An Grinch ar Ghoid na Nollag

A version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, adapted for the Irish by myself and Máire Eoghain, of Scátháinín Mháire, for her Meánrang Gaeilge, 2011.
You can find this and other fun Irish goodies over at our blogger site, Agus Aráile, 7rl.blogspot.com

Baineadh sult as an Nollaig i mbaile na Who,
Ach théadh an Grinch thar an tséasur gan fiú.

Bhí an ghráin ag an nGrinch ar an Nollaig, fadó.
Bhí a chroíse chomh fuar agus róbheag faoi dhó.

"Caithfidh mé stop a chur uirthi go deo!"

Níor mhaith leis an torann, ná bréagáin na féile,
Síor-canadh is casadh is 'chuile shórt eile.

"Gread leis an gcallán is guthanna caola!
Curfaidh mé scrios ar a mbuac na teile!"

Go tobann ansin, chum seisean a bheart.
Foirfe go holc, is go foirfe mícheart.

Shleamhnaigh sé síos isteach ina dtithe,
Idir gach uile Who, ag codladh sa luí.
'Chuile Who-leanbh sa leaba theolaí.

Ghoid sé na bronntanais sactha sna stocaí,
Féiríní beaga 's crainn mhóra fhlocaithe;

Gach mír den bhia is gach naipcín gréasta;
Thóg seisean uatha fiú rósta an fhéasta.

Ach tugadh faoi deara an gadaí ag Who,
Páiste amháin, tugtar léi Cindy Lou.

"Cé thusa ansin? Cén fáth ' bhfuil tú ann?
Céard atá tú ag déanamh anois lenár gcrann?"

"Cuirfidh mé caoi ar bholgán amháin.
Sin í an chúis a tháinig mé ann.
Agus beidh mé ar ais le bhur stuif agus crann.
Mar sin, téigh a luí, agus ná bí ag stán'."

Ansin chuig a chluas, bhí fuaim ag teacht.
Glortha ag séideadh go soléir is beacht.

Ach ní raibh siad brónach ar bith, nó go dona.
Ba é ceol lán d'armóin agus mothú an-sona.

Cé go ndearna sé cinnte a dhícheall beag scallta,
Baineadh tada amach ansin, go ginearalta.

Tháinig an Nollaig in ainneoin a iarrachta.
Bhí na Whos fós ag ceiliúradh in aghaidh a choireachta.

"B'fhéidir nach bhfuil as na siopaí an bhrí,
Ach maireann an Nollaig anseo inár gcroíthe!"

D'fhoghlaim an Grinch gur an meon an ní 's deise.
Bíonn rudaí go deas, ach níl siad ach breise.

Tháinig an mothú isteach ina chroí,
Agus maireann sé beo ansin ceart i gconaí.

Mar a d'fhás a chroí féin an lá maith sin faoi thrí.
Agus maireann sé beo ansin ceart i gconaí!!

The Other Half

"I'll pray for you."

What Christians (and apparently now, Muslims 130127) mean when they say, "I'll pray for you."

Here's my question to you, Mr. or Ms. Christian (or Abrahamic god-pusher of any sort); Why even bother telling me, an atheist, that you will pray for me? However you imagine that playing out, it is at best a misuse of communication, and at worst a product of coercion.

You're communicating dishonestly-

Mentioning it to me gets you nowhere with me. I can't imagine you don't already realise that I think prayer is a waste of time.
If you were really concerned for me, and thought that sending psychic messages to your imaginary sky ghost would help, then why don't you just do that, and not tell me you are going to do it? That would make much more sense, if indeed you actually believed such un-efforts would be efficacious. But why mention it? Because the weight of your intent is not actually on the prayer, is it? However silly that alone would be, you are just trying to shirk further discussion, when faced with cognitive dissonance.
You throw the phrase off like a lizard detaches its tail, and in some part of your mind, you may also realise the phrase is worthless in its literal sense.

You're just being selfish-

When you realise that you're being dishonest, you wish to mitigate your own self-judgment by hearing yourself saying what you believe to be righteous words.
'There, I said the nice *christian*(muslim) thing.. I'm good.. I'm not a liar for jesus (or Mo)."

