Patience? – and I can assure you that I am not the Author in disguise.
As I understand it, Judaism is not a racial identity, but a monotheistic belief system. An atheist who continues to describe themselves as Jewish is conflating identity with heritage. If you were to remove the religious component from Jewish life – no circumcision, no bar mitzvah, no Rabbi, no prayers, no Hannukah, and no synagogue – then self-styled ‘Jews’ would have nothing to distinguish them from the rest of civil society, apart from the vapid cliches of professional ambition, clinging mothers and bookishness.
You seem desperate to find evidence of anti-Semitism at J&M, despite massive evidence to the contrary. So put your cards on the table – are YOU Jewish?
I’m not Jewish. I HAVE done my homework (took me three weeks as I kept choking with laughter at the strip and outrage at the inspirations) IMHO Author is a world authority (sorry) on poking fun at legitimate targets. The two main targets represent the vast majority of the religious people I come into contact with ( therefore I assume we live in the same country) Pat, there are several other targets mentioned by name but the overriding target is theism. I know J&M is good because I regularly have to re-read strips to see the joke, then comes the flash and I’m incapableof coherent speech fopr the next twenty minutes. Enjoy the quality.
Nice summary, steeve, and I too liked the silly puns from hotrats. Great Fuzzy has a good point too. Lighten up, Pat Kittle, we’re all here for a laugh.
Given the general subject matter of these strips, I think that Author (PBUH) is entitled to retain as much anonymity as possible, for his own safety. Little hints about his background could conceivably be added together over time by some religious fundamentalist, to give the identity of someone to stand next to when settling off his/her underpants.
Others reading this entire exchange can draw their own conclusions.
Don’t worry, we will, but I doubt it will be one you like.
I don’t mind my name being mocked, but “Pot-Kettle”??
You congratulate yourselves on discovering the obvious. If you want to mock my name, be creative. For example, a friend of mine (Jewish, BTW) reversed the initials in my first (Pat) & last (Kittle) names.
As for the disingenuous Jewish author:
Presumably everyone in this forum was raised in the “dominant Judeo-Christian culture” which we now joke about.
Has anyone ever heard it called the “dominant Islamo-Christian culture”? So, why “Jesus and Mo”?
A common stereotype:
Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media — and Jews use their media to ridicule anyone who says Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media.
@PK:
Seeing that you just can’t let it lie, your friend’s Spoonerism is good for a cheap laugh, but potentially insulting. My lighthearted aside, on what I had assumed was a pseudonym, hardly qualifies as cruel mockery, but perhaps I touched a nerve, after all.
Your insistence (on no apparent evidence) that the Author is Jewish, while refusing to say whether or not you are, seems to be a clear example of a ‘pot-kettle’ scenario.
# ‘Presumably everyone in this forum was raised in the “dominant Judeo-Christian culture” which we now joke about’ #
Your blithe assertions only serve to narrow the debate to your own fixation. No, not only jews and Christians visit the site, and no, we mock all religious belief without fear or favour
It’s also a bit late to start complaining that it shouldn’t be Jesus & Mo, on the basis that our culture is _Judeo_ Christian! For crying out loud, it’s the NAME of the SITE – what do you want the Author to do? Change it to Jesus and Moses to avoid a charge of anti-Semitism?
But your crowning hypocrisy is your ‘common stereotype’ – which presumably you disagree with – which is exactly the position you put the Author in. Using algebraic substitution:
The Author is “behind the curtain” running the anti-Semitic J&M site — and the Author uses the anti-Semitic J&M site to ridicule anyone who says The Author is “behind the curtain” running the anti-Semitic J&M site.
Seriously, Pat, use the search function and read some of the strips with Moses–they’re among the best IMHO–especially when he parts the roof of the car to make a sunroof.
The Jewish author insists that naming his lame cartoon after Jesus & Mo(hammed) does not in any way single out Jesus & Mo(hammed).
As proof, I’m instructed to do a search for “Moses” who is a “frequent visitor” here.
Moses’ most recent “frequent visit” was October of last year. Pretty “frequent” all right.
🙂
From what I saw, Moses’ function here is to serve as the wise & rational foil for the closet-case fools, Jesus & Mo(hammed).
Did I mention a common stereotype:
Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media — and Jews use their media to ridicule anyone who says Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media.
There’s a cartoon for you — after all, personal experience is the richest source of comedy, right?
@PK
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.
(Proverbs 26:11-12)
Next time you (somewhat bitterly) concede losing a debate, leave your tragic contempt for dogs out of it — the appreciation of those noble beings is a gift of which you may someday be worthy.
@PK
No bitterness, tragedy or contempt in the Biblical quote – how you lard on the imprecation! – just the observed fact that you prefer to recycle your waste, rather than declare your interest, or provide any evidence for your obsessive thesis.
I concede nothing, because there is no contest. You make such a strong case against yourself, that all one has to do is sit back and watch your contradictions auto-destruct. Nothing you have said even approximates a coherent argument – ‘Not even wrong’ as neils Bohr used to say.
Conveniently selective reading, and perversely missing the point in pursuit of a dogmatic ‘truth’, is a strategy we are all familiar with from studying the claims of religion. Naturally, one can never ‘win’ against the implacable repetition of an implausible assertion, indeed that’s one of the reasons we are all here.
Although I am sure you will guarantee yourself the last triumphant word, from my side, this correspondance is closed.
Never argue with a fool for they drag you down to their level then beat you with experience!
Personally I’ve always thought Author was a closet Christian. You know how devious they are. He pretends to be anti-religion, especially anti-christian, to lure all us atheists to his site. Now that we are here he is slowly converting us with clever subtext . . . Nuh, I don’t know how Pat does it, this sounds silly even to me.
Although I do love Pat’s idea that some, if not all of us, are the Author in cognito. I can just picture the poor lonely bloke with the blog that no one reads having to have arguments in the comments thread with himself under four different alias.
@Peakcrew “Homosexuality, though, really does hurt no-one”
… until the lube runs out.
Maybe because I live in Europe, I find this entire homo/god discussion so excruciatingly (i know) meaningless.
I find J&M quite enjoyable, but I must say the atheist circle-jerk does get boring. The Ben houdja chap is the only one that makes the comments occasionally interesting.
Foucault makes a very important argument in History of Sexuality (3 vols) that back in the day people fucked, now they moan about it. The 20th century didn’t really contribute much to sexuality beyond “talking about it” as the new form of pleasure. Talking of course is broadly understood, so tentacle porn, or rather Rule 34 would be perfect illustrations of moaning-as-pleasure as opposed to moaning-in-pleasure. All the comments, including mine I suppose continue in this tradition of modern pleasuring. I recall the first thing I did the morning after my first threesome was to TELL a friend (incidentally, someone whom I wanted to hit for the next one).
