It started off normal enough, a cup of tea on the porch swing. Then I decide the weather is now warm enough that I shall shave my dog Reno as he gets over heated. I settle in the backyard and start to shave him. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Reno is a boy dog, but he is a diva. He also has princess feet, very sensitive and he despises having then touched. However, he is a fury creature and thusly has to have them shaved. I spend 30 min arguing with him as he is jerking his feet out of my hand and yipping as if I were beating him with a stick which I may say I was tempted to do.
Finally, I get him to sit still for ten seconds and I ‘m shaving one of his back feet. Apparently he decides I MIGHT be getting too close to his poor toes and jerks his foot, knocking my hand and the trimmer straight into his ball sack.
Now, I did not yell at him for biting me
I don’t blame him, poor baby.
After he bites me and writhes around in agony for several more minutes, he climbs up on my lap like a scared little kid and cuddles, whimpering. Making me cry and feel as if I am the worstest mommy that ever there was.
I decide to give him a break and, after comforting him, put him back on his run, half shaven and looking like he had gotten caught in some kind of machinery. Prompting Pooh to make comments like “Damn barber school students!” which while mean were funny as hell. Plus poor Reno had this lemony expression on his face. I have seen a similar expression on the faces of freshly shorn sheep. But given the fact I had just done something unpleasant to his ball sac I tried to hide my mirth.
Now having not only injured (just slightly but still!) one of my fubabies, I decide to try my hand at yard work. I rake and shovel, things are going well until I decide to get a glass of water. I enter my home and hear an odd hissing noise. What is this? I wonder as I make my way into the kitchen wearing Dollar Tree flip-flops. ( May I point out at this juncture that Dollar Tree flipflops have no traction, this becomes important in a moment.) The hissing noise is louder here and sounds vaguely familiar. I take another step … into three inches of water.
Dear GOD! I panic and turn, intent in making a swift dash to get Pooh, when I discover the aforementioned lack of traction. I slip, trip and land on my ass. Flaying wildly in the rapidly growing puddle that once was my kitchen floor. After two ungainly and (I am sure) undignified attempts to get to my feet I finally stagger to the door open it and calmly say to my wisecracking husband, “Pooh, honey, come here please, you are really going to want to see this.”
For once there is no argument and he comes inside and does what I can only surmise to be some sort of secret male handyman dance, while uttering bad words at the top of his lungs. Then, whipping open the doors under the sink, swears some more and dashes from the house.
What follows is fifteen minutes of me trying to stem the tide, while I can see the top of Pooh’s head bounce back and forth across the kitchen windows, turning the air blue and waving various grips and pliers.
Finally the water stops and I am there; a sodden, fur and grass covered mess. Apparently, I am informed much later, a washer popped off and this led to the Great Flood.
After mopping up, I returned to the great out-doors where I received a splinter of epic proportions, finally finished shaving the dog, got a very weirdly shaped sunburn, (Don’t ask I am not telling) and then collapsed on the porch swing.
If I had any idea, this all would have happened to me this morning I would have never gotten out of the bed.
Reno seems to have forgiven me for the ball sack incident and I am glad. Though between you and me, he can’t figure out how to use the darn things anyway.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I am a bad blogger
I really am. I know I should at least attempt to post something once a week, and lord knows the stuff that happens to me is very blogworthy (Two weekends ago, P ooh set fire to the wall, again in his tighty whities! I’m telling you that was something to see.)
I just don’t like to do it. I am lazy blah. Isn’t Sloth supposed to be a sin? I have friends who do blog less than I do so I try to console myself with this fact. But let’s face it, when they do blog its some fantastic thing about shoe shopping or the feminine products isle at the hell mouth, er, I mean Wal-Mart that has me hooting.
What do I have? Pooh in his undies setting fire to my wall.
*Sigh* I’m so pathetic!
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Morning Flight 6 AM NOOOOOO!!!!!!
Getting up at three in the morning is not a happy thing, especially when one had gotten no sleep the night before. However, as the getting up was a precursor to my trip to NOLA I bounced out of bed with all the enthusiasm of a five year old on Christmas morning. (Not really, but I did not growl at the pooh. So I am going with enthusiasm.)
Off to the airport we go. Check in is a breeze (thank you Charlotte International Airport!) that is until one of the attendants relays to me that it is an oversold flight and I may not have a seat.
“Excuse me?” I say bewildered and clutching my prepaid receipt in my hand.
“Yes, Ma’am, those confirmations are not a guarantee that you will get a seat on the flight. You better hurry. Have a great day.”
Hurry. Looking at the line that weaves out of the security checkpoint I am engulfed by quiet panic. I think; I am gonna miss my flight, and they will reroute me through seven airports. I shall arrive in Nola just in time to get back on a flight here. Or worse, I will end up in Finland and have to survive on herring or smelt. Gods and Goddess I will die!
I turn to Pooh to relay this and he does what he does best.
“I am gonna miss my flight.”
“No you aren’t. I got you here in plenty of time.”
“She said the flight was oversold. I am gonna miss it. They‘ll bump me.”
“They won’t bump you because if they try I will come up in there and shoot someone’s ass.”
