God Is In The Animated Gifs

Warning: If you are religious, and blasphemy seriously bothers you, I suggest you skip this post. (Let's face it, it's probably not going to be that good anyway.) These are all meant to be cheeky, but they may offend you. Come back next week when I'll probably be talking about how the GO Train sucks or something.

I am an atheist, and I have been for a while now. Used to be a believer as a kid, then an agnostic in my teens. But the older I got, the more I thought about it and the more I saw of life, the more skeptical I became. Then Bruce Almighty came out, and that was pretty much the last straw.

However, I find religion, and more importantly, the social and cultural need for humans to believe in an omnipotent being and some sort of afterlife, fascinating. I like to talk and learn about religions and love to hear people's thoughts about it, even when they are opposed to mine - as long as it's an open dialogue and we can both present our ideas. One-sided proselytizing, however, tends to get my intellectual knickers in a metaphorical twist. I confess to getting a bit testy about it from time to time.

Over the years, people have taken it upon themselves to send me emails giving me their cogent arguments in favour of Christianity. That is to say, they've forwarded me graphic-heavy emails of animated gifs with bible verses written in glitter. This puzzles me as I've never sent even ONE email filled with secular sentiments and animated gifs of Richard Dawkins biting the head off of an alter boy to warrant receiving them.

Which gave me an idea. While I will never have the brass cojones to send out that kind of email to a real person, I can always write a blog post about it! That way I can let off a bit of steam and no one gets hurt (unless they actually read the blog, and how likely is that?)

Below are a few of my favourite real images sent to me in actual emails, each followed by my filthy heathen response.

*Note: unfortunately, the site that hosts these images doesn't allow the animated gifs to animate for some reason. That really takes the fun out of some of them, but what are you going to do? I'll give a hint as to what it should be doing in the image.

Image #1: (For some reason, this one works)

Apparent reverent sentiment: It is right to be humble in the face of Jesus' incredible sacrifice.
My immediate thought: Be with you in a minute, Jesus. Fish bone caught in my throat!
Image I would've used:



Image #2:


Apparent reverent sentiment: You should... uh... save yourself for Jesus... I guess? Wow.
My immediate thought: Eddie Rabbitt enjoys a lovely day at the spa, while a young girl has lots and LOTS of time to improve her embroidery skills.
Image I would've used:

Image #3: (The water should be rippling)


Apparent reverent sentiment: Jesus' peace is flowing like a river.
My immediate thought: *Yawn* Where's the zazz, people?
Image I would've used: (Hand is moving back and forth)



Image #4:



Apparent reverent sentiment: Jesus is cool! Certainly cool enough to relate to today's youth!
My immediate thought: "Jesus is one sexy mother-" "Shut your mouth!" "I'm just talkin' 'bout the son o' god!"
Image I would've used:



Image #5: (Wings are flapping)

Apparent reverent sentiment: I think it's pretty clear.
My immediate thought: Oh, for the love of--.
Image I would've used:

Let My Love Open the Dore

Attention unsuspecting American audience: Meet the newest hilarious Canadian personality that you will soon steal and pretend like he has always been your own (i.e. pay him a living wage for his talent.)

His name is Jon Dore, and I predict he will be the next Kid in the Hall to invade your shores.

The premise of his show is that in each episode he deals with a situation (such as trying to quit smoking, or being tested for infertility) and interviews real people along the way in his quest to solve the issue. But this ain't like no Borat-like make-fun-of-people-who-don't-know-you're-making-fun-of-their-racism bullshit. It's much more post-modern than that. Oh, you'd better believe it.

He does say stupid things, but it mostly just makes him look like the idiot. Plus, the people he interviews are well aware that this is a joke.

I know, it doesn't sound like it would be funny, but it is. To prove it, here is Jon interviewing a pharmacist about STDs: (not particularly safe for work)



And just to temp you further, here is one of my favourite interviews so far:



(And, by the way, if you don't want to just crumble potato chips and Oreos over this adorable child and eat him with a bowl of ice cream, you have no soul. Seriously, if you don't agree... I think you should leave. Now.)

