SO LONG, JEFF

Jeff Hanneman, the brilliant, life-long guitarist for Slayer, died yesterday. A statement from the band simply said, “Slayer is devastated to inform their friends and fans that their bandmate and brother, Jeff Hanneman, passed away at about 11AM this morning near his Southern California home.” I can already envision the assholes from the Westboro Baptist Church preparing their lovely placards to honor him.

Douchebag hipsters, top-40-listening idiots, and religious retards (including your mother in-law) have long associated Slayer with anti-theism and devil-worship, but, let’s be honest, no one ever accused the aforementioned, deciphering groups of listeners of being exceptionally bright. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Slayer has been, and always will be, one of the most notoriously brutal, honest, and thought provoking bands in history. Is there is a single band on planet earth that is more ubiquitously associated with evil and mayhem? I think not. However, despite retarded popular opinion, Slayer has never been a satanic band, but, true to form, that certainly didn’t stop them from reveling in that public image.

Slayer simply takes the harsh reality of the sometimes very ugly world that confronts them and shoves it in back in our delusional, facebook-checking, idiot faces. Topics like famine, disease, murder, and death are consistent lyrical themes that pepper Slayer’s ultra-aggressive musical attack. If society wants to stick its collective head in the sand and pretend such unpleasant topics aren’t part of our objective reality, then I guess we should all go back to reading TMZ and watching The Jersey Shore. But, if you want a nasty dose of reality served without the large side-dish of phony pop bullshit, Slayer fucking delivers.

Despite being constantly pigeon-holed by the simple-minded, Slayer is a purely American creation and a testament to free speech. In an increasingly sanitized, post-Janet nip-slip world, Slayer has consistently challenged conventional norms, and they have never been afraid to do so in rude fashion. If there is a God, he made Jeff Hanneman just to piss you off.

So long, Jeff. You will be missed.

HAPPY EASTER

Christians love nothing more than grandstanding on their phony, righteous outrage, and saying “happy zombie day” to these dolts on Easter is a sure fire way to give them the false indignation they so crave. However, I’m not exactly sure why that statement is so offensive to bible-thumpers. A zombie is defined as a being who has been reanimated by a supernatural power, and, correct me if I am wrong, Jesus was resurrected from the dead on Easter Sunday by the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe. So why are Christians so offended by the insinuation that Jesus was a zombie? Is it the general association that zombies have with mindless cannibals? Perhaps Christians should reconsider their stance on the issue while they are consuming human blood and flesh at this morning’s Easter Sunday mass. You can’t make this shit up. On a side note, it cannot be a coincidence that the season finale of The Walking Dead falls on Easter Sunday. Now you’ll have to excuse me for the day; I’m gonna go look for Easter Eggs at the bottom of a bottle of Tito’s.

DOLPHIN MOSES

The above heartbreaking video is footage of a mother dolphin struggling to save her already dead calf. According to the report, she spent days with her baby on her back in a desperate attempt to give the calf oxygen so that it might live. What’s more amazing is that a non-human mammal demonstrated incredible compassion and behaved morally apparently without having to be told to do so by her dolphin God. But, wait, I thought theism was the only source of objective morality?

See, moral behavior is not something that is inherent within earthly beings; we must be told how to think and behave by a list of archaic rules that were magically engraved on stone tablets by an invisible man. Thus, I’m sure the incessant clicking and squeaking of dolphins is nothing more than the endless repetition of the dolphin ten commandments that were given to them by dolphin Moses thousands of years ago. Otherwise, this unthinking beast would have simply dumped that stupid dead calf on the ocean floor and gone looking for a snack and a new dolphin baby-daddy.

RON AND FEZ: THE MEANING OF LIFE

If you aren’t familiar with the Ron & Fez show on Sirius XM, then that is something you need to remedy quickly. I do not hesitate for one second to label Ron Bennington the greatest radio personality in the country. The guy is hilarious, brilliant, and ten times the interviewer of a James Lipton or Larry King. Anyway, listen to Ronny B’s thoughts on organized religion above, and then do yourself a favor and check out his afternoon radio show and website.

EVOLUTION DISPROVED: THE CROCKODUCK

We all know the religious are stupid, but a lot of them are liars, too. Instead of offering any evidence that a God exists, they try to poke tiny holes in the mountain of evidence that proves evolution is the mechanism by which life came to be on this planet, and they do this by attempting to exploit gaps in the existing fossil record. The fossil record that evidences evolution is by no means complete, and it is very likely that it will never be complete because many species that existed in the past were simply not preserved or their fossils have weathered away. However, there are still many transitional and intermediate fossils known to exist, and from the fossil record that has already been discovered, there is no doubt that evolution is the truth. But, never discouraged by facts, religious dumbshits take the enormous and utterly ridiculous leap in logic that the gaps that exist in evolution somehow mean the bible is true.

In the above video, Kirk Cameron suggests that because a half-crocodile, half-duck fossil has never been found, that the theory of evolution is a fabrication. Not only is this proposition unimaginably and fantastically stupid, it’s also completely disingenuous on Cameron’s part. While he is a complete fucking moron, Kirk likely has enough brains to realize what he is claiming is absurd and not at all how scientists suggest the evolutionary process works. The notion that at an ape one day gave birth to a human is made by those who are either too impossibly stupid to live or by someone that is lying to advance their bullshit message. Cameron is clearly doing the latter. He knows what he’s saying is an absolute falsehood, but that certainly does not stop him from confidently uttering such idiotic nonsense to convince the Fox News audience that Jesus Christ is Lord. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a bearing false witness a sin against God?