I am somewhat mollified. Peace and calm settle through me for I know, that if they indeed try to bump me, The Pooh will swoop in and open a can of whoop ass. So with a smile on my face I wait in line for 20 minutes, secure in the knowledge that, one way or another I am getting on this flight.
On the plane I am wedged between two rather rotund persons of the male persuasion. This made for a somewhat uncomfortable and rather apologetic fight, the person on my right kept elbowing me in the bosom as he was apparently having some issues with his laptop, while the person on my right was almost certainly inebriated ( peeps, he smelled like a still) and kept resting his head on my shoulder. I did not mind so much as I am sure he was a nervous flier and I am all for giving comfort where comfort is needed. (I am sweet damnit!)
We land in Alanta! Yay!!!! Half way there. I sniff the air cautiously, what is that I smell?? STARBUCKS. I take off with all the enthusiasm of a wildebeest thundering through the African plains. Pacified with my double shot peppermint mocha I sit and wait.
Apparently, peppermint is not soothing to the tummy when mixed with espresso and chocolate. I haul out the Dramamine, pop two and the rest of my flight is a blur. We land and I look at the time. Three past Ten, well goodie, out comes the phone and I call the Glamazon (AKA Karen) arrangements are made to meet at her baggage claim.
“What are you wearing?” I ask so that I may be able to pick her out in the crowd.
“Black print shirt , black skirt and heels.” She replies, graciously omitting the designers as she knows this only confuses me.
I hang up the phone and stow it, only to have to fish it out again. Is Jenn. And the conversation went a lot like this.
“Hey!”
“Meme?”
“Yeah. Hi!”
Chackle hiss pop “…..You?”
“What?”
“What?”
“WHAT?”
“WHAT?”
Somehow we manage to communicate- sisters you know- is a magical thing. And it is agreed that she and Nee shall pick us up at the airport, how exciting!
I grab my bag and head over to find Karen. On the way I note a quite bewildering array of women - and one person I am sure had an Addams apple- dressed per her description. I am smart and clever however and like a bloodhound scenting a prison escapee, I look at the floor examining shoes left and right, there in the corner I spot my prey, impossibly high and stylish heels. Tis Karen for sure.
“Karen?” I squeal.
“Meme” she squeals back.
Hugs all around. Folks let me tell you, Karen is beautiful and blessed with an hourglass figure Mae West would have envied. I am jealous sorta.
Phone ringing breaks up the huggles fest and it is Jenn again.
Crackel hiss pop “…Are you?”
“What?”
“What?”
“WHAT?”
“WHAT?”
Finally, after about ten calls in as many minutes we collect Ange and after schlepping ourselves and our luggage up and down baggage claim finally make it to the correct door and exit nearly being mashed by oncoming taxis. We scurry across to the passenger pick up and look for Jenn and Nee.
Nothing. Turning, I spy a woman in a van and one standing beside the van, it looks kinda like our Jenn but I wait, sure enough she opens her mouth to say something and I know.
“That’s Jenn.“ I say.
“Are you sure?” Karen asks.
“Yep. I can see her big mouth from here.”
The trip was quite fun, Karen commandeered the very back and sat like Queen if All She Surveys. I sat next to Ange and terrified Jenn by shouting multiple directions to Nee who did, at one point growl; “DO NOT make me stop this car.”
I was scared. I really was. But we made it in one happy, loud and hungry piece!
Coming up Part Two: The Hotel Lasalle
Off to the airport we go. Check in is a breeze (thank you Charlotte International Airport!) that is until one of the attendants relays to me that it is an oversold flight and I may not have a seat.
“Excuse me?” I say bewildered and clutching my prepaid receipt in my hand.
“Yes, Ma’am, those confirmations are not a guarantee that you will get a seat on the flight. You better hurry. Have a great day.”
Hurry. Looking at the line that weaves out of the security checkpoint I am engulfed by quiet panic. I think; I am gonna miss my flight, and they will reroute me through seven airports. I shall arrive in Nola just in time to get back on a flight here. Or worse, I will end up in Finland and have to survive on herring or smelt. Gods and Goddess I will die!
I turn to Pooh to relay this and he does what he does best.
“I am gonna miss my flight.”
“No you aren’t. I got you here in plenty of time.”
“She said the flight was oversold. I am gonna miss it. They‘ll bump me.”
“They won’t bump you because if they try I will come up in there and shoot someone’s ass.”
I am somewhat mollified. Peace and calm settle through me for I know, that if they indeed try to bump me, The Pooh will swoop in and open a can of whoop ass. So with a smile on my face I wait in line for 20 minutes, secure in the knowledge that, one way or another I am getting on this flight.
On the plane I am wedged between two rather rotund persons of the male persuasion. This made for a somewhat uncomfortable and rather apologetic fight, the person on my right kept elbowing me in the bosom as he was apparently having some issues with his laptop, while the person on my right was almost certainly inebriated ( peeps, he smelled like a still) and kept resting his head on my shoulder. I did not mind so much as I am sure he was a nervous flier and I am all for giving comfort where comfort is needed. (I am sweet damnit!)
We land in Alanta! Yay!!!! Half way there. I sniff the air cautiously, what is that I smell?? STARBUCKS. I take off with all the enthusiasm of a wildebeest thundering through the African plains. Pacified with my double shot peppermint mocha I sit and wait.