It's odd, but these are probably the two clips that have the least amount of swearing and objectionable material in them that I could possibly have posted. But if you like swearing and objectionable humour, along with a healthy dose of blasphemy and poop jokes, than this is the show for you*! (I'm looking at YOU Comedy Central.)

Well, that's pretty much it. The Jon Dore Television Show. Coming soon to a cable network near you**!

You're welcome, America.


*If you'd like to see more of this show, just go on YouTube and put in "Jon Dore" and you'll see loads of them. However, they're just clips, not full shows, so some of the gags won't work for you since there are call backs from earlier in the show.

**Of course, I mean an American cable network. It's already on the Canadian Comedy Network, but that doesn't really count, now does it?

Email 101

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard Feynman, super-smart physicist dude

Mr. Feynman may have been talking about scientific experimentation when he uttered the above, but I feel it's something that can be applied to other aspects of our lives. Take emails, for example.

Ah, email! I do love it so. Unfortunately, as I've learned over the last 15 years, it has its challenges.

Based on the emails that I'm still getting after all this time, it seems there is nothing more difficult to keep a rational head about than mass-forwarded emails. Terrifying urban myths, animated gifs of Jesus holding a kitten, emails with 50-point pink font assuring me that I am the sender's BEST friend (or a STRONG woman or a CLASSY lady). There's the blatantly racist emails with "jokes" attributed to poor George Carlin, ones trying to prove 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy (or predicted by Nostradamus, or a government conspiracy), and ones assuring me that my government gives more money to those shiftless, lazy refugees than our own seniors.

It's enough to make your head spin! How can you possibly get through them with your sanity in tact? Well, I think it might be a good time to go over some ground rules about mass-forwarded emails that the neophyte might not be aware of, and the oldophyte might do well to remember.

1. Every mass-forwarded email you receive, no matter how plausible or innocuous, is a lie.
It might be amusing, it might be clever, it might cite air-tight references like "my hairdresser's doctor said", but it is most definitely a lie.

Case in point: the other day I received an email that showcased incredible paper art that blew my mind with it's inventiveness and delicacy.







The email said that these pictures were part of a contest for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. and that the contest stipulated that they could only use ONE piece of paper. Holy cow, how awesome!

However, something about the similarity of the pictures made me suspicious, so before I forwarded it on myself (I thought it was just that cool), I did some checking. Guess what? It was a lie! For no apparent reason!

Seems these are all from the same artist, a Danish guy named Peter Callesen, who may or may not have used one single sheet of paper for each of these (his website doesn't really specify). Does it make the art any less remarkable? Does it make me feel any less of a talentless hack who can't fold up a paper airplane without devolving into a blubbering mass of paper cuts and tears? No, it does not. So I'm not sure what the lie was supposed to add to the email.

It's the same kind of pointless lie as a person claiming they were born in Harrow, Ontario instead of their real birthplace: Chatham, Ontario. It makes no difference to anyone which god-forsaken southern Ontario backwater they were born in, so why would they lie about it? The answer of course is, nobody knows.

However, it seems that there is nothing too trivial for people to lie about. Therefore, my recommendation is to always check Snopes.com, the Skeptic's Dictionary or your own common sense before believing an email, and most especially, before sending it on.

2. Email isn't magic.
There is no way in hell your computer will start to play a video to you simply because you forwarded an email on to x number of people. Disney cannot track how many emails are forwarded from your computer in order to send you money, give you a free trip, or grant you eternal youth. You won't find out who your secret admirer is by hitting "forward", and you're not going to save an ailing child by hitting "send". Email just doesn't work that way.

Email hucksters seem to be able to trick people easily because most people have no idea how email works. It's a lot like a car in that respect. You might know the basics of how to use it, but you don't really know what goes on behind the scenes. But trust me, email is about as magical as your Honda Civic.

If someone told you that driving to the grocery store and back ten times would make a certain song come on the radio the next time you turned on the car, you'd assume that they were mentally retarded and react accordingly, perhaps by smiling politely, patting them on the head and giving them a cookie. However, when people are told the same thing via email, somehow it is given a lot more credence. Here's a hint: If it sounds utterly impossible, it is.