And seriously what’s withthe missing Jewish jokes author? Just because it will generate censorship in Germany instead of a fatwa in the sandy countries is no reason surely
Thanks to PK I’ve just been going through all the old Moses cartoons – very entertaining. Reading them all at once has made me realise what a pretentious prick Moses is!
I am most definitely not the author (though I wish I had half of his creativity and wit), yet no doubt this posting will merely persuade Pat Kittle that there is only him/her and the Author posting here, because I am also going to ask why the answer “You are half right” is not obviously referring to the author’s atheism and not pseudo-racial background (see hotrats’ comment above for why I refer to it so), and, more importantly, why is it so damned important?
I wish there were more strips involving Moses, because they are some of the best and most thought-provoking. As you have alluded to, Pat, but drawn the wrong assumption, Moses always comes out looking apparently wise and Elderly (is in “like an Elder”), but that is where you need to look harder to see the wit.
It has also just occurred to me – Jews are less of a target here because they are not evangelical, and they are not constantly trying to push their insane, narrow-minded views on the rest of us (with the exception of not being able to ask some difficult questions about WW2, and successfully making medical research more difficult in order to protect everyone from the vast number of Mengeles in the medical profession (recalibrate your sarcasm-meter)). Whilst there may, as you say, be a conspiracy of Jews at the top of the capitalist system, it is difficult to make a joke out of that. However, perhaps the author is, at this very moment, sharpening his pixels in order to do just that!
Pat Kittle, regarding your apparently favourite mantra “Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media — and Jews use their media to ridicule anyone who says Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media”.
Are you aware that you are paying homage to my all-time favourite J&M strip? I say no more, save to invite you to witness genius. http://www.jesusandmo.net/2006/10/30/suit/ .
Enjoy!
And here’s a thought. If Author were to invoke his right to banish the troll, how much wowuld P.K. believe (s)he’d won? And how frustrated (s)he’d be, convinced of a win yet impotent to crow triumph at the ‘vanquished’ foe.
The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.
🙂
Hmmm… my previous comment unleashed a torrent of recalcitrant schizophrenic opprobrium from the (can’t-simply-admit-he’s-Jewish) author.
🙂
He’s clearly wrestling with the urge to erase my comments (“banish the troll”) — of course he’s theoretically opposed to censorship, and this exchange IS perhaps the most interesting event to grace his blog, but STILL — it IS a major embarrassment.
I (unlike certain others) use my real first & last name, and I never post additional comments from made-up sources to give the appearance of others agreeing with me — but somehow that makes me the “troll.”
Hey, once you’ve called someone a troll you’ve got all the justification you need to censor them. Right?
🙂
And the dirt of gossip blows into my face
And the dust of rumors covers me
But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick
You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says
“It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”
Now, now Pat. Remember :
You see this one-eyed midget shouting the word ‘now’.
And you say, for what reason? And he says, ‘how?’
And you say, what does this mean?
And he screams back, ‘you’re a cow’.
Give me some milk or else go home.”
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
and this exchange IS perhaps the most interesting event to grace his blog
Get over yourself!
Following your sockpuppet theory, Author is doing an impressive job of inventing new identities, perhaps including this one – OMG, I must be Author! Shit, now I’ll have to think up a new cartoon by Wednesday.
Pat Kittle, you may find your own delusional ramblings enertaining but, as much as I’d hate to disillusion you, I’ve seen far more interesting – not to mention intelligent – things smeared onto my post-arsewipe toilet tissue.
Sorry that I won’t be posting my real name. It ends in -meir, so you’d only suspect me of being part of the big Jewish conspiracy. It’s true, as kosher as Christmas.
Jewish? Schmewish! Oy vez.
AOS, (giggle) I have a name that could be Jewish as well (not refering to Mary). Maybe there is a conspiracy SO secret none of us know we are a part of it!
Every time she (just assuming, but I’m getting a ‘she’ vibe) accuses one of us of being Author I want to leap in the air and shout “I’m Spartacus”.
I also had a thought: what if she’s right? What if you are all the Author and for all these years I have been having conversations with, arguing with and determining different personalities of the one person and his alter egos? Wow, this is getting too creepy.
This brouhaha shows the underbelly of Jesus & Mo. Thou shalt not reproach jews, atheists or homosexuals, for the smug shall gang up in their lameass wrath with the spectre of Godwin not far behind
So some n00b with an obsession about Jewishness jumps quickly to the conclusions (a) that Author is Jewish and (b) that several of the regulars here are Author’s sockpuppets (with no evidence offered for either conclusion); then said n00b pats himself on the back for “winning” a “debate”, pretends that everyone else is getting “embarrassed”, and declares the whole exchange to be the “most interesting event” here….
You’re missing nothing, Bro. I think you’ve summed it up nicely.
Either that, or we’ve all somehow been missing all these obvious “facts” for the last 6½ years. How could we have been so blind? Thank Yahweh Pet Kittie came along to show us the error of our ways. Thinking about that name, could it be Jerry Coyne, aka Ceiling Cat.
@Brother Daniel:
Let’s hope that with the proximity of a new cartoon, Acolyte of Sagan misses your above post. I inadvisedly used a certain word once, which brought on – well, this:
“the abominable term ‘newbie’, a non-word so worthy of contempt that anything written subsequent to it loses any meaning; a diabolical collection of letters so shit-grippingly awful…” (etc.)
His seeing it again, re-abbreviated to a single syllable, AND re-spelt using the brain-damaged US pronunciation of ‘new’, AND re-written in ‘leetspeak’ with zeros for ‘O’s, might well be enough to make the poor chap’s head explode.
Author, please raise shields and take us to DEFCON 1.
@hotrats: Thanks for the warning. I strongly disagree with AoS about the merits of the term “newbie”; its closest synonyms in a more traditional lexicon (such as “newcomer”) lack the connotation of ineptitude, which I fully intended to convey. Moreover, the variant “n00b” can add a certain tone of contempt, also intended.
Finally, I also disagree with you about US pronunciation: It’s merely different, not inferior. Think of it as a completely different language, if that helps.
@Brother Daniel: Glad to see that you have self-deprecation at hand to defend yourself, good points well made.
Apropos US pronunciation, I was anticipating AoS’s reaction rather than expressing any strong opinion of my own – after all, the Scots have ‘the noo’ for ‘now’ without adverse comment – but I would have to say that before American English deserves the status of an independant language, it will have to come up with alternative pronunciations of its own that do not obscure meaning, as they do, er, the noo.