Apparently, peppermint is not soothing to the tummy when mixed with espresso and chocolate. I haul out the Dramamine, pop two and the rest of my flight is a blur. We land and I look at the time. Three past Ten, well goodie, out comes the phone and I call the Glamazon (AKA Karen) arrangements are made to meet at her baggage claim.
“What are you wearing?” I ask so that I may be able to pick her out in the crowd.
“Black print shirt , black skirt and heels.” She replies, graciously omitting the designers as she knows this only confuses me.
I hang up the phone and stow it, only to have to fish it out again. Is Jenn. And the conversation went a lot like this.
“Hey!”
“Meme?”
“Yeah. Hi!”
Chackle hiss pop “…..You?”
“What?”
“What?”
“WHAT?”
“WHAT?”
Somehow we manage to communicate- sisters you know- is a magical thing. And it is agreed that she and Nee shall pick us up at the airport, how exciting!
I grab my bag and head over to find Karen. On the way I note a quite bewildering array of women - and one person I am sure had an Addams apple- dressed per her description. I am smart and clever however and like a bloodhound scenting a prison escapee, I look at the floor examining shoes left and right, there in the corner I spot my prey, impossibly high and stylish heels. Tis Karen for sure.
“Karen?” I squeal.
“Meme” she squeals back.
Hugs all around. Folks let me tell you, Karen is beautiful and blessed with an hourglass figure Mae West would have envied. I am jealous sorta.
Phone ringing breaks up the huggles fest and it is Jenn again.
Crackel hiss pop “…Are you?”
“What?”
“What?”
“WHAT?”
“WHAT?”
Finally, after about ten calls in as many minutes we collect Ange and after schlepping ourselves and our luggage up and down baggage claim finally make it to the correct door and exit nearly being mashed by oncoming taxis. We scurry across to the passenger pick up and look for Jenn and Nee.
Nothing. Turning, I spy a woman in a van and one standing beside the van, it looks kinda like our Jenn but I wait, sure enough she opens her mouth to say something and I know.
“That’s Jenn.“ I say.
“Are you sure?” Karen asks.
“Yep. I can see her big mouth from here.”
The trip was quite fun, Karen commandeered the very back and sat like Queen if All She Surveys. I sat next to Ange and terrified Jenn by shouting multiple directions to Nee who did, at one point growl; “DO NOT make me stop this car.”
I was scared. I really was. But we made it in one happy, loud and hungry piece!
Coming up Part Two: The Hotel Lasalle
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
untitled
I am sad, I am blue,
I hate everything I have to do.
I hate my job, I hate my life.
Getting out of bed seems such a high price.
I hate my face, I hate my ass
I want to break my looking glass
Life sucks big time I say,
As I crawl throughout my sucky day.
I have no desire to summon a smile,
The effort hardly seems worthwhile.
I am dull and bent,
I think of people with ill intent.
I am cranky and sour,
all alone hour by hour.
Life has no color or shine
It’s just a way to pass the time
I hate it when I feel this way.
Even the sun is dim today.
I hate everything I have to do.
I hate my job, I hate my life.
Getting out of bed seems such a high price.
I hate my face, I hate my ass
I want to break my looking glass
Life sucks big time I say,
As I crawl throughout my sucky day.
I have no desire to summon a smile,
The effort hardly seems worthwhile.
I am dull and bent,
I think of people with ill intent.
I am cranky and sour,
all alone hour by hour.
Life has no color or shine
It’s just a way to pass the time
I hate it when I feel this way.
Even the sun is dim today.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Musings
Lately I have been thinking about the phrase “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind”. This is most likely because my dog, Reno has been hit by a car and suffered an injury to his back leg. Now for those of you who don’t know, Reno is my bebbie, as little dogs tend to be for people who don’t have children. And, as little dogs tend to be, he is pitiful.
This is where the cruel to be kind part comes in. He must use the potty and cannot get there under his own steam so I must carry him. This makes him cry, because it is painful. He gets snappish and forces me to muzzle him, which I hate. It is one of the main reasons I don’t take him to be groomed and do it myself instead.
There is little choice for me here, I can leave him lying in a puddle of his own waste, or I can be cruel to him. So, I pick him up and carry him outside because in the long run it is a kindness. But in this moment it is cruel, plain and simple. It scares him and hurts him and you can see in his eyes he does not understand why I am doing this awful thing to him.
I don’t feel guilty about it, but it pains me, because even though I am the one hurting and scaring him he still turns to me for comfort. I am his mommy, or his alpha or whatever it is that he sees me as, I am the one he expects to fix everything and make him feel better.
I am certain my love for this dog is not one tenth of the love a parent has for their child and it leaves me even more relieved that I have no kids. As bad as I feel, how much more pain would there be if Reno were a human baby? And how on earth do parents cope when their children are hurting? When their baby needs to have a shot or surgery and they cry and snap and at the same time want hugs and kisses? Where to mommies and daddys get the strength to dig in and do what needs to be done? To be cruel to be kind?