Of course there are always those people who say, "I don't know if this will work, but I'll forward it on anyway. Why the heck not?!" The heck not is because you're essentially spamming your family and friends, filling their inboxes with nonsense and clogging their mail servers (and yours) with crap.

Also, see Rule #1.

3. You are allowed to edit emails that you forward.
Your ability to delete superfluous text in an email does not end once you hit the "forward" button. If you've done your due diligence to make sure you're not forwarding some outrageous lie - or you know it's a lie and you still feel it warrants re-forwarding - please go in and delete all of the ugly extraneous information in the email first.

Not only is it tedious to scroll through 37 versions of other people's thoughts (this is hilarious! so true!1! lolz!), that gobbledygook at the top of each email contains actual personal information that should not be forwarded to all and sundry. Do all of your friends a favour and delete it.

You also don't have to keep the 50-point pink font that screams at the unsuspecting recipient, either. You are allowed, nay greatly encouraged, to go in and turn it into something reasonable and tasteful. Your friends' retinas will thank you.

It's also a good idea to put your email addresses in the BCC field rather than the To field so that your recipients won't see every one of your friend's email addresses. You wouldn't give out all of your friends' telephone numbers to a bunch of strangers, would you?

You would? Wow, you're a real jerk, you know that?

4. Common courtesy only takes 4 little letters
Lord knows we all love a good dirty joke. However, you should remember that many people you are sending your amusingly saucy email to are perhaps opening it up at work. We've all had the unsettling sensation of clicking on an image in an email that is simply entitled "Ouch!1!", only to have a huge jpg fill the screen with an unfortunate naked man whose testicles are humourously caught in a wringer washer. This, of course, is the exact moment that the boss strolls up to ask about those TPS reports. Later that week, Sexual Harassment Sensitivity Training is scheduled for the whole office. Ouch, indeed.

All of this could have been avoided had the picture been labelled "Ouch!1! (NSFW)", which simply means Not Safe For Work. If you love your friend enough to send him/her a photograph of a man getting his junk hilariously crushed by an antique appliance, surely you love him/her enough to let them know to wait until it's safe to view it.

5. Other people's inboxes are not the place for your ill-informed, poorly researched, atrociously-spelled second-hand opinions
If any of these words appear in an email that you're thinking of righteously mass-forwarding, DO NOT:

redneck
immigrant
Jesus Christ
welfare
George W. Bush
blessings/god/prayer
John Edwards (the douche bag who pretends to talk to dead people, not the presidential candidate. Okay, maybe him, too.)
9/11
rag heads
politically correct
Intelligent design

Man, I could be here all day with this list... Hm. Here's a good rule of thumb: if you preface your email with something like, "FINALLY, someone has the guts to speak the truth!!1!", chances are the email is offensive to someone on your list. I'm not saying you don't have a right to your ill-informed opinion, I'm just saying don't force it on your whole address book of contacts. If you do, be prepared for rebuttal emails, often ones that are well-researched and tend to make you look like a bit of a dick.

Or, if you feel you must forward it, please take the time to pick and choose people in your address list who you feel share your opinions (i.e. NOT me), do not just shotgun it to everyone. Also, and this is important, see Rule #1.

Myself, I would heartily welcome mass emails that contain the following phrases:

critical thought
James Randi
the Socratic method
Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert/Lewis Black
secular humanism
tolerance
cultural relativism
Jason Statham (I'm only human)

Of course, my chances of getting a mass-forwarded email like that are as likely as me never getting any from the first list again. I.e. not bloody. But a girl can dream, can't she?

In any event, those are my general rules to anyone struggling with using email in this day and age. (There's probably a few more, but I'm not allowed to go past the number five in my blog posts.) I haven't touched on real spam, as there are plenty of sources out there to explain how to deal with that, and some who are much funnier than I am to boot.

Email is a great tool for communicating with friends, sharing a laugh or two, or avoiding having to actually talk to a human. Embrace it, have fun with it, but above all, don't forget to use the most important tool in your arsenal: that thing encased in bone and hair that sits just above your shoulders!

