Humour

My next couple of posts on climate change are going to be pretty serious, so I thought I might throw in a bit of humour first. And what better way to do it than to create your own atheist bus slogan? Yes, that’s right: the atheist bus campaign has now set up an atheist bus slogan generator, so you can create your own custom atheist bus slogan! Feel free to create your own, then please post it here.

Well I think it’s high time we had a little comic relief, so as I’ve just seen Ghost Town—and I enjoyed The Office and Extras—I thought it would be appropriate to post this video of Ricky Gervais talking about the Bible. The Bible is a very easy target for comedians, as it is just so patently absurd—it is totally unbelievable that any educated adult could accept what it says literally, yet so many do! It’s utterly incredible how people can switch off their normal critical faculties when it comes to religion.

The day so many of us have been waiting for has finally arrived! And here’s how I celebrated the end of the Bush administration—we originally tried to follow Loverboy’s idea of using balloons, but they kept exploding whenever we tried to do anything with them! So we decided to shoot me tearing up images of Rice, Cheney and Bush instead, which fortunately worked pretty well I think. As promised, we’ve also posted an extended, extra naughty version for my web site members, and I blow a kiss to everyone who entered my win a kiss from me for Christmas competition. I received emails from a few people who said they were trying to think of a winning entry, but didn’t end up posting any! So I guess a lot of people were so intent on winning that they didn’t enter at all if they didn’t think they could. But as I ended up blowing a kiss to every entrant, I would have given you a kiss anyway. (As with all of our videos, it is in MPEG4 format, so you’ll need either QuickTime or 3ivx to view it.)

On a more serious note, I would sincerely like to wish President Obama all the best for his term in the White House—let’s hope he is able to achieve at least some of the things he has set out to do.

Well I think it’s high time we had some good news, and if you’re an atheist like me, this certainly is that. The atheist bus campaign I wrote about last year has now been officially launched, after raising over £135,000—breaking the original target by over 2400%! This means that instead of having only 30 atheist buses as originally planned, there will now be 800 of them rolling across the UK! There will also be 1000 tube cards running on the London Underground featuring four famous atheist quotations from Douglas Adams, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson and Katharine Hepburn. They are now even seeking suggestions for the slogan for a second wave of atheist buses in April.

Even better, the campaign has now gone global! Spain, Italy and France will be launching buses with their own translations of the original slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, and even buses in Washington DC have been carrying the slogan “Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness’ sake” for well over a month now. Canada and Ireland will be running the campaign as well. However, I must now reveal what is for me some very sad and shameful news: The Atheist Foundation of Australia‘s attempts to run the slogan “Atheism—celebrate reason!” on buses here in Australia have been refused by the company responsible for public metropolitan transport advertising across most of Australia (APN Outdoors). However, they are taking their case to the Tasmanian Anti-discrimination Commissioner, as their bus advertising company (Metro Tasmania) is state owned. This is truly a shameful situation for a country as free and progressive as Australia.

I’m still feeling outraged by the situation in Gaza, so rather than posting an angry diatribe, I thought I’d post this clever, lighthearted video instead. The whole thing is very true, but the bit about why we decide to start killing eachother has particular relevance to the insanity going on over there I think.

Well I must say I really enjoyed all the entries in my win a kiss from me for Christmas competition—my readers certainly are a very witty bunch! So much so in fact that I haven’t been able to pick a clear winner. So I’ve decided to blow a kiss to everyone who entered! I must say though, I do think Loverboy’s entry will make for a nice, simple, yet entertaining video, so I’ve decided to act out his suggestion in the clip—I have the perfect, cute and sexy little party dress for the occasion! And for my web site members, I will post an extended, R-rated version as well!

I was originally intending to post this video on New Year’s Day, but given the subject matter, I think it will actually be more appropriate to post it on Inauguration Day. So look out for it on January 20!

Oh, and merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and happy holidays to everyone who is lucky enough to be having them now.

Here’s a brilliant parody of the ludicrous idea that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God would send somebody to hell simply because they didn’t believe in the Bible, no matter how good a person they were. This video’s creator (Edward Current) has several other funny religious parodies as well.

Given my ethnicity, I’m sure there must be a few Japanophiles amongst my readership. And even if you aren’t one, it’s hard not to find a lot of the weird and wonderful things that go on there interesting to say the least! Hence the Planet Japan Podcast, which has a feature on your’s truly in their latest episode (my segment starts at 18:37). I suspect their regular “Religion Corner” segment would be of interest to my readers as well. In the present episode, co-host Doug has a rather interesting(!) hypothesis as to why John McCain lost the US election too. He has also written several articles for Blogcritics magazine, including some very topical Reflections on God and Santa (I’ve sometimes wondered about the idea he puts forward here as well!).

BTW, sorry for the less substantial posts recently, but with all the doom and gloom around at the moment, I feel I would like to write about less weighty issues for now. But rest assured I will be returning to my favorite topics of religion and politics (and the environment as well) next month!

While we’re on the subject of Christmas, I couldn’t resist posting this absolutely hilarious spoof of R. Kelly’s “hip hopera” Trapped in the Closet, which has got to be the funniest and most creative (not to mention sick, twisted and blasphemous!) Christmas video I’ve ever seen—not for the faint of heart.

Talking about funny and creative Christmas videos, remember there’s only three weeks left to win a kiss from me for Christmas. Even if you don’t win, at least by entering you can give me a good laugh!

Also, if you were intending to buy something for yourself from my online store for Christmas, you’d better hurry, as it will usually take about two weeks for orders from outside Australia to reach you. We’ve also become aware of some intermittent mail server problems at our ISP, which means there is a small chance we may not have received your order. If you’ve tried to place an order with us but haven’t received a response, please try again now—we are very confident the issue has been fixed.

Wow! After eight long years, the reign of the neo-cons is finally ending! And with a college vote of over 2:1, a popular margin of 6 points, and more total votes than any other Presidential candidate in US history(!), it may even be emphatic enough for the Republicans to re-think their position, and get rid of the religious right and neo-conservative cancers upon their party. Sadly however, I doubt it—early signs are that they may go even further to the right. If they do, I can only imagine they will lose by an even bigger margin the next time around, and maybe that will do it. We can only hope.

Although Obama’s victory speech was quite impressive, I was if anything even more impressed with John McCain’s very gracious concession speech. It’s almost as if he secretly wanted Obama to win—perhaps after butting heads with the religious right throughout his campaign, he really did think it would be for the best! I now understand why he didn’t try to use Pastor Wright in his Obama smear campaign (which surprised me): it seems he really is sincerely anti-racist, unlike much of his party.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to come up with an appropriate way to celebrate the win, and I’ve also been wondering what I can bitch about now that the neo-cons are gone. Actually, not really—I still have plenty of things I want to write about! But I thought some funny and creative answers to these two questions would make for a good, fun competition for my readers and fans, so I’ve decided to do the following: whoever can come up with best answer to one or both of these questions wins a kiss from me! That’s right—I will do a video where I blow a kiss to you with your name on it, which I will publish here. And if you’re a member of my main web site, I will do an adult version for you as well! Read the rest of this entry »