Of course everyone is free to use language as they feel, so-called ‘inferior’ usage is simply evidence of cultural bias, and ‘American speech’, a catch-all label masking a wide range of usage, often has, to my ear, a more vigourous and expressive character than its British counterpart.
But even among highly educated speakers, numerous distinct UK English sound groups collapse into mush in US speech, creating false homophones with unrelated words:
‘ant’ < aunt, 'pom' < palm, 'ladder' < latter, 'hostel' < hostile, 'winner' < winter, 'cot' < caught, 'warder' < water, etc.
Taken together with such impoverished pronunciations as 'noo', when the same sound gives them no trouble in 'few' or 'view', these are marks of simple degeneration – permanent linguistic brain damage, as it were – not individuality, or independance.
I would welcome a genuinely independant American English, indeed any evidence that Americans take their enunciation seriously; and if anyone can provide a single example of a word or phrase in American speech that is more clearly and distinctly pronounced than its UK equivalent, I will happily concede the point.
(I didn't assume you were from the US, but it's comforting to know that you aren't).
But Hotrats, you forget that you agreed with me on ‘newbie’;
‘@AoS re newbie –
Guilty as charged, OMG sorry sorry sorry. No edit facility, so it stands as a permanent stain on my character…Hangs head in shame…especially when I could have used ‘neophyte’ – ah, feels better already…’
Brother Daniel, any language that rhymes ‘laboratory’ with ‘lavatory’ is most certainly inferior.
AoS:
You may have had your irony detector set to ‘stun’ in overestimating my contrition, which was deliberately overdone (hence the ‘puzzling’ OMG). But I don’t see me disagreeing with you in any of the above, so wonder why you drag it up.
Hotrats, I can think of one word that is distinctly over-pronounced in the U.S. compared to here, owing to the insistence on emphasising what should be a silent ‘h’ – veHicle. But the exception proves the rule, and all that.
By the way, I think you misunderstood Brother Daniel’s last post. Unless I’m reading it wrong, he was suggesting that the abominable non-word was meant to convey connotations of Pat Kittle’s ineptitude and the double nought was used contemptuously towards something that’s even less interesting than nothing. I didn’t see any self-deprecation.
As to the good Brother’s use of the non-word, well to be honest, I didn’t even read it as ‘newbie’, so a pedantic atheists’ curse on you for making me type it again! Until you pointed it out I just assumed that ‘noob’ was a synonym along the lines of ‘dork’ or ‘dweeb’ that I hadn’t yet heard.
That said, since when were numbers acceptable substitutes for letters in standard written English (writing rude words on calculators excepted, of course)? There may be a precedent with the Freeman/Pitt film SE7EN, but any hope the mixed format may once have had over becoming common usage was surely shattered by the boyband 5IVE! I beg of you, please keep this monstrosity for character-limited media such as SMS and Twitter.
cu l8r 🙂
Looks like I was composing as you were posting, Hotrats.
Why bring it up again? Because unlike God, I can intervene when somebody uses my name to impose their own view, and if I’m going to be painted a language Nazi I want it to be clear that others were complicit by agreement if not by deed.
But mainly because I enjoy a running joke. I’m not being combative even if it may often look that way, I just have a sense of humour dryer than Mother Theresa’s lips (decide for yourself which set!).
I have to confess, AoS is right regarding my intended reference for “ineptitude”. I apologize for being unclear.
@hotrats: Re “warder / water”, those may be homophones in some small regional US accents, but not in any that I’ve heard. I’m guessing that you’re referring to the voicing of the “t” in “water” to make it sound like a “d” (in which case, that’s a fair cop), but perhaps you’re forgetting that most Americans (unlike most Brits) pronounce all their “r”s. 😉
@Brother Daniel:
My point was not that the US pronunciations are different from the UK ones; as you rightly point out, American is rhotic (R-pronouncing) and ‘water/warder’ are slightly different (‘water < wadder' is nearer the mark, though 'wadder', one who wads, is a bit of a stretch for potential misunderstanding).
A better example is parody < parity, or medal < metal; in US speech a 'metal medal', like a 'winter winner' sounds just like the same word repeated. And I've just noticed that 'Adam Ant' sounds like a US version of 'Atom aunt'.
bitter lemon said, “This brouhaha shows the underbelly of Jesus & Mo. Thou shalt not reproach jews, atheists or homosexuals, for the smug shall gang up in their lameass wrath with the spectre of Godwin not far behind.”
Errrrrmmmmm … I think you are writing on the wrong website. No-one has never reproached Jews, though I did give a reason why there are fewer digs at Jews than at Evangelicals. There is no need to “reproach” homosexuals, so that is a non sequitur, and, since most of the people regularly on this site are, by the nature of the topic, somewhere on the agnostic and/or atheist path, it would be seriously surprising if there was much “reproach” against them (however, there is criticism of the rabid atheists attracted by Richard Dawkins in the comments section of at least one recent strip).
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
February 27, 2009
Clever and subtle…who’d have thought two little dabs of blusher could say so much? And good to see the Barmaid back!
I assume they’re holding hands?
Well observed as always!
Both boys beginning to blush? Surely Jibril can’t be giving them simultaneous revelations…can he? Yuck!
Agreed, he’s a total can’t
clearly these lads were hetro, jesus hung out with hookers and mohammad was diggin his 77 virgins…. although that proves nothing.
I wonder what most xtains would think about a 33 year old single, unemployed, never married man wandering around the desert with 12 other single men.
Power bottoms for Jesus and Mo!
In this strip, the erect handle on the beer tap takes on a whole new meaning…..
It’s Howard and Raj.
@Ophelia – I had to Google that. A new couple to compare J&M to!
Bottoms up.
There was that classic line from the film ‘Airplane’ when the pilot talks to the little boy … “Do you like gladiators?”
Wrestling? You mean like Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in Women in Love?
The implacable homophobia of Judaism and Islam, and its striking contrast to the vibrant homosexual thread running through contemporaneous Greek and Roman culture, may be as simple as the age-old conflict between desert and city dweller.
In a large, cosmopolitan population, with access to running water and sports facilities (gymnasium after all means ‘naked place’), and with the leisure to cultivate aesthetics and the pursuit of pleasure, the emergence of homosexual behaviour will be more or less smooth and explicable, if not inevitable.
Its emergence in a tent or village, between people who for want of water rarely washed, spent their lives in in the same company from cradle to grave, and whose opportunities for social interaction were next to nil, would represent a risky departure from traditions tailored to wilderness survival, and naturally the tribal god will want to nip it in the bud.