I don’t know, but I do know I have a deeper respect for people who decide to populate their lives with one of those irksome, complex, funny and fascinating creatures. I couldn’t do it.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
The sad truth
Is that I hate to blog.
I read my friend’s blogs with a mixture of enjoyment and envy and think to myself, why can’t I write like that?
Does nothing good happen to me, well, good enough to be worth blogging?
Sure it does, every day. The truth folks, is that I am just paranoid. I don’t want people to know what happens in my life, not really. I have this deep-seated and wholly unreasonable fear that there is some weird, greasy, creepy dude in a windowless van, cataloguing every bit of personal information I let slip into the cyberverse and waiting until he has just enough to steal me away and dump me in a pit, where he shall -- yep, you guessed it-- make me put lotion on my skin.
One could say I am almost phobic about it. I don’t like blogging, chatting (with the exception of my very small and tight circle of friends) or those prolific personality quizzes peeps keep sending me. ACK, why on do you care what I had for breakfast? I can't help but think; hmmm, I bet my serial stalker (whoever he may be) wants to know!
This is not a good attitude for a writer to have, your books don’t get sold if nobody knows who you are. I have a friend who is just amazing at all the minutia of promo and name dropping. Her website is out of this world, her group is active and the many other groups she belongs to all know who she is and they love her.
I hate her…. I really do… no I love her…. No, I hate her!!! ACK! Am I tipping into serial stalker territory myself?
What’s a reclusive-unknown-but-seriously-in-need-of-exposure-writer to do????
By the way, in case my stalker is wondering….I don’t eat breakfast. Nayna! Pfft!
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Godless, shmodless what nonsense!
Hi there,
This is something interesting I picked up from one of my groups. I cannot say I hate this woman, but she is annoying. Kind of like a yappy dog that is too tiny and scrawny to actually kick, so one grits one’s teeth and lets her yap.
Even Pooh, who is ultra conservative, (can you imagine?) despises this woman.
Anyway, this is a review of Ann Coulter’s latest drivel, (not to be compared to my lovely, sexy, sassy and spicy drivel, mind you.) Now, I don't subscribe to the theory of evolution myself, but I do think there is truth in the survival of the fittest. And who are we to presume how the divine went about creation? We were not there and even if we were, the magnitude of such an act would surely have fried our tiny brains.
The woman is a fruit and an embarrassment to the few really true Good Christians out there.
I am genuinely embarrassed for her.
Godless: The Church of Liberalism
by Ann Coulter
Coultergeist
A review by Jerry Coyne
H. L. Mencken once responded to a question asked by many of hisreaders: "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence inthe United States, then why do you live here?" His answer was,"Why do men go to zoos?" Sadly, Mencken is not here to ogle thenewest creature in the American Zoo: the Bleached Flamingo, otherwiseknown as Ann Coulter. This beast draws crowds by its frequent,raucous calls, eerily resembling a human voice, and its unearthlyappearance, scrawny and pallid. (Wikipedia notes that "a whiteor pale flamingo ... is usually unhealthy or suffering from alack of food.") The etiolated Coulter issued a piercing squawkthis spring with her now-notorious book, Godless: The Church ofLiberalism. Its thesis, harebrained even by her standards, isthat liberals are an atheistic lot who have devised a substitute religion, replete with the sacraments of abortion, feminism, coddlingof criminals, and -- you guessed it -- bestiality. Liberals also have their god, who, like Coulter's, is bearded and imposing.He is none other than Charles Darwin. But the left-wing god is malevolent, for Coulter sees Darwin as the root cause of every ill afflicting our society, not to mention being responsible for the historical atrocities of Hitler and Stalin.
The furor caused by her vicious remarks about the 9/11 widows("I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.")has distracted people from the main topic of her book: evolutionary biology, or rather the pathetic pseudoscientific arguments of its modern fundamentalist challenger, Intelligent Design (ID).This occupies four of Coulter's eleven chapters. Enamored of ID,and unable to fathom a scientific reason why biologists don't buy it, Coulter suggests that scientists are an evil sub-cabal of atheist liberals, a group so addicted to godlessness that they must hide at all costs the awful "truth" that evolution didn't happen. She accuses evolutionists of brainwashing children with phony fossils and made-up "evidence," turning the kids into "Darwiniacs"stripped of all moral (i.e., biblical) grounding and prone to become beasts and genocidal lunatics. To Coulter, biologists are folks who, when not playing with test tubes or warping children's minds, encourage people to have sex with dogs. (I am not making this up.)
Any sane person who starts reading Godless will soon ask, Does Coulter really believe this stuff? The answer is that it doesn't much matter. What's far more disturbing than Coulter herself (and she's plenty disturbing: On the cover photo she has the scariest eyes since Rasputin) is the fact that Americans are lapping up her latest prose like a pack of starved cats. The buyers cannot be political opponents who just want to enjoy her "humor"; like me, those people wouldn't enrich her by a dime. (I didn't pay for my copy.) Rather, a lot of folks apparently like her ravings-- suggesting that, on some level at least, they must agree with her. And this means that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who put Coulter at the top of the best-seller lists see evolution as a national menace.