(Your brain, I'm talking about your brain.)

The Why Chromosome

Ah, I love a nice, clean house. I suppose I'd love it even more if I wasn't the one who had to clean it, but still. It's wonderful to relax in it knowing that if Oprah or the guy you had a crush on in high school just happened to knock on your door, you could welcome them into your home with aplomb.

Even though the work level is split pretty evenly at my house, I still whine about having to clean. I like to think of myself as a fairly renaissance woman, able to juggle the many challenges a 00s woman must face, but I must confess that scrubbing toilets on a regular basis is not one of the things that makes me feel particularly self-actualized. Although, I guess it's good to know that my worth as a human is no longer based solely on this skill. Now it's based on my ability to write a marketing plan as well. So there's that.

However, I've noticed in living with a male person of the masculine gender that our cleaning styles tend to differ slightly. And I'm wondering if it's just the households that I've lived in, or if it's a more widely-seen phenomenon.

There is one example in particular that stumps me. If your home has more than one level in it, chances are the women in your household do this when they clean: they pile up things that need to go upstairs at the bottom of the stairs, and things that need to go downstairs at the top of the stairs (depending on what floor she is cleaning at the time). This is an incredibly rational, extremely efficient thing to do. Instead of breaking her stride and wasting energy taking a trip up or down stairs needlessly, she will place the object on the stairs, knowing that in the general course of her cleaning, or the rest of the day, she or somebody else in the household will be going up or down and can easily grab the object on the way.

I have never seen a man do this.

In point of fact, I have actually seen many a man confidently stride past an object placed on the stairs, not only without taking the object, but as if he hadn't even seen it. When pressed as to why he had done this, he will insist that he had no idea where the object was intended to go once brought up or downstairs. How was he possibly supposed to guess where the toilet paper, a stack of folded laundry, or a dirty dish goes? He's not a mind reader for god's sake!

Indeed.

I do remember doing the same thing as a child before I grew up and started taking responsibility for myself, but the answer there was that I was just lazy and didn't want to take the thing. But that can't be the answer here. Can it?

I am hoping that there is some rational, science-based answer for it. Something about right-brain versus left-brain thinking, perhaps. Or hunting versus gathering race memory behaviour. Anything, really. Please feel free to email me your theories, or leave them in the comments.

We need to get to the bottom (or top) of this!

¿Dónde "S"tá la biblioteca?

The other day I stumbled across the Windsor Public Library site. At first I was impressed to see them having come so far from the time when I had to frequent their hallowed nooks as a student, lo those many years ago. (This was in the prehistoric days before computers, you understand, when you needed to use a thing called a "card catalogue" if you wanted to find a book. Although back then there were plenty of spots to park your dinosaur, at least.)

Anyway, now my old library is all online and digital and slick and whatnot. Good for them!

Only thing is, in looking at the front page of their site, I'm feeling a bit bad for the poor Windsorite illiterates now.

As if they didn't have enough to deal with already, poor buggers.

Happy New Year!

With special emphasis on the happy!

Now, I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions because, well, they're so darn easy to break and when you do, you feel awful and then dive headlong into the thing you didn't want to do because, what the hell, you're a weak-willed awful human being anyway, what's the difference, right?

No, I'm more a fan of baby steps and of working away at change as part of life on an ongoing basis. Since I'm prone to depression and the aforementioned petulant "Oh, I give up!" mindset after the slightest setback, I find it works better for me this way.

However, that doesn't mean that occasionally I can't take a moment to look at specific things that I'd like to work on. In that spirit, and in light of the fact that I have not done a Five List (TM) in simply eons, I give you:

Five Things That I Would Like To See Myself Work on This Year

1. Let's Get Physical!
I know it's probably the number one thing on most people's list of things to do for the new year, next to quitting smoking: losing weight and/or getting into shape. This is not really what I'm shooting for specifically. Sure, it's nice not to feel bloated and fat, and to be able to fit into your jeans without an elaborate scenario involving a wire hanger and a deal with the devil, but the thing I want is to just feel healthier.