The homophobia of the Christian church is much more hypocritical; sexual ambivalence in the Church runs the gamut from monasteries run as fronts for gay communities, through having to make an accomodation with the skewed cross-section of the community that resulted from the statistical dearth of active heterosexuals prepared to embrace a life of celibacy, to never seeing the upper layer of the priesthood, from bishop to Pope, in recognisably male attire.
Given the prevalence of sexual experimentation among mammals, and primates in particular, it’s hard to imagine an omniscient creator who would not be long beyond shock or rage at the mechanics of sexual behaviour – but let’s not go dragging God into the sorry business of sex and religion. Whether or not it matters to God, preachers have found it a perennial winner in the scare-the-sheep stakes.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire, homophobia has been a reliable rabble-rouser; in general people don’t give much thought to their sexual orientation unless it diverts from the mainstream, so most are ignorant of the practices and sociology of gay experience, and can be spoon-fed pernicious lies about paedophilia, secret social agendas and seduction of heterosexuals.
But it’s mainly reliable because of the maths – in any random crowd, you can confidently assume that any gays will be outnumbered 10 to 1. This may explain why gay love is the causative agent of choice when evangelists attempt to explain away the death toll of hurricanes, tsunamis, September 11th and so on, as the reluctant vengance of a loving God, driven to frenzy by relentless disobedience of laws that, as the preacher well knows, 90% of any audience would never dream of breaking.
In the same way that the rich sound off about the feckless poor, nobody the fundamentalist preacher knows personally is openly gay, likewise his congregation, so all are free to fantasize behaviour demonical enough to draw down the wrath; likewise, abortion fulfils the same role for Catholics. Who is going to pipe up from the back of the crowd on behalf of those portrayed as kiddie-fiddlers or baby-killers?
It’s nothing to do with the sex itself, which nobody either knows or deeply cares about, unless they have their own ‘issues’. In ironic contrast to the propaganda, sexual predation by gays is the exception, and straights know perfectly well that the biggest risk to their children is their fellow heterosexuals.
Like anti-Semitism under the Nazis, homophobia is the poofters’ own fault – for being too few, too dependant on civilized values, and too easy to demonize to an angry and ignorant mob.
This weekend it’s ?stanbul Pride, Mo…
Minding one’s own business
Not demanding attention
What a novel concept.
@hotrats: “but let’s not go dragging God into the sorry business of sex” 😉
@Nasser Ben Houdja
Well done! At last, in the haiku you have found an ideal vehicle for your poetic gift. Can we hope that this means you have abandoned your travail with the limerick form for good?
@tGF:
That’s ‘the sorry business of sex _and religion_’ – nothing abject about sex per se, which seems to be one of the few things a Creator deserves gratitude for.
Ah! Dear old Eyebrows. I wonder what he wrestles with?
Or Who???
@hotrats:
Not sure we’re not a cross purposes here, my fault of we are. Or that I miss your point. Anyway, I was smileying about “dragging God”, while I still had the context of homophobia in my head from the previous sentence, IYSWIM.
“I assume they’re holding hands?”
Not hands exactly…
You know, there are dozens and dozens of different varieties of deviant sexuality beyond homosexuality. Let’s limit this just to activities involving consenting adults — am I to assume that the people here would consider disgust to be an inappropriate response to every single one of all the bizarre practices that you can find people engaging in? Is there no sexual activity that disgusts any of you?
And if there is, does that imply that you might be a closet case who is subconsciously aroused by that activity?
@jb – Depends how often it disgusts you.
@Author — I don’t follow. And I don’t think you addressed my main question: do you think disgust is ever an appropriate response to other people’s sexual practices?
Not disgusting exactly, but religious celibacy has some notably grubby consequences. Pious sexual repression and its attendant mix of desire, frustration and guilt, hinder emotional development and foster pathological personality traits far more than any known form of consensual sexual activity.
Speaking for myself, I can’t think of a consensual act that is disgusting per se, to the point where I begin to wonder what you had in mind; perhaps my imagination is too limited, but the further that sex practices divert from the mainstream, the more they provoke laughter or disbelief rather than nausea.
Of course there are some activities that are disgusting to me which would remain disgusting in a sexual context, but I wouldn’t say that implies that I am interested in the possibility, let alone subconsciously aroused by it.
@ Richardelguru: Or whom?
@jb: I think your question needs parsing a little more. First: Why should we contain this only to sexual practices? There are many things that people do around the world that I might regard as disgusting (liking fish-head soup is one!). Second: There is a world of difference between being *disgusted by* an activity, and regarding the people who do it as *being disgusting*. Third: If it is done without coercion, then it does not matter – ever – whether I or anyone else regards it as disgusting.
It is long past time that we, as a society, accept the Millian Harm Principal as the founding of our society. If it hurts no-one, it is acceptable – what is so difficult about that? (Okay, I am aware that this brings sado-masochistic practices into question, and that then requires utilitarian calculus to be applied). Homosexuality, though, really does hurt no-one except the “I don’t like the idea of it” moralists who always manage to have a voice louder than their nasty, sheltered world-view warrants.
Please forgive me if I have misread the intention behind your question, but it seems that you are suggesting that it is OK to feel disgusted by homosexuality in the same way as others might be disgusted by, say, activities involving faeces. You also seem to be suggesting that, if it is OK to be disgusted by something, then it is OK to want it banned or otherwise controlled. The first point is, to my mind, wrong because there is a world of difference between sexual orientation and fetishism. One is who one is, the other is a means of getting gratification. Or, to put it another way, regardless of sexual orientation, there is going to be an overlay of fetishism in what helps a person get their jollies. The second point is wrong, again in my opinion, for the reasons I outlined above.
I do have another question, though – is it OK to be disgusted at someone that wants to stop an activity they find disgusting?
@Hotrats. Don’t Haiku have 17 syllables?
Haiku: 17 syllables, arranged 5,7,5. Although, that would be in the original japanese. I usually stick to 17 English syllables but have been known to stretch a line here and there
Translations from Japanese into English are unlikely to correspond to an identical number of syllables per line
Obviously, mocking Christianity & Islam is hilarious.
Just don’t mock Judaism.
Just guessing, the cartoonist here is a Jewish atheist (no, that’s not a self-contradiction).
(FYI: I’m an atheist.)
@Pat Kittle – You’re half right.
You’re Jewish?
Hey Pat, doing a little bit of research before speaking ensures less chance of looking like an idiot. Moses is a frequent visitor to these shores – which you could have easily discovered by glancing at random back issues of J & M.
So the “Mo” in “Jesus and Mo” is actually “Moses”?
How careless of me.
No, of course not. Or he wouldn’t be wearing the turban-thingy.
You’re demanding equal representation for every irrelevant minority religion or just Judaism?