Well, that's hardly news. We've known for years that nearly half of all Americans believe in the Genesis account of creation, and only about 10 percent want evolution taught in public schools without mentioning ID or other forms of creationism. But it's worth taking up the cudgels once again, if only to show that,contrary to Coulter's claim, accepting Darwinism is not tantamount to endorsing immorality and genocide.
First, one has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects.The answer is a resounding No. According to the book's acknowledgments,Coulter was tutored in the "complex ideas" of evolution by DavidBerlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologistat Lehigh University (whose own department's website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the "giants"of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology from this lot is like learning elocution from George W.Bush.
As expected with such tutors, the Darwinism decried by Coulter is the usual distorted cardboard cut-out. All she does is parrot the ID line: There are no transitional fossils; natural selectioncan't create true novelty; some features of organisms could not have evolved and therefore must have been designed by an unspecified supernatural agent. And her "research" method consists of using quotes taken out of context, scouring biased secondary sources,and distorting what appears in the scientific literature. Judging by the shoddy documentation of the evolution section, I'm not convinced that the rest of the book isn't based on equally shoddy research. At any rate, I won't belabor the case that Coulter makes for ID, as I've already shown in TNR that her arguments are completely bogus.
What is especially striking is Coulter's failure to tell us what she really believes about how the earth's species got here. It's clear that she thinks God had a direct hand in it, but beyond that we remain unenlightened. IDers believe in limited amounts of evolution. Does Coulter think that mammals evolved from reptiles?If not, what are those curious mammal-like reptiles that appear exactly at the right time in the fossil record? Did humans evolve from ape-like primates, or did the Designer conjure us into existence all at once? How did all those annoying fossils get there, in remarkable evolutionary order?
And, when faced with the real evidence that shows how strongly evolution trumps ID, she clams up completely. What about the massive fossil evidence for human evolution -- what exactly were those creatures 2 million years ago that had human-like skeletons but ape-like brains? Did a race of Limbaughs walk the earth? And why did God -- sorry, the Intelligent Designer -- give whales a vestigial pelvis, and the flightless kiwi bird tiny, nonfunctional wings?Why do we carry around in our DNA useless genes that are functional in similar species? Did the Designer decide to make the world look as though life had evolved? What a joker! And the Designer doesn't seem all that intelligent, either. He must have been asleep at the wheel when he designed our appendix, back, and prostate gland.
There are none so blind as those who will not see, and Coulter knows that myopia about evolution is a lucrative game. After all,she is a millionaire, reveling in her status as a celebrity and stalked by ignorazzis. I have never seen anyone enjoy her own inanity so much.
But after ranting for nearly a hundred pages about evolution,Coulter finally gives away the game on page 277: "God exists whether or not archaeopteryx ever evolved into something better. If evolution is true, then God created evolution." Gee. Evolution might be true after all! But she's just spent a hundred pages telling us it isn't! What gives? As Tennessee Williams's Big Daddy said,there's a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room.
What's annoying about Coulter (note: there's more than one thing!)is that she insistently demands evidence for evolution (none of which she'll ever accept), but requires not a shred of evidence for her "alternative hypothesis." She repeatedly assures us that God exists (not just any God -- the Christian God), that there is only one God (she's no Hindu, folks), that we are made in the image of said God, that the Christian Bible, like Antonin Scalia's Constitution, "is not a 'living' document" (that is, not susceptible to changing interpretation; so does she think that Genesis is literally true?), and that God just might have used evolutionas part of His plan. What makes her so sure about all this? And how does she know that the Supreme Being, even if It exists, goes by the name of Yahweh, rather than Allah, Wotan, Zeus, or Mabel?If Coulter just knows these things by faith alone, she should say so, and then tell us why she's so sure that what Parsees or Zunis just know is wrong. I, for one, am not prepared to believe that Ann Coulter is made in God's image without seeing some proof.
Moreover, if evolution is wrong, why is it the central paradigm of biology? According to Coulter, it's all a big con game. In smoky back rooms at annual meetings, evolutionists plot ways to jam Darwin down America's throat, knowing that even though it is scientifically incorrect, Darwinism (Coulter says) "lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing -- screw your secretary, kill Grandma, abort your defective child -- Darwinsays it will benefit humanity!"
Unfortunately for Coulter (but fortunately for humanity), science doesn't work this way. Scientists gain fame and high reputation not for propping up their personal prejudices, but for finding out facts about nature. And if evolution really were wrong, the renegade scientist who disproved it -- and showed that generations of his predecessors were misled -- would reach the top of the scientific ladder in one leap, gaining fame and riches. All it would take to trash Darwinism is a simple demonstration that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, or that our closest genetic relative is the rabbit. There is no cabal, no back-room conspiracy.
Instead, the empirical evidence for evolution just keeps piling up, year after year.
As for biologists' supposed agenda of godlessness -- how ridiculous!Yes, a lot of scientists are atheists, but most have better things to do than deliberately destroy people's faith. This goes doubly for the many scientists -- roughly a third of them -- who are religious. After all, one of the most vocal (and effective) opponents of ID is Ken Miller of Brown University, a devout Catholic.