Because let's face it: I ain't never been that healthy. My diet consists mainly of cheese, butter, and alcohol. Getting off my arse, putting down the mashed potatoes and wine, and getting my blood pumping can only do me good.

I started a new workout routine in September and I feel a lot better already. Not just because I've lost about 15 pounds, but because the other day we got hit with a huge pile of snow and I spent about two and half hours out shovelling. Although it was work and I struggled with it, I couldn't believe how, I don't know, strong and healthy I felt doing it. I kept waiting for the laboured breathing and uncontrollable muscle spasms that I was generally used to after five minutes of sustained exercise. It was weird!

Although it frightens me that I might start to enjoy "wholesome" activities that could be featured in a ParticipACTION ad, I must admit that not dying of a heart attack has become a goal of mine the older I get.

(Just FYI, right now my preferred method of death is a toss up between saving an adorable urchin and a litter of puppies from a life-threatening catastrophe, or accidentally being crushed between Jason Statham and Ryan Reynolds in some sort of sexy duel for my love.)

2. You Got One, Use It
A lot of people over the years have accused me of being smart (and, no, not all of them were being sarcastic). About five minutes reading this blog should put any fears of that possibility to rest, however, among some friends and family the impression remains. Maybe it's because I share some of the characteristics that typically smart people exhibit. For example, I ask the question "why" a lot, I'm a big fan of verifiable evidence, and I freely admit when I don't know or understand something.

As any truly smart person can tell you, this does not make me smart. It just makes me a lot less dumb than I could be if I were less insufferable. It doesn't make me any more able to understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity (I got about three paragraphs into the foreword and had to go lie down for a while), but it makes me better equipped to say, figure out that the email telling me I just won the Spanish lottery is a fraud. (Which is good for me, because that email one comes up a lot more than Theoretical Physics does on a daily basis anyway.)

So, the thing I'd like to work on is actually becoming smart, or at the very least, more rational. Besides, the brain is just like any other muscle in your body, the more you use it, the more flexible and strong it becomes. [Note to self: look up whether the brain is a muscle or not.]

3. The Hulk is an Idiot!
Along the same lines of trying to become more rational, another thing I'd like to work on is my tendency to become enraged over rather insignificant things. I'm a many-generationed W.A.S.P., so the instinct to deeply bury emotions like love, fear, passion, existential angst, doubt, simple joy, etc. courses through my veins as surely as does my involuntary affinity for boiled vegetables. In fact, the only acceptable emotions available to the W.A.S.P. are anger and alcohol-induced joviality.

As I don't want to take either to their natural conclusions (i.e. court-ordered anger management classes or A.A.), I thought I'd try to nip this thing in the bud, before it gets any more ridiculous than it is now.

Here is a short list of things that make me much angrier than is healthy:
- when the mouth-holes in the plastic lids on take out coffee cups align with the seam of the cup. You see, it makes the liquid pool more when I take a sip and it's a tiny bit messier than I'd like it to be.
- the fact that you can't skip over the FBI warning messages on DVDs in English... then in French. Then the disclaimers about the commentaries... in English... then French... then Spanish.
- when the toilet paper roll hangs in the "wrong" direction.
- people who ignore you if you accidentally bump into them and you say "Oh, excuse me". Seriously, they don't say ONE word. Not "it's okay", or "jerk", or even "screw you, lady". NOTHING. (I also always feel I have to get to the bottom of their silence.)
- the manufactured suspense of a prime time game show.
- the "shaky camera" phenomenon.

The list goes on, but I'm finding it hard to keep myself from getting all riled up already.

What I'd like to do is learn not to take any of these things personally, and perhaps understand that these are not things designed to have an impact on me in any real way whatsoever (except for the last two. And that makes me hate them more).

Because my life is going well in other areas, I tend to blow up the tiny inconveniences that I encounter in a day into something to rant about. If I could learn to be more sanguine about them, I feel I may be able to start expressing some of those other emotions I mentioned earlier. Who knows? A W.A.S.P. can dream, can't she?