Isn’t that kind of prejudiced of you? What about the Hindus? Don’t they have the right to be mocked equally with others?
Wonderful contradiction in terms in Nassar’s contribution this week.
@ Daoloth, steeve:
Shhh! I can handle any number of NBH’s imperfect haikus, just as long as he doesn’t go back to limericks…
Which half? Or does that mean half a foreskin? Sorry, big circumcision discussion over at WEIT distracted me, nothing personal ;-).
@ Pat Kittle – homework for today: go back and read all the previous cartoons to see representations of Moses and Smith. Have fun!
@ Author:
I repeat — so you’re Jewish?
@ Pat Kittle:
If ‘Jewish Atheist’ is half right, which half would you put money on?
And are you the famous Pat that called the Kittle black?
@ hotrats:
I simply guessed the author is a Jewish atheist.
So — maybe the author is actually a Jewish agnostic (or a Jewish humanist, etc.) but doesn’t want to acknowledge being Jewish. In that case the author could respond (as s/he did): “You’re half right.”
I’m just asking a simple question — is the author Jewish?
Rather than a simple direct answer…
1) I’m called an “idiot” for not looking up enough “random back issues”…
2) I’m assigned “homework for today”…
3) My real name is mocked (by someone hiding behind a pseudonym).
Your juvenile evasions suggest the author is Jewish. Don’t worry, I won’t call out my storm troopers.
🙂
No haiku, hotrats,
two too many syllables:
poetic licence?
.
Poetic licence
is a poor excuse, we think,
for ineptitude.
For ineptitude,
compounded with ambition,
makes fools of bigots.
.
“Makes fools of bigots”?
The argument’s circular:
a dog, and a tail.
A dog, and a tail,
a self-indulgent pairing:
the wag, and the wagged.
.
But, to be serious, hotrats, a lot of what you say is very interesting. But I’m not happy about this bit:
.
“Given the prevalence of sexual experimentation among mammals, and primates in particular, it’s hard to imagine an omniscient creator who would not be long beyond shock or rage at the mechanics of sexual behaviour”
.
because an omniscient creator ought not, by its very nature, to be shocked by anything that its creation gets up to. After all, would it not foresee all eventualities as implicit in the very act of creation? To create a world must imply to create all eventualities of which the world is capable. The “mechanics of sexual behaviour”, by this reckoning, would be the creator’s own invention, the product of its mind, its will, its very powers of creation.
.
My own view is rather different from yours. Christianity is determined to interpret the will of God to all mortals, and it derives much of its method from Aristotle and from the Platonists. The will of God must represent “purpose” (because we represent God’s will to ourselves as “purpose”), so one of the things for which “purpose” must be found is sex. As sex is an emotionally fraught subject, the purpose is naturally found to be one which removes emotion as much as possible. My views on why this is seem to be contentious, but in essence they are to do with the urgency of male sexual desire and male resentment of the emotional vulnerability that this urgency implies. The “purpose” of sex is found in procreation, so any form of sex which is not aimed at the intention to procreate is contrary to God’s supposed will. I say “intention”, and not “desire”, because will and intention are paramount in this view: desire, contrary to fact, is seen to be not a natural part of the world but something which departs from God’s order. Instead, the idea is that we must make our wills — our intentions — conform to God’s will. Of course, God’s will is determined (sorry, “interpreted”) by God’s specially chosen representatives, and they are very keen to tell us who they are and why we must do what they tell us.
Then again, I might have misunderstood “it’s hard to imagine”.
“Is there no sexual activity that disgusts any of you?”
jb, to what purpose is this question asked? What is the nature of disgust? Is it, that disgust is a natural reaction and therefore must say something true about the nature of what disgusts? That what disgusts is by nature disgusting? Here’s a job for Plato, perhaps. But why are we to take your question seriously? Are you saying that disgust is an objective interpretation of some event in the natural world, or are you saying that the fact that I may not like something constitutes a moral imperative?
@Pat Kittle
“I’m just asking a simple question — is the author Jewish?”
Why?
For your benefit, I repeat my initial comment:
Obviously, mocking Christianity & Islam is hilarious — Just don’t mock Judaism.
Have the Jewish author explain to you.
🙂
Pat, I think your take-offence-a-meter is set too high. If you can’t tell the difference between mocking and a gentle pun (loved it hotrats) then you need to turn down the dial.
Your continued assistance to know the racial/cultural background of an author who satirises all religions while refusing to explain why you would like to know, is somewhat fishy. I smell a set-up on the way.
@ mary2:
The Jewish author (you, perhaps?) won’t aknowledge the obvious.
🙂
Others reading this entire exchange can draw their own conclusions.
Surprise me, and restrain your upwelling urge to…
1) play your antiSemitism card…
2) censor this highly embarrassing (for you) exchange.
🙂
Come now Pat, no need to be coy. You must have evidence of this anti-semitism you seem to be accusing the author (or myself, can’t really make that out) of.
As an atheist I came to this website expecting witty sacriligious humor, but frankly, it’s pretty lame.
And so are the Jewish author’s replies to my comments, which the author disguises with aliases.
Disappointment comes to those who expect.
The term is “take offence”, thus you know who to complain to if you’re daft enough to be offended.
Personally I couldn’t give a toss what planet the author comes from, that’s not what counts, it’s what’s said that matters (“Oh my name it is nothin’ My age it means less”, With God On Our Side by Bob Dylan).
Finally, can you really mocked 😉
Opps!
Finally, can you really be mocked 😉
@ theGreatFuzzy:
Actually, disappointment is not at all what I expected here.
I thought I was going to an intelligent free-thinking website.
Nevertheless, I am reminded that godlessness does not guarantee integrity.
@Pat Kittle:
Personally, I find some of the thoughts (free or otherwise) expessed here really make me think. OTOH, some stuff appears to be utter rubbish (including some of my own) but I am never sure if I haven’t missed the point and that it’s actually brilliant.
As for being dissappointed it’s a bit like being proved wrong, and therefore a good thing to happen every once and a while – it’d be a boring universe otherwise (it must be awful being any sort of god)
You’ve rasied a question in my mind, “Does integrity guarantee godlessness?”
@ Pat Kittle
Contributors use pseudonyms for practical and security reasons – using real names attracts spammers and trolls to email accounts and social network pages. Unlike aliases, few real names are unique, and there is more opportunity for misidentification. Accusing us of hiding behind anonymity is like accusing you of hiding behind a sexually ambiguous first name – are you Patrick or Patience? – and I can assure you that I am not the Author in disguise.