The real reason Coulter goes after evolution is not because it'swrong, but because she doesn't like it -- it doesn't accord with how she thinks the world should be. That's because she feels,along with many Americans, that "Darwin's theory overturned every aspect of Biblical morality." What's so sad -- not so much for Coulter as for Americans as a whole -- is that this idea is simply wrong. Darwinism, after all, is just a body of thought about the origin and change of biological diversity, not a handbook of ethics.(I just consulted my copy of The Origin of Species, and I swear that there's nothing in there about abortion or eugenics, much less about shtupping one's secretary.)
If Coulter were right, evolutionists would be the most beastly people on earth, not to be trusted in the vicinity of a goat.But I've been around biologists all of my adult life, and I cantell you that they're a lot more civil than, say, Coulter. It's a simple fact that you don't need the Bible -- or even religion-- to be moral. Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews, who don't follow the New Testament, usually behave responsibly despite this problem;and atheists and agnostics derive morality from non-biblical philosophy.In fact, one of the most ethical people I know is Coulter's version of the Antichrist: the atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins (more about that below). Dawkins would never say -- as Coulter does-- that Cindy Sheehan doesn't look good in shorts, that Al Franken resembles a monkey, or that 9/11 widows enjoyed the deaths of their husbands. Isn't there something in the Bible about doing unto others?
The mistake of equating Darwinism with a code of behavior leads Coulter into her most idiotic accusation: that the Holocaust and numberless murders of Stalin can be laid at Darwin's door. "From Marx to Hitler, the men responsible for the greatest mass murders of the twentieth century were avid Darwinists." Anyone who is religious should be very careful about saying something like this,because, throughout history, more killings have been done in the name of religion than of anything else. What's going on in the Middle East, and what happened in Serbia and Northern Ireland?What was the Inquisition about, and the Crusades, and the slaughter following the partition of India? Religion, of course -- or rather,religiously inspired killing. (Come to think of it, the reason Hitler singled out the Jews is that Christians regarded them for centuries as the killers of Christ. And I don't remember any mentionof Darwinism in the Moscow Doctors' Trial.) If Darwin is guilty of genocide, then so are God, Jesus, Brahma, Martin Luther, and countless popes.
As Coulter well knows, the misuse of an idea for evil purposes does not mean that idea is wrong. In fact, she accuses liberals of making this very error: She attacks them for worrying that the message of racial inequality conveyed by the book The Bell Curve could promote genocide: "Only liberals could interpret a statement that people have varying IQs as a call to start killing people." Back at you, Ann: Only conservatives could interpret a statement that species evolved as a call to start killing people.
Coulter clearly knows better. I conclude that the trash-talkingblonde bit is just a shtick (admittedly, a clever one) calculated to make her rich and famous. (Look at her website, where she whines regularly that she is not getting enough notice.) Her hyper-conservativism seems no more grounded than her faith. She has claimed that the Bible is her favorite book, she is rumored to go to church, and on the cover of Godless you see a cross dangling tantalizingly in her décolletage. But could anybody who absorbed the Sermonon the Mount write, as she does of Richard Dawkins, "I defy any of my coreligionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell"? Well, I wouldn't want Coulter to roast (there's not much meat there anyway), but I wish she'd shut up and learn something about evolution. Her case for ID involves the same stupid arguments that fundamentalists have made for a hundred years. They're about as convincing as the blonde hair that gets her so much attention. By their roots shall ye know them.
Jerry Coyne is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionat the University of Chicago.
Read the review online
at:http://www.powells.com/tnr/review/2006_08_10
This is something interesting I picked up from one of my groups. I cannot say I hate this woman, but she is annoying. Kind of like a yappy dog that is too tiny and scrawny to actually kick, so one grits one’s teeth and lets her yap.
Even Pooh, who is ultra conservative, (can you imagine?) despises this woman.
Anyway, this is a review of Ann Coulter’s latest drivel, (not to be compared to my lovely, sexy, sassy and spicy drivel, mind you.) Now, I don't subscribe to the theory of evolution myself, but I do think there is truth in the survival of the fittest. And who are we to presume how the divine went about creation? We were not there and even if we were, the magnitude of such an act would surely have fried our tiny brains.
The woman is a fruit and an embarrassment to the few really true Good Christians out there.
I am genuinely embarrassed for her.
Godless: The Church of Liberalism
by Ann Coulter
Coultergeist
A review by Jerry Coyne
H. L. Mencken once responded to a question asked by many of hisreaders: "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence inthe United States, then why do you live here?" His answer was,"Why do men go to zoos?" Sadly, Mencken is not here to ogle thenewest creature in the American Zoo: the Bleached Flamingo, otherwiseknown as Ann Coulter. This beast draws crowds by its frequent,raucous calls, eerily resembling a human voice, and its unearthlyappearance, scrawny and pallid. (Wikipedia notes that "a whiteor pale flamingo ... is usually unhealthy or suffering from alack of food.") The etiolated Coulter issued a piercing squawkthis spring with her now-notorious book, Godless: The Church ofLiberalism. Its thesis, harebrained even by her standards, isthat liberals are an atheistic lot who have devised a substitute religion, replete with the sacraments of abortion, feminism, coddlingof criminals, and -- you guessed it -- bestiality. Liberals also have their god, who, like Coulter's, is bearded and imposing.He is none other than Charles Darwin. But the left-wing god is malevolent, for Coulter sees Darwin as the root cause of every ill afflicting our society, not to mention being responsible for the historical atrocities of Hitler and Stalin.