Thus, Kirk’s belief in God has made him a willfully ignorant, lying hypocrite. Gosh, the religious are right, faith is a virtue.

MORE OF THE SAME

The Texas Rangers’ star outfielder and recovering junkie, Josh Hamilton, relapsed earlier this week by hitting the bottle, and today he issued an apology to his family, his team, and his fans. As if on cue from the post I wrote this morning, Hamilton stated:

“After this happens and praying about it, I cannot take a break from my recovery. My recovery is Christ. My recovery is an everyday process, because when I take that one day off, it leaves me open for that moment of weakness and it’s always been that way.”

Personally, I don’t think Hamilton owes an apology to anyone. A grown man can have a few drinks as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone, and Hamilton stated that the several drinks he consumed did not result in him snorting angel-dust in an alley and killing strippers. No harm, no foul. However, if Hamilton feels he let some people down then it’s his prerogative to say he’s sorry, and I can’t fault him for that. I just find it bizarre that a star athlete with a very successful career and a jam packed bank account still needs the artificial crutch of religion to escape his addiction. If his life doesn’t provide for a satisfactory reality then I’m not sure what hope there is for the rest of us regular folks.

IDIOTS IN CRISIS

You gotta love Fox News. No recitation of the channel’s blatant political agenda is really necessary, but to quote Jon Stewart, Fox News is a “cyclonic perpetual emotional machine that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” Basically, the network exists to convince small-minded, bible thumping rednecks that voting for plutocrats is in their best economic interest. This effort entails nonstop manufactured outrage over intentionally misperceived “attacks” on Christianity. Amazingly, convincing members of the world’s largest and most prevalent religion that they are a persecuted minority has been a relatively easy task.

In the video above, hot-air machine Stuart Varney invites the president of American Atheists, Dave Silverman, onto his program to be publicly scolded for having the audacity to think for himself. I recently blogged about how the religious put their idiotic beliefs on a pedestal safely out of reach of criticism, and this video is a textbook example of that cowardice. The minute Silverman tries to rationally and accurately explain that prayer is futile in the face of an oncoming hurricane, the panel pandering to religious dunderheads jumps all over him for mocking and insulting their moronic beliefs with childlike fits of false indignation all while thoroughly bashing atheists and those with critical thinking skills. Have you ever seen Idiocracy? It’s happening right before our eyes.

SO LONG, HITCH

I haven’t really had an opportunity to post much here over the past soul-crushing work-week, but I’m going to get back on the cheapthinker ball here shortly. I certainly don’t want to disappoint all three of my avid readers. Unfortunately, over the course of the fruitless blogging week, my favorite writer and hero alcoholic, Christopher Hitchens, passed away after battling cancer of the esophagus. I’ve known Hitchens was sick since his rather bleak diagnosis about a year and a half ago, and, judging from his very recent public appearances, I knew the deadly disease and the agonizing radiation treatments were both beginning to take a large toll on him physically. However, despite his gaunt appearance and frail voice, I never really believed he would succumb to his illness.

There was part of me that thought the larger than life Christopher Hitchens was simply too strong to allow a small group of malignant cells silence him. I just knew he would somehow pull through and regrow his shaggy hair and scruffy beard, and promptly return to trashing religious morons and moral hypocrites all while gargling enough Johnnie Walker Black to stun a mule. Unfortunately, that was not to be, and Hitchens died on December 15th in a hospital in Houston. It’s still very strange to talk about him in the past tense; one can easily go watch his many great debates and speeches on youtube and see him full of life and vigor and mowing down idiots with venomous glee. That’s how I will always remember him.

Hitchens has been on my radar screen ever since I discovered him as a frequent guest on Bill Maher’s show some years ago, and certainly long before I came to know him as an outspoken atheist. His knowledge of politics, literature, and culture was fearsome and unmatched, and his erudition was always delivered with a keen sense of irony and English charm. However, it wasn’t until he published God Is Not Great that I really took notice of the man’s prolific output and brilliant prose. He’s been my hero ever since.

Hitchens’ arguments against religion and the existence of a God were virtually airtight. In the many debates I’ve watched, I never saw a single opponent raise even a modest challenge that Hitchens could not easily turn against them in spectacular and embarrassing fashion. Hitchens claimed not to be an atheist, but rather an anti-theist. He said not only did he not believe religion to be true, but that he was glad it wasn’t true. The major monotheistic religions seemed to Hitchens to be nothing more than celestial dictatorships from which there was no escape, and Hitchens was an arch enemy of all forms of totalitarianism and bullying everywhere. I will always be grateful to Hitchens for helping to fuel my interest in what has subsequently become my favorite topic of discussion and study, and for giving me the courage to come out swinging against adults that still believe in bronze age superstitions. Seriously, as Hitch would say, grow the fuck up.

I’m going to post some of my favorite Hitchens moments over the course of the next few weeks. It’s truly a shame that there is now only a finite amount of them to be shared. If you’ve never read any of Hitchens work, do yourself a favor and remedy that quickly, and, while you’re at it, pour yourself a Johnnie Walker Black cut with Perrier. It will cure what ails you. Godspeed, Hitch. You will be sorely missed.