No fat lady in a horned helmet over here

The Arbourist’s partner, The Intransigent One, is a choral soprano who has received some vocal training. She has even taught herself arias. The Arbourist himself sings in a choir but mostly plays the piano. With that information in mind, I wonder they think of this video, another incarnation of the “Sh*t people say” meme:

It’s Sh*t Opera Singers Say, and is brought to you by mezzo–soprano Jennifer Rivera and Tenor William Ferguson.

Some trivia: The song sung when she puts on all those scarves is not a made up, but rather is a few measures of what is arguably the best–known opera excerpt sung by women, the Queen of the Night Aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, also known as Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen. The fact that she doesn’t reach F₆ shows she’s no coloratura soprano.

War on Christmas ends

Today, a national association of brick–and–mortar and online retails declared victory in the War on Christmas. A press release was issued to mark the occasion:

Today is a great day in the history of capitalism, business, and the United States. Retailers decades long effort to redefine Christmas have been successful. What once was a religious holiday has successfully transformed into a commercialized and consumerized glorified shopping spree. And no wingnut can really complain, as Christmas was the bastardized descendant of the Roman festival of Saturnalia and various winter solstice observances. A careful reading of the Bible reveals evidence that implies that Jesus was probably born in late summer or early autumn. Therefore, our victory in the War on Christmas in no way is an attack on any religion.

The press release gave special thanks one group:

We would like to give special thanks to our moles in the National Association of Perennially Pissed off Wingnuts for distracting them from our real objective. Everyone knows that the phrase “Happy Holidays” merely began as a shortening of “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” However, our agents, by reminding wingnuts that the phrase “Happy Holidays” could also apply to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and other winter holidays, and by making wingnuts think it was a politically correct attack on Christianity, allowed us to distract our enemies with an irrelevant diversion, therefore allowing us to focus on our real objective.

A question

How exactly are laws preventing same–sex couples who really want to get married from actually getting married supposed to protect the sanctity of this 72–day marriage, a marriage that, unlike many other things, actually was over by Christmas?

More random stuff

In no particular order:

• Leon Panetta, the American Secretary of Defense, has signed a certification to formally end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (via).
• And bigots, the sky hasn’t fallen.
• More proof that correlation does not equal causation, or why emptying your spam folder is good for the economy (via).
• Someone Rick Perry respects is strongly urging him not to run for president.
• Too bad Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum didn’t get the message.
• There were terrorist attacks in Norway, and several people have been killed. My condolences.
• This is so sad. “Half of US Social Program Recipients Believe They ‘Have Not Used A Government Social Program’“. The ignorance, I can see it.
• Team Japan won the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Congratulations to them. A major morale booster after their devastating earthquake.
• As my own team did not play like CONCACAF champs, I’ll admit to cheering for the US.
• The game was also the most tweeted event in history.
• Update: Negative aspects of and problems with gender stereotypes.

The following is a message from God

Dear not-raptureds:

You may have seen lots of people being raptured today. However, they weren’t the ones you expected. For example, the Robertson, Dobson, Fischer, and Barber types are still here. There are numerous reasons for this.

One is the consistent false predictions. There are far too many doomsdays that didn’t.

One reason is that you accuse me of “creating a fake”. Evolution is a fact supported by overwhelming observable evidence. The cdesign proponentists and creationists dispute this, therefore committing the sin of blasphemy by accusing me of being deceptive. This is why members of the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis et al are still here.

Another is the few–issuesism. You focus almost exclusively on abortion, school prayer (even though you are told not to show off your faith), and same–sex marriage. How could it possibly be reasonable for my “followers” to be few–issue voters, when I, the creator of the universe, are clearly not a few–issue diety? You give the whole faith a bad name, making all Christians look like judgmental, sex obsessed fundies who cannot mind their own businesses. This therefore excludes the Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, et al are still here.

One other reason is how you promote the heresy of “prosperity theology”. Rather than acting following the reality that a camel going through the eye of a needle has a better chance than the rich man has of getting into heaven, you claim that the rich are especially favoured by me. You even go so far as to falsely ignore one entire book of the Bible. Instead you lie and whine about “redistribution”, while at the same time having no problem running million dollar megachurches and living in mansions funded by the proceeds of your members. This is why pretty much everyone who is a member of a megachurch is still here.

Lastly, you promote hypocrisy and make a complete farce of the idea of being saved. You claim that once you are saved you are always saved and guaranteed to get to heaven, no matter what you do. This provides no incentive for being moral, hence you high divorce rate, rampant child abuse, and the oppression of women. This is why all fundamentalist and theocon types are still here.

For those reasons, this is why the Lunas of the world have been raptured, and why you wingnuts have not.

Have a nice tribulation.

From: God

Two quotes

I’ve found two quotes in the blogosphere, and they basically summarize my view of the Tea Party, Rand, and the GOP.

I don’t know who came up the first, but I found versions of it at both Dispatches from the Culture Wars and at DAMMIT JANET!:

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate that holds a dozen cookies. The CEO grabs 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.”

I’m pretty sure that the other one comes from someone named John Rogers, writing at the blog Kung Fu Monkey:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

This you have to read

A too funny thing this is.