The furor caused by her vicious remarks about the 9/11 widows("I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.")has distracted people from the main topic of her book: evolutionary biology, or rather the pathetic pseudoscientific arguments of its modern fundamentalist challenger, Intelligent Design (ID).This occupies four of Coulter's eleven chapters. Enamored of ID,and unable to fathom a scientific reason why biologists don't buy it, Coulter suggests that scientists are an evil sub-cabal of atheist liberals, a group so addicted to godlessness that they must hide at all costs the awful "truth" that evolution didn't happen. She accuses evolutionists of brainwashing children with phony fossils and made-up "evidence," turning the kids into "Darwiniacs"stripped of all moral (i.e., biblical) grounding and prone to become beasts and genocidal lunatics. To Coulter, biologists are folks who, when not playing with test tubes or warping children's minds, encourage people to have sex with dogs. (I am not making this up.)
Any sane person who starts reading Godless will soon ask, Does Coulter really believe this stuff? The answer is that it doesn't much matter. What's far more disturbing than Coulter herself (and she's plenty disturbing: On the cover photo she has the scariest eyes since Rasputin) is the fact that Americans are lapping up her latest prose like a pack of starved cats. The buyers cannot be political opponents who just want to enjoy her "humor"; like me, those people wouldn't enrich her by a dime. (I didn't pay for my copy.) Rather, a lot of folks apparently like her ravings-- suggesting that, on some level at least, they must agree with her. And this means that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who put Coulter at the top of the best-seller lists see evolution as a national menace.
Well, that's hardly news. We've known for years that nearly half of all Americans believe in the Genesis account of creation, and only about 10 percent want evolution taught in public schools without mentioning ID or other forms of creationism. But it's worth taking up the cudgels once again, if only to show that,contrary to Coulter's claim, accepting Darwinism is not tantamount to endorsing immorality and genocide.
First, one has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects.The answer is a resounding No. According to the book's acknowledgments,Coulter was tutored in the "complex ideas" of evolution by DavidBerlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologistat Lehigh University (whose own department's website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the "giants"of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology from this lot is like learning elocution from George W.Bush.
As expected with such tutors, the Darwinism decried by Coulter is the usual distorted cardboard cut-out. All she does is parrot the ID line: There are no transitional fossils; natural selectioncan't create true novelty; some features of organisms could not have evolved and therefore must have been designed by an unspecified supernatural agent. And her "research" method consists of using quotes taken out of context, scouring biased secondary sources,and distorting what appears in the scientific literature. Judging by the shoddy documentation of the evolution section, I'm not convinced that the rest of the book isn't based on equally shoddy research. At any rate, I won't belabor the case that Coulter makes for ID, as I've already shown in TNR that her arguments are completely bogus.
What is especially striking is Coulter's failure to tell us what she really believes about how the earth's species got here. It's clear that she thinks God had a direct hand in it, but beyond that we remain unenlightened. IDers believe in limited amounts of evolution. Does Coulter think that mammals evolved from reptiles?If not, what are those curious mammal-like reptiles that appear exactly at the right time in the fossil record? Did humans evolve from ape-like primates, or did the Designer conjure us into existence all at once? How did all those annoying fossils get there, in remarkable evolutionary order?
And, when faced with the real evidence that shows how strongly evolution trumps ID, she clams up completely. What about the massive fossil evidence for human evolution -- what exactly were those creatures 2 million years ago that had human-like skeletons but ape-like brains? Did a race of Limbaughs walk the earth? And why did God -- sorry, the Intelligent Designer -- give whales a vestigial pelvis, and the flightless kiwi bird tiny, nonfunctional wings?Why do we carry around in our DNA useless genes that are functional in similar species? Did the Designer decide to make the world look as though life had evolved? What a joker! And the Designer doesn't seem all that intelligent, either. He must have been asleep at the wheel when he designed our appendix, back, and prostate gland.
There are none so blind as those who will not see, and Coulter knows that myopia about evolution is a lucrative game. After all,she is a millionaire, reveling in her status as a celebrity and stalked by ignorazzis. I have never seen anyone enjoy her own inanity so much.
But after ranting for nearly a hundred pages about evolution,Coulter finally gives away the game on page 277: "God exists whether or not archaeopteryx ever evolved into something better. If evolution is true, then God created evolution." Gee. Evolution might be true after all! But she's just spent a hundred pages telling us it isn't! What gives? As Tennessee Williams's Big Daddy said,there's a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room.
What's annoying about Coulter (note: there's more than one thing!)is that she insistently demands evidence for evolution (none of which she'll ever accept), but requires not a shred of evidence for her "alternative hypothesis." She repeatedly assures us that God exists (not just any God -- the Christian God), that there is only one God (she's no Hindu, folks), that we are made in the image of said God, that the Christian Bible, like Antonin Scalia's Constitution, "is not a 'living' document" (that is, not susceptible to changing interpretation; so does she think that Genesis is literally true?), and that God just might have used evolutionas part of His plan. What makes her so sure about all this? And how does she know that the Supreme Being, even if It exists, goes by the name of Yahweh, rather than Allah, Wotan, Zeus, or Mabel?If Coulter just knows these things by faith alone, she should say so, and then tell us why she's so sure that what Parsees or Zunis just know is wrong. I, for one, am not prepared to believe that Ann Coulter is made in God's image without seeing some proof.