You think you're being watched-

You're putting on a show for your imaginary judge. You've got to choose carefully from that limited superstitious phrase set, don't you? If you don't say the appropriate magic words, then it will show up as a negative tick on your heavenly credit score. Your god is watching you! Never mind the inconsistency that he's supposedly all-knowing in the first place, and would discern you're underlying, platitude encrusted motivations anyway.
But it doesn't end there! Who else is watching? Others of your "faith".
Despite what they say, they do judge, and you're afraid of that. You have to be careful not to say what you're really thinking, like "fuck off," lest your congregation cast a glance of disparagement your way.

So let's try just a bit harder to put an honest face on it, shall we? If you really and truly wish to pray for me, go ahead and clench your eyelids resolutely firm to your little delusional hearts content, dance a dance, make a grass doll, whatever. I just don't need to hear about it. And if you think I do, take a long hard think about these, your more probable motivations.

Pumpcarvings

Three pans of lasagna and a massive pumpkin for each ensured a good time was had by all.

I got pumpkin slime all over my iphone screen. I guess that will teach me not to be constantly on my mobile device while elbow deep in gourd guts. By the looks of this pic, I could have used the 4S's stabilization feature, too.

Mine is lowermost right.

Festivities continue Monday with the handing out of the candy! (One for you, and two for me. One for you, and three for me.)

Apparently, My Ass Is No Asset

In which I link my latest disappointment back to politics and religion.

I was brainstorming how to make some quick cash, and thought back to an article I was reading, about how research institutions really need bodies to do research on..

http://tinyurl.com/3o9zqlz

..and so I thought, hey, I wonder how much I could get if I sold my future corpse to science. Sounded like a good idea to me. Supply and demand! There's probably alotta fun stuff inside this bizarre set of guts.
But then I was researching it further, and found out that it is, seemingly for no good reason, illegal to sell bodies or body parts, even if they're your own, in these United States, and in each of the states of these United States.
Instead, we are prodded, with a strong undertone of moral sanction, to just hand over our most precious asset (our actual former selves) to those researchers who would seek to both deal in and deny its commodity.

"Your donation should be made in the spirit of a truly priceless gift for mankind and the advancement of health sciences."

Blah blah blah giveusyourbodyforfree blah.

What are the honest reasons behind this quaint proscription? I wager, the self-same religious "sacred body" jibberty jabber mentioned in that article.
Oh, Reginald, we mustn't trample on the "soul", cheapen up the "chakras", or debase the "spirit" of the deceased's former temple.
Laws against such an otherwise reasonable transaction can only be based in superstitious sensitivities and rooted in the antiquated asshattery that has yet to be fully flushed out of our societal system.
I'm winking at you, religion.

Hey, wait! What happened to our great capitalist society?! Why isn't the political Right jumping all over this? Oh, that's right, they have to play the doublethink game and play to the diametrically opposed constituents of their base: the fundie religious, and the free-market wheeler-dealers. And since this idea would step on the toes of the already panicky social reactionaries, the fundie card trumps on this one.
And why isn't the Left up in arms.. or rather, flowers.. about the infringement that is unjustly and unreasonably restricting our personal right to happiness in determining the manner by which our remains meet their ultimate destiny? Oh, that's right, they have to tiptoe around the egg shells of political correctness. We shouldn't dare to possibly disrespect anyone's sacred beliefs. Especially if those beliefs happen to have been sneaked in and codified by law. Everyone has the right not to be offended, after all.
Sure, I can understand a ban on selling other people's body parts. That sort of market would conjure the whole woke-up-in-a-bathtub-full-of-ice-with-a-surgical-scar-missing-a-kidney scenario. But my own body parts?! My own whole body? That's gotta be worth something. And I was under the impression that it was mine to do with as I pleased.. well, except apparently, use "controlled substances" on it, sell it for sex, or voluntarily stop its life functions.. but that's a whole nother set of somewhat related issues.
Can't say there wouldn't be any purchase interest, if they were being honest, especially with all the interesting complications of diabetes churning around in this walking zombie. But then, of course, the arms of those institutions of higher learning would be hard twisted to start actually paying for something they've always gotten for free.. or clandestinely dug out of the local paupers' field. That's the real reason they're so quick to leverage that "spirit of giving" "betterment of mankind" spiel. For them too, it's just all a matter of the cash.
If they want it, they can buy it.
Their moral outrage is plastic.

