Two chewy aphorisms from the Happy Tutor: (1) “Give us Barabas,” cries the smart mob, and out he comes waving the American Flag. (2) The market ye seek lies not without but within. For His kingdom is not of this world.

When ridership dropped on some routes, MARTA figured out it didn’t have to cut the routes if it switched to mini-buses, which are cheaper to operate and staff. They’ve got some real rocket scientists working over there now. But will anyone at MARTA use this info to add new routes cheaply? I’m not holding my breath.

Pleo is a toy robot that is supposed to think and act like a baby dinosaur. The robot is supposed to retail for $200 later this year. Damn, I want one. Just to see what the dog and cats think of their new pet. Looks like it knows to recharge itself like a Roomba vac too.

Some three months ago I posted about Danish cartoonists receiving death threats for their depictions of Muhammed. And, well, things have only gotten more intelligent since then, so it’s time for an update.

But first, this linktastic post by Jason Pitzl-Waters, which points to this Wikipedia summary of the whole damn thing. And this Christopher Hitchens quote. Now then, I’m all caught up.

Are you caught up? Twelve cartoons in September, ranging from funny to clever to stupid to offensive. Several death threats. Cartoonists in hiding. One closed embassy. Several nationwide boycotts of Danish products. Demands from the Arab League for UN sanctions against Denmark. Several violent protests. At least three embassies set on fire, one of them not even Danish. And at least three deaths during all this madness.

I’ll say that last part again. Twelve cartoons. At least three people dead.

In response an Iranian paper has started a contest for the best cartoon making fun of the Holocaust. So twelve Danish cartoonists break a Muslim taboo, and somehow this leads to a contest to make fun of Hitler killing millions of Jews. Oh, and the death threats. And three people dead.

Who are these people? And why do these Muslim fundamentalists think that anyone in the West should respect their damnable opinions? It doesn’t matter how fucking offended they are. They burned embassies. They issued death threats. They killed people. And they think the Holocaust is funny. Tee-hee.

They do not believe in civil society, human rights, or freedom of speech. So fuck them. Fuck all of the violent protesters, all of the governments condoning it, and all the jihadists grinning from ear to ear because everyone is up in a tizzy about it. Fuck you all.

I will say this for Christian fundamentalists. During all the Christ mockery of the last thirty years, they’ve never killed people over it. No one died over Life of Brian, The Last Temptation, Piss Christ, or The Da Vinci Code. They whined, they cried, they left their shit out in public. But they didn’t kill anyone for it. Kudos to them.

I have ambigous feelings about the death penalty. But anyone who kills someone over religious satire deserves to die, painfully and in public. And anyone who incites others to do so deserves to die. Twice.

And we in the West had better be prepared to pull the trigger. I think the whole “clash of civilizations” meme is bullshit, but these murdering fundamentalists obviously don’t.

Christopher Hitchens: “Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.”

Last week I waited on a couple and their almost-five-year-old grandson. As I was walking them through the restaurant to find them a table, Grandson grew very excited when he saw our biggest booth.

“You can sit there. A big boy can sit in a big booth,” I told him.

He mumbled something in response. Rolling her eyes, Grandmother translated, “He says he’s not a boy today. He’s a skunk.”

I remember my little brother at Grandson’s age spending several weeks pretending he was a dog, so I was amused. Grandmother was not. When I returned to the table with some water, I overheard Grandmother telling Grandfather, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

Later, I saw Grandson pointing to a wadded-up napkin. “Look, it’s a mouse.”

“No,” Grandmother corrected, “that’s a napkin.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Grandmother was not being a very good grandmother that day. Whatever her reasons, she was not appreciating her almost-five-year-old grandson for who he is. She was treating what is childlike as though it were childish.

The division between “childlike” and “childish” is well marked in this society that worships regularly at the Cult of the Child. One we appreciate, even adore, and the other we scold. One, we feel, is appropriate and valuable, the other shameful and immature.

And yet we have no such division for adolescent behavior.

Click to continue reading “Embrace your inner adolescent”