As I understand it, Judaism is not a racial identity, but a monotheistic belief system. An atheist who continues to describe themselves as Jewish is conflating identity with heritage. If you were to remove the religious component from Jewish life – no circumcision, no bar mitzvah, no Rabbi, no prayers, no Hannukah, and no synagogue – then self-styled ‘Jews’ would have nothing to distinguish them from the rest of civil society, apart from the vapid cliches of professional ambition, clinging mothers and bookishness.
You seem desperate to find evidence of anti-Semitism at J&M, despite massive evidence to the contrary. So put your cards on the table – are YOU Jewish?
I’m not Jewish. I HAVE done my homework (took me three weeks as I kept choking with laughter at the strip and outrage at the inspirations) IMHO Author is a world authority (sorry) on poking fun at legitimate targets. The two main targets represent the vast majority of the religious people I come into contact with ( therefore I assume we live in the same country) Pat, there are several other targets mentioned by name but the overriding target is theism. I know J&M is good because I regularly have to re-read strips to see the joke, then comes the flash and I’m incapableof coherent speech fopr the next twenty minutes. Enjoy the quality.
typing a little too quickly there..
Nice summary, steeve, and I too liked the silly puns from hotrats. Great Fuzzy has a good point too. Lighten up, Pat Kittle, we’re all here for a laugh.
Given the general subject matter of these strips, I think that Author (PBUH) is entitled to retain as much anonymity as possible, for his own safety. Little hints about his background could conceivably be added together over time by some religious fundamentalist, to give the identity of someone to stand next to when settling off his/her underpants.
Don’t worry, we will, but I doubt it will be one you like.
Bugger me, that’s funny!
@pat kittle – given his artistic bent, I’d say the author is one of the children of the MacBook.
I don’t mind my name being mocked, but “Pot-Kettle”??
You congratulate yourselves on discovering the obvious. If you want to mock my name, be creative. For example, a friend of mine (Jewish, BTW) reversed the initials in my first (Pat) & last (Kittle) names.
As for the disingenuous Jewish author:
Presumably everyone in this forum was raised in the “dominant Judeo-Christian culture” which we now joke about.
Has anyone ever heard it called the “dominant Islamo-Christian culture”? So, why “Jesus and Mo”?
A common stereotype:
Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media — and Jews use their media to ridicule anyone who says Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media.
🙂
@PK:
Seeing that you just can’t let it lie, your friend’s Spoonerism is good for a cheap laugh, but potentially insulting. My lighthearted aside, on what I had assumed was a pseudonym, hardly qualifies as cruel mockery, but perhaps I touched a nerve, after all.
Your insistence (on no apparent evidence) that the Author is Jewish, while refusing to say whether or not you are, seems to be a clear example of a ‘pot-kettle’ scenario.
# ‘Presumably everyone in this forum was raised in the “dominant Judeo-Christian culture” which we now joke about’ #
Your blithe assertions only serve to narrow the debate to your own fixation. No, not only jews and Christians visit the site, and no, we mock all religious belief without fear or favour
It’s also a bit late to start complaining that it shouldn’t be Jesus & Mo, on the basis that our culture is _Judeo_ Christian! For crying out loud, it’s the NAME of the SITE – what do you want the Author to do? Change it to Jesus and Moses to avoid a charge of anti-Semitism?
But your crowning hypocrisy is your ‘common stereotype’ – which presumably you disagree with – which is exactly the position you put the Author in. Using algebraic substitution:
The Author is “behind the curtain” running the anti-Semitic J&M site — and the Author uses the anti-Semitic J&M site to ridicule anyone who says The Author is “behind the curtain” running the anti-Semitic J&M site.
Troll, you are busted.
I used to assume stereotypes were automatically wrong.
🙂
Seriously, Pat, use the search function and read some of the strips with Moses–they’re among the best IMHO–especially when he parts the roof of the car to make a sunroof.
The Jewish author insists that naming his lame cartoon after Jesus & Mo(hammed) does not in any way single out Jesus & Mo(hammed).
As proof, I’m instructed to do a search for “Moses” who is a “frequent visitor” here.
Moses’ most recent “frequent visit” was October of last year. Pretty “frequent” all right.
🙂
From what I saw, Moses’ function here is to serve as the wise & rational foil for the closet-case fools, Jesus & Mo(hammed).
Did I mention a common stereotype:
Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media — and Jews use their media to ridicule anyone who says Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media.
There’s a cartoon for you — after all, personal experience is the richest source of comedy, right?
🙂
@PK
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.
(Proverbs 26:11-12)
@ hotrats:
Next time you (somewhat bitterly) concede losing a debate, leave your tragic contempt for dogs out of it — the appreciation of those noble beings is a gift of which you may someday be worthy.
If you’re lucky.
🙂
@PK
No bitterness, tragedy or contempt in the Biblical quote – how you lard on the imprecation! – just the observed fact that you prefer to recycle your waste, rather than declare your interest, or provide any evidence for your obsessive thesis.
I concede nothing, because there is no contest. You make such a strong case against yourself, that all one has to do is sit back and watch your contradictions auto-destruct. Nothing you have said even approximates a coherent argument – ‘Not even wrong’ as neils Bohr used to say.
Conveniently selective reading, and perversely missing the point in pursuit of a dogmatic ‘truth’, is a strategy we are all familiar with from studying the claims of religion. Naturally, one can never ‘win’ against the implacable repetition of an implausible assertion, indeed that’s one of the reasons we are all here.
Although I am sure you will guarantee yourself the last triumphant word, from my side, this correspondance is closed.
Never argue with a fool, others can not always tell the difference.
Never argue with a fool for they drag you down to their level then beat you with experience!
Personally I’ve always thought Author was a closet Christian. You know how devious they are. He pretends to be anti-religion, especially anti-christian, to lure all us atheists to his site. Now that we are here he is slowly converting us with clever subtext . . . Nuh, I don’t know how Pat does it, this sounds silly even to me.
Although I do love Pat’s idea that some, if not all of us, are the Author in cognito. I can just picture the poor lonely bloke with the blog that no one reads having to have arguments in the comments thread with himself under four different alias.
@Peakcrew “Homosexuality, though, really does hurt no-one”
… until the lube runs out.
Maybe because I live in Europe, I find this entire homo/god discussion so excruciatingly (i know) meaningless.
I find J&M quite enjoyable, but I must say the atheist circle-jerk does get boring. The Ben houdja chap is the only one that makes the comments occasionally interesting.
Foucault makes a very important argument in History of Sexuality (3 vols) that back in the day people fucked, now they moan about it. The 20th century didn’t really contribute much to sexuality beyond “talking about it” as the new form of pleasure. Talking of course is broadly understood, so tentacle porn, or rather Rule 34 would be perfect illustrations of moaning-as-pleasure as opposed to moaning-in-pleasure. All the comments, including mine I suppose continue in this tradition of modern pleasuring. I recall the first thing I did the morning after my first threesome was to TELL a friend (incidentally, someone whom I wanted to hit for the next one).