(Actually, I think they're against that, too.)

4. Writer's Blog
As ever, I would like to be more diligent and creative in my writing. Every once in a while I look back at the beginning of my blog and wonder where all my energy and enthusiasm went. I mean, FIVE updates in ONE week? That's got to be some kind of record!

Anyway, I'd love to be able to recapture it. However, I say that pretty much every post, so I guess we'll see...

5. Happy Girl More
The older I get the more I understand that there really is only one thing I can control in this world, and that is my reaction to it. (I know that's such a hackneyed thing to say and it has probably been embroidered on many a throw pillow in its day, but that doesn't make it any less true.)

I've had quite a few concrete examples of my being able to change my attitude about a person or situation, so I cannot dismiss it any more. It's difficult, yes, but not impossible. And I'm not talking about self delusion ("I absolutely LOVE my shitty job!"), more about looking for more than is the easiest to see ("maybe quitting my job isn't the answer, maybe I just need to approach it differently"). It helps to surround yourself with people who are good at it themselves if you can, this is the sort of thing that is contagious - as contagious as being a miserable cuss is, in fact.

Anyway, that's what I'd like to continue to work on: being happy. Appreciating the wonderful things that I have while I have them, and not taking the crappy stuff too seriously. Being able to change the crappy stuff that happens in life is not always attainable for us mere mortals, but changing the way we feel about it is at least within our grasp (perhaps much harder to do, but still).

I always find watching something funny helps keep the morale up, too. Here's something that I rediscovered the other day from my childhood that always makes me smile. I hope it does the same for you (not completely safe for work as there is some swearing). Lovely Gilda, we miss you.

In any event, there's my Five List, the first of 2008. Here's to many more!

Kenny Bless Us, Everyone

They say that it is better to give than to receive. Well, from personal experience, I think they may be right.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, my mom was given a gift by a neighbour. It was a gift so hideous, and yet so earnestly given, that she of course had to accept it graciously, and with a straight face. Not only that, but it was a one-of-a-kind handmade hideous gift, and my mother felt compelled to hang it in our home lest said neighbour were to drop by unexpectedly. We kids, of course, laughed heartily and teased my poor mum mercilessly about it. (I'm sorry, but we're jerky, it's what we do.)

But that isn't the full extent of jerkiness, oh, no. When we moved out of the neighbourhood I felt it was my duty to pass on the joy of receiving an uncomfortably dreadful gift to various friends.

I gave it to many of my friends as a fake gift. It was wonderful. I got to see the initial pain of my dear friends having to be polite in the face of being given something so truly appalling, then the blessed relief they got when they found out it was only a joke.

Witness:

My friend Tom struggles with etiquette as his then-girlfriend offers no bloody help at all.

Tom shows off his lovely gift, as his girlfriend doubles over with emotional support.

It's really the closest thing to a practical joke that I've ever gotten to. I can never bear to make people feel uncomfortable for more than a minute or two. I squirmed terribly as one of my sweet friends stammered out that she always kind of liked that one Kenny Rogers song, and that it was a pretty shade of blue. I would have been completely ashamed of myself if she hadn't instantly suggested we do the same thing to Tom once she found out it was a joke.

Then one day a friend of mine ruined all my fun. She declared that she actually wanted the gift and she made me let her keep it! She explained that it was selfish of me to keep the fun all to myself and that others could use the delight of a Kenny-gifting encounter, too.

Of course, she was right.

She then "paid it forward" to a friend of hers that I don't know, and I've never seen the wonderful gift again. That was about fourteen years ago. *sigh*

Since then, life has carried on as normal, and each year I get nice, thoughtful gifts from friends and family that I enjoy. Useful things, tasteful things, things that I have asked for. Still, I dream that one of these bright Christmas mornings I may just open an awkwardly-shaped present and rediscover the joy that a Kenny Rogers-glitter-jumpsuit-guitar-clock miracle can bring to a gloomy, world-weary heart!

This holiday season, let me extend the same hope for you and your loved ones. May the glitter of a gold and blue jumpsuit be with you all! And to all a good night!