So, fuck 'em. They're not willing to fork over fare trade value, they're getting squat. My corpus is going in the furnace.

Root Beer Milk?

In the Supermarket I sees this amazing new product. Rootbeer flavoured milk! For times when you crave that poorly disguised children's medicine taste, combined with a thick mucous inducing consistency.

And not only is it "Select", folks, but also "artificially flavored", for those times when you want your viscous medicine fluid to also bear down on your internals like ever so much plastic.

Theists are so Clever (sarcasm)

This placard encountered on facebook here, with this addition from the poster:

" 'Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...' — C.S. Lewis "


This assay endeavors to be witty on the basis of a number of disingenuous straw-man arguments and projection. It fancies itself an artful attempt at objection to atheism, but ends up failing as badly in its aim as the erstwhile flat-earther complaint, "If the earth is round, why don't we all fall off?"
Let's see exactly what's wrong with it.

Firstly, the attempted lampoon, in trying to attack atheism, fails to address it at all. Instead, it tries to aim its spit-wad caliber missiles at firmly evidenced, scientifically based, standard cosmological and biological principles; and doesn't even represent them accurately. Know what you're attacking before you rush head-long into idiocy.

Atheism is not a belief system. It has no dogma and promotes no claims. It is the simple *lack* of belief in a god or gods. We are all atheist with respect to the gods we don't happen to believe in. Do we believe in Amaterasu? No. Most likely because most people don't even know which of the many gods that is. We are atheist in respect to it. Don't think your particular god is special, or any different than any of the rest. People who define themselves as atheists today simply lack a belief in all gods. So right from the start, "Atheism, The belief that.." is fallacious.

Secondly, no one I know of on this planet holds the belief that "there was nothing". Not cosmologists; who only extrapolate on the basis of sound evidence back to a quantum singularity; which is something, not nothing; Not agnostics, who don't address the subject at all on the basis that we can't know either way about gods, creation, something or nothing; And not theists, who are the ones who postulate a variety of incongruous and mutually incompatible *magic* creators, without any evidence for such beings, who *magically* brought everything into existence with no description of the method. They postulate without basis a supernatural cause, and fail to explain the connection between that cause and its effect. That is the very definition of magic.
Yes, it is the theist who believes in magic, not the atheist.
And the bottom line is, there may or may not have been nothing. We don't know, but atheism has nothing to say on the subject.

And Thirdly, the poster's assertion of atheism being too simplistic, on top of her tired old claim that a universe without a god has no meaning, via C.S. Lewis; That is what is too simplistic. Human beings assign meaning to their lives and the elements in their lives. That is not a depraved view of meaning by any stretch. It wonderfully speaks to the way we can describe how we fit *naturally* into our world and this universe. There is no need, and indeed no evidence to assume some supernatural meaning-assigner. That, in and of itself, is yet another instance of projection; of anthropomorphizing the universe as an intelligence. That's what is too simplistic, too juvenile, and not well thought out.

Is atheism simple? Yes. Is it too simple? Not unless you try to misconstrue it as a belief system, or a means by which answers are derived. But atheism is, as I've stated, not a belief system. It makes no claims. It doesn't pretend to answer any questions, and doesn't seek, unlike the many religions of the world, to fill in the gaps of our knowledge with the unsatisfactory and dishonest place-holder of "god did it". That's not an answer. It describes nothing; explains nothing. It has no basis in reality. It is honest to admit there are things we don't know. Making up gods for those things we have yet to figure out is no answer at all.
The next disjointed and overreaching assertion religious people usually jump to is that atheists don't believe in anything at all then. That's not true either. Just because atheism doesn't provide a belief system by itself, doesn't mean that we, as human beings, don't derive our beliefs elsewhere. We just don't happen to tie them to unsubstantiated myths, fairytales, or imaginary friends. I for one, value belief in things that are supported by evidence. Some atheists find meaning in the pursuit of science, others in the tasks of humanism.. or both. There are many belief systems that have nothing to do with the idea of gods, even religions- some forms of Buddhism, for example. We shouldn't assume that those who differ in their beliefs from us are in some way devoid of belief, meaning, ethics or morals.