And seriously what’s withthe missing Jewish jokes author? Just because it will generate censorship in Germany instead of a fatwa in the sandy countries is no reason surely
Thanks to PK I’ve just been going through all the old Moses cartoons – very entertaining. Reading them all at once has made me realise what a pretentious prick Moses is!
Yes, Moses is a complete prick.
I am most definitely not the author (though I wish I had half of his creativity and wit), yet no doubt this posting will merely persuade Pat Kittle that there is only him/her and the Author posting here, because I am also going to ask why the answer “You are half right” is not obviously referring to the author’s atheism and not pseudo-racial background (see hotrats’ comment above for why I refer to it so), and, more importantly, why is it so damned important?
I wish there were more strips involving Moses, because they are some of the best and most thought-provoking. As you have alluded to, Pat, but drawn the wrong assumption, Moses always comes out looking apparently wise and Elderly (is in “like an Elder”), but that is where you need to look harder to see the wit.
It has also just occurred to me – Jews are less of a target here because they are not evangelical, and they are not constantly trying to push their insane, narrow-minded views on the rest of us (with the exception of not being able to ask some difficult questions about WW2, and successfully making medical research more difficult in order to protect everyone from the vast number of Mengeles in the medical profession (recalibrate your sarcasm-meter)). Whilst there may, as you say, be a conspiracy of Jews at the top of the capitalist system, it is difficult to make a joke out of that. However, perhaps the author is, at this very moment, sharpening his pixels in order to do just that!
Looks like I’m late to the party.
Pat Kittle, regarding your apparently favourite mantra “Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media — and Jews use their media to ridicule anyone who says Jews are “behind the curtain” running the media”.
Are you aware that you are paying homage to my all-time favourite J&M strip? I say no more, save to invite you to witness genius.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2006/10/30/suit/ .
Enjoy!
And here’s a thought. If Author were to invoke his right to banish the troll, how much wowuld P.K. believe (s)he’d won? And how frustrated (s)he’d be, convinced of a win yet impotent to crow triumph at the ‘vanquished’ foe.
The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.
Oops! ‘would’, not wowuld’.
🙂
Hmmm… my previous comment unleashed a torrent of recalcitrant schizophrenic opprobrium from the (can’t-simply-admit-he’s-Jewish) author.
🙂
He’s clearly wrestling with the urge to erase my comments (“banish the troll”) — of course he’s theoretically opposed to censorship, and this exchange IS perhaps the most interesting event to grace his blog, but STILL — it IS a major embarrassment.
I (unlike certain others) use my real first & last name, and I never post additional comments from made-up sources to give the appearance of others agreeing with me — but somehow that makes me the “troll.”
Hey, once you’ve called someone a troll you’ve got all the justification you need to censor them. Right?
🙂
“Oh my name it ain’t nothin’, my age it means less”
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.
OK; we’ll continue the Jewish-atheist-or-not debate in a minute.
My question is: can you be a Catholic vegetarian?
Yes, quickly, change the subject!
🙂
And the dirt of gossip blows into my face
And the dust of rumors covers me
But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick
I mean the Magic Biscuits. It sounds a bit, you know, urgh. I won’t even eat a battery egg.
Like Judas of old,
You lie and deceive,
As aliases unfold
You want me to believe
You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says
“It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”
Now, now Pat. Remember :
You see this one-eyed midget shouting the word ‘now’.
And you say, for what reason? And he says, ‘how?’
And you say, what does this mean?
And he screams back, ‘you’re a cow’.
Give me some milk or else go home.”
Just seemed appropriate.
Cause you know something is happening
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Clones
Now I’m cross. Some Joker has been thievin’ my best lines.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
It’s amazing that we can cut and paste ANY of Bob’s lyrics and they still make sense here. Man’s a genius.
I was sleepin’ like a rat
When I heard something jerkin’
There stood Rita
Lookin’ just like Tony Perkins
well, maybe not all
@PK: “this exchange IS perhaps the most interesting event to grace his blog”
As a long-time reader but new participant, don’t give yourself airs.
@PK
Get over yourself!
Following your sockpuppet theory, Author is doing an impressive job of inventing new identities, perhaps including this one – OMG, I must be Author! Shit, now I’ll have to think up a new cartoon by Wednesday.
Sorry, JATBS, you must be typing faster than me. Great minds think alike – or perhaps we are the same person 😉
I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since that . This is all getting a bit Alice.
Pat Kittle, you may find your own delusional ramblings enertaining but, as much as I’d hate to disillusion you, I’ve seen far more interesting – not to mention intelligent – things smeared onto my post-arsewipe toilet tissue.
Sorry that I won’t be posting my real name. It ends in -meir, so you’d only suspect me of being part of the big Jewish conspiracy. It’s true, as kosher as Christmas.
Jewish? Schmewish! Oy vez.
AOS, (giggle) I have a name that could be Jewish as well (not refering to Mary). Maybe there is a conspiracy SO secret none of us know we are a part of it!
Every time she (just assuming, but I’m getting a ‘she’ vibe) accuses one of us of being Author I want to leap in the air and shout “I’m Spartacus”.
I also had a thought: what if she’s right? What if you are all the Author and for all these years I have been having conversations with, arguing with and determining different personalities of the one person and his alter egos? Wow, this is getting too creepy.
@ Mary2 – I’M AUTHOR!
I suspect that your avatar could be a clue to your true cultural identity.
This brouhaha shows the underbelly of Jesus & Mo. Thou shalt not reproach jews, atheists or homosexuals, for the smug shall gang up in their lameass wrath with the spectre of Godwin not far behind
*scratches head*
So some n00b with an obsession about Jewishness jumps quickly to the conclusions (a) that Author is Jewish and (b) that several of the regulars here are Author’s sockpuppets (with no evidence offered for either conclusion); then said n00b pats himself on the back for “winning” a “debate”, pretends that everyone else is getting “embarrassed”, and declares the whole exchange to be the “most interesting event” here….
What am I missing?
You’re missing nothing, Bro. I think you’ve summed it up nicely.
Either that, or we’ve all somehow been missing all these obvious “facts” for the last 6½ years. How could we have been so blind? Thank Yahweh Pet Kittie came along to show us the error of our ways. Thinking about that name, could it be Jerry Coyne, aka Ceiling Cat.