Moreover, if evolution is wrong, why is it the central paradigm of biology? According to Coulter, it's all a big con game. In smoky back rooms at annual meetings, evolutionists plot ways to jam Darwin down America's throat, knowing that even though it is scientifically incorrect, Darwinism (Coulter says) "lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing -- screw your secretary, kill Grandma, abort your defective child -- Darwinsays it will benefit humanity!"
Unfortunately for Coulter (but fortunately for humanity), science doesn't work this way. Scientists gain fame and high reputation not for propping up their personal prejudices, but for finding out facts about nature. And if evolution really were wrong, the renegade scientist who disproved it -- and showed that generations of his predecessors were misled -- would reach the top of the scientific ladder in one leap, gaining fame and riches. All it would take to trash Darwinism is a simple demonstration that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, or that our closest genetic relative is the rabbit. There is no cabal, no back-room conspiracy.
Instead, the empirical evidence for evolution just keeps piling up, year after year.
As for biologists' supposed agenda of godlessness -- how ridiculous!Yes, a lot of scientists are atheists, but most have better things to do than deliberately destroy people's faith. This goes doubly for the many scientists -- roughly a third of them -- who are religious. After all, one of the most vocal (and effective) opponents of ID is Ken Miller of Brown University, a devout Catholic.
The real reason Coulter goes after evolution is not because it'swrong, but because she doesn't like it -- it doesn't accord with how she thinks the world should be. That's because she feels,along with many Americans, that "Darwin's theory overturned every aspect of Biblical morality." What's so sad -- not so much for Coulter as for Americans as a whole -- is that this idea is simply wrong. Darwinism, after all, is just a body of thought about the origin and change of biological diversity, not a handbook of ethics.(I just consulted my copy of The Origin of Species, and I swear that there's nothing in there about abortion or eugenics, much less about shtupping one's secretary.)
If Coulter were right, evolutionists would be the most beastly people on earth, not to be trusted in the vicinity of a goat.But I've been around biologists all of my adult life, and I cantell you that they're a lot more civil than, say, Coulter. It's a simple fact that you don't need the Bible -- or even religion-- to be moral. Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews, who don't follow the New Testament, usually behave responsibly despite this problem;and atheists and agnostics derive morality from non-biblical philosophy.In fact, one of the most ethical people I know is Coulter's version of the Antichrist: the atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins (more about that below). Dawkins would never say -- as Coulter does-- that Cindy Sheehan doesn't look good in shorts, that Al Franken resembles a monkey, or that 9/11 widows enjoyed the deaths of their husbands. Isn't there something in the Bible about doing unto others?
The mistake of equating Darwinism with a code of behavior leads Coulter into her most idiotic accusation: that the Holocaust and numberless murders of Stalin can be laid at Darwin's door. "From Marx to Hitler, the men responsible for the greatest mass murders of the twentieth century were avid Darwinists." Anyone who is religious should be very careful about saying something like this,because, throughout history, more killings have been done in the name of religion than of anything else. What's going on in the Middle East, and what happened in Serbia and Northern Ireland?What was the Inquisition about, and the Crusades, and the slaughter following the partition of India? Religion, of course -- or rather,religiously inspired killing. (Come to think of it, the reason Hitler singled out the Jews is that Christians regarded them for centuries as the killers of Christ. And I don't remember any mentionof Darwinism in the Moscow Doctors' Trial.) If Darwin is guilty of genocide, then so are God, Jesus, Brahma, Martin Luther, and countless popes.
As Coulter well knows, the misuse of an idea for evil purposes does not mean that idea is wrong. In fact, she accuses liberals of making this very error: She attacks them for worrying that the message of racial inequality conveyed by the book The Bell Curve could promote genocide: "Only liberals could interpret a statement that people have varying IQs as a call to start killing people." Back at you, Ann: Only conservatives could interpret a statement that species evolved as a call to start killing people.
Coulter clearly knows better. I conclude that the trash-talkingblonde bit is just a shtick (admittedly, a clever one) calculated to make her rich and famous. (Look at her website, where she whines regularly that she is not getting enough notice.) Her hyper-conservativism seems no more grounded than her faith. She has claimed that the Bible is her favorite book, she is rumored to go to church, and on the cover of Godless you see a cross dangling tantalizingly in her décolletage. But could anybody who absorbed the Sermonon the Mount write, as she does of Richard Dawkins, "I defy any of my coreligionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell"? Well, I wouldn't want Coulter to roast (there's not much meat there anyway), but I wish she'd shut up and learn something about evolution. Her case for ID involves the same stupid arguments that fundamentalists have made for a hundred years. They're about as convincing as the blonde hair that gets her so much attention. By their roots shall ye know them.
Jerry Coyne is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionat the University of Chicago.
Read the review online
at:http://www.powells.com/tnr/review/2006_08_10
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