To finish up, let's look at some of the *filler* in this supposedly clever epithetic paragraph.

"..nothing happened to nothing.." - Utterly meaningless. Who would claim such a thing? Though atheists usually cannot be generalized in most ways religious people would like, I can assure you, we would not.

"..then nothing magically exploded for no reason.." - A quantum singularity is not nothing. It didn't explode, it expanded. To say that everything that occurs has to have a reason, i.e., goal oriented intelligence behind it, is just another case of anthropomorphic projection, again. This is not to say that there isn't a valid question of "how". There is just not always a "why". These two questions are often conflated by religious people who can't seem to wrap their heads around the difference.

"..creating everything.." - Yet another case of not being able to wrap their heads around the concept that not only isn't everything "created", but that most things are not "created". Human beings create things. That is the only verifiable example of creation that exists in the universe so far. Human beings like to project that perception of creation onto other things that seem complex. Just because something is complex doesn't mean it's created. This simply boils down to an argument from ignorance on the part of religious people.

"..and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself.." - I've already shown how magic is a hallmark of religious belief, not of atheism, nor of science. Science does very well at describing rationally, logically and with supporting evidence how order can arise from natural physical conditions. Read a science book. If you think your god put stuff together like lego pieces, then describe exactly the method by which he did this and how such a claim can be independently substantiated. Do that, right after you show that your particular god exists and acts upon this universe at all.

"..for no reason what so ever [sic].." - Again with the fallacy that everything has to have a "why"-based reason. If you think that everything has to have such a reason behind it, then do please explain why that is in the first place.

"..into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs." - Now who's being too simplistic? Oh wait.. it's this sophomoric, fallacy-soaked, straw-man laden attempt at cleverness that has been too simplistic all along.

"Makes perfect sense." - Yes, It does, when you both represent the concepts you're attempting to describe accurately, and know what you're talking about.

I Have Implants!

Wait. No I don't, despite what iPhone autocorrect may wish to have you know. The word "unopened" is a perfectly good word anyways. Why would it want to change it?

Between Boehner and Dayton

Why does Governor Mark Dayton.. rr.. Marshall Field.. Macy.. Target?. whatever, always look like he's about ready to cry?



At least he doesn't blubber uncontrollably like Boehner.

We're Not Racist

At a nearby movie house.

Are the Irish considered a "race"? What criteria go into determining a race of people? Physical considerations, usually, but how about purely cultural or geographic ones. Are Northern Irish people a different "race" than Republic of Ireland folks?
Can ginger people be considered a race? How about people with Down's Syndrome? Things that make ya go blërg.

..But What Else Doesn't it Contain?

I had breakfast at McDonald's with a friend this morning.

Yes, I know we have better choices, but [fill in excuse here]. One breakfast burrito mummied up tight. I'm not exactly sure what it contained, but I've been successfully duped by their marketing department into perceiving the ingredients as something resembling scrambled eggs, sausage and cheese.

What I was surprised at was their apparent need to tell me what was *not* in the burrito, and what that something was...

Hail Storm

Suddenly it's hot and humid today. Then we get a hail storm. I went outside in it, to get a hailstone, because I'm smart like that :P I forgot my side door lock was busted and had to run round the front. We'll see if I've raised any bruises.

Buffett Biffs It

Jimmy Buffett fell off stage in Australia..

Fox news in Minneapolis apparently changes the news item to the collapse of a self-serve food counter :P



I wonder if the buffet in question had any cheeseburgers in paradise?

FAIL

Just rummaging through old stuff. I found this missing pet flyer that I took from a supermarket on my way through Albert Lea Minnesota in September of 2001.
For those who don't know, Hormel is a meat packing plant. 0_o