@Brother Daniel:
Let’s hope that with the proximity of a new cartoon, Acolyte of Sagan misses your above post. I inadvisedly used a certain word once, which brought on – well, this:
“the abominable term ‘newbie’, a non-word so worthy of contempt that anything written subsequent to it loses any meaning; a diabolical collection of letters so shit-grippingly awful…” (etc.)
His seeing it again, re-abbreviated to a single syllable, AND re-spelt using the brain-damaged US pronunciation of ‘new’, AND re-written in ‘leetspeak’ with zeros for ‘O’s, might well be enough to make the poor chap’s head explode.
Author, please raise shields and take us to DEFCON 1.
“What am I missing?”
That it took over 100 comments to ‘er done. And yes, Fuckerless is my real name and I am not from Mars.
I’m Author! And so is my wife!
@hotrats: Thanks for the warning. I strongly disagree with AoS about the merits of the term “newbie”; its closest synonyms in a more traditional lexicon (such as “newcomer”) lack the connotation of ineptitude, which I fully intended to convey. Moreover, the variant “n00b” can add a certain tone of contempt, also intended.
Finally, I also disagree with you about US pronunciation: It’s merely different, not inferior. Think of it as a completely different language, if that helps.
(Incidentally, I am not from the US.)
@Brother Daniel: Glad to see that you have self-deprecation at hand to defend yourself, good points well made.
Apropos US pronunciation, I was anticipating AoS’s reaction rather than expressing any strong opinion of my own – after all, the Scots have ‘the noo’ for ‘now’ without adverse comment – but I would have to say that before American English deserves the status of an independant language, it will have to come up with alternative pronunciations of its own that do not obscure meaning, as they do, er, the noo.
Of course everyone is free to use language as they feel, so-called ‘inferior’ usage is simply evidence of cultural bias, and ‘American speech’, a catch-all label masking a wide range of usage, often has, to my ear, a more vigourous and expressive character than its British counterpart.
But even among highly educated speakers, numerous distinct UK English sound groups collapse into mush in US speech, creating false homophones with unrelated words:
‘ant’ < aunt, 'pom' < palm, 'ladder' < latter, 'hostel' < hostile, 'winner' < winter, 'cot' < caught, 'warder' < water, etc.
Taken together with such impoverished pronunciations as 'noo', when the same sound gives them no trouble in 'few' or 'view', these are marks of simple degeneration – permanent linguistic brain damage, as it were – not individuality, or independance.
I would welcome a genuinely independant American English, indeed any evidence that Americans take their enunciation seriously; and if anyone can provide a single example of a word or phrase in American speech that is more clearly and distinctly pronounced than its UK equivalent, I will happily concede the point.
(I didn't assume you were from the US, but it's comforting to know that you aren't).
But Hotrats, you forget that you agreed with me on ‘newbie’;
‘@AoS re newbie –
Guilty as charged, OMG sorry sorry sorry. No edit facility, so it stands as a permanent stain on my character…Hangs head in shame…especially when I could have used ‘neophyte’ – ah, feels better already…’
Brother Daniel, any language that rhymes ‘laboratory’ with ‘lavatory’ is most certainly inferior.
AoS:
You may have had your irony detector set to ‘stun’ in overestimating my contrition, which was deliberately overdone (hence the ‘puzzling’ OMG). But I don’t see me disagreeing with you in any of the above, so wonder why you drag it up.
Hotrats, I can think of one word that is distinctly over-pronounced in the U.S. compared to here, owing to the insistence on emphasising what should be a silent ‘h’ – veHicle. But the exception proves the rule, and all that.
By the way, I think you misunderstood Brother Daniel’s last post. Unless I’m reading it wrong, he was suggesting that the abominable non-word was meant to convey connotations of Pat Kittle’s ineptitude and the double nought was used contemptuously towards something that’s even less interesting than nothing. I didn’t see any self-deprecation.
As to the good Brother’s use of the non-word, well to be honest, I didn’t even read it as ‘newbie’, so a pedantic atheists’ curse on you for making me type it again! Until you pointed it out I just assumed that ‘noob’ was a synonym along the lines of ‘dork’ or ‘dweeb’ that I hadn’t yet heard.
That said, since when were numbers acceptable substitutes for letters in standard written English (writing rude words on calculators excepted, of course)? There may be a precedent with the Freeman/Pitt film SE7EN, but any hope the mixed format may once have had over becoming common usage was surely shattered by the boyband 5IVE! I beg of you, please keep this monstrosity for character-limited media such as SMS and Twitter.
cu l8r 🙂
Looks like I was composing as you were posting, Hotrats.
Why bring it up again? Because unlike God, I can intervene when somebody uses my name to impose their own view, and if I’m going to be painted a language Nazi I want it to be clear that others were complicit by agreement if not by deed.
But mainly because I enjoy a running joke. I’m not being combative even if it may often look that way, I just have a sense of humour dryer than Mother Theresa’s lips (decide for yourself which set!).
I have to confess, AoS is right regarding my intended reference for “ineptitude”. I apologize for being unclear.
@hotrats: Re “warder / water”, those may be homophones in some small regional US accents, but not in any that I’ve heard. I’m guessing that you’re referring to the voicing of the “t” in “water” to make it sound like a “d” (in which case, that’s a fair cop), but perhaps you’re forgetting that most Americans (unlike most Brits) pronounce all their “r”s. 😉
@Brother Daniel:
My point was not that the US pronunciations are different from the UK ones; as you rightly point out, American is rhotic (R-pronouncing) and ‘water/warder’ are slightly different (‘water < wadder' is nearer the mark, though 'wadder', one who wads, is a bit of a stretch for potential misunderstanding).
A better example is parody < parity, or medal < metal; in US speech a 'metal medal', like a 'winter winner' sounds just like the same word repeated. And I've just noticed that 'Adam Ant' sounds like a US version of 'Atom aunt'.
bitter lemon said, “This brouhaha shows the underbelly of Jesus & Mo. Thou shalt not reproach jews, atheists or homosexuals, for the smug shall gang up in their lameass wrath with the spectre of Godwin not far behind.”
Errrrrmmmmm … I think you are writing on the wrong website. No-one has never reproached Jews, though I did give a reason why there are fewer digs at Jews than at Evangelicals. There is no need to “reproach” homosexuals, so that is a non sequitur, and, since most of the people regularly on this site are, by the nature of the topic, somewhere on the agnostic and/or atheist path, it would be seriously surprising if there was much “reproach” against them (however, there is criticism of the rabid atheists attracted by Richard Dawkins in the comments section of at least one recent strip).
Personally, I am baffled by your post in general.
Peakcrew, I think even ‘bitter lemon’ is baffled by his/her own post, so what chance do the rest of have?
@AoS – 🙂