Ray: “I’m going to get some utensils to eat with.”

Me: “Because you are a lady, and don’t wish to soil your dainty fingers with chicken flesh.”

Ray: “A really manly and awesome sort of lady!”

Me: “Such as one with a penis?”

Ray: “I was going to say one that likes to fuck other ladies... with her dick.”

Me: “So, a hermaphrodite, then?”

Ray: “That’s right!”

Me: “A hermaphrodite in a tuxedo.”

Ray: “Because of the awesome part, yeah.”

Me: “Well, they say clothes make the man.”

Some years ago, my friend Paul was visiting Vancouver, and he and I found ourselves at my best friend BJ's place. We were having a fairly weighty discussion about morality and government, revolving around whether a government ought to have a greater responsibility to its people or to the cause of justice as a whole, and what, ultimately, one ought to expect out of a government in this arena. BJ, who had in large part been quiet and a little disengaged up to this point, tossed in his two cents, which derailed the conversation, but in this very act spawned a much more interesting conversation. It's been long enough that I'll have to be just a little creative in re-creating the conversation from memory, and indeed after a certain point I remember the flow of the conversation better than which contribution was made by which specific person, and so I might be slightly inaccurate in my attribution.

"Just to bring this conversation down to my level, you know what I think society knows? Every community ought to have, like, a guy with a dolphin in the place of his head to make moral judgements over the community. Dolphin Judges."

Me: "An entire dolphin? Not just a dolphin's head, but like a reverse-centaur sort of arrangement, where it's a complete human body up to the neck, and then from that point up it's an entire dolphin, minus the tail or something?"

BJ: "Something like that, yeah! Dolphins, you know, they have a much simpler and less-complicated view of the world, but they know right from wrong, and they could communicate this through clicks and whistles and stuff."

Me: "You know what I think would be even better? An old village wise man who has a machine affixed to their head, with a big LCD display screen on it, and they hear peoples' grievances, and then the device on their head measures the relative morality of one path or another and then reads out and displays a numerical rating for them. Like a... a 'Moralometer'. And that way, if someone has a problem with a ruling, you can be like 'Hey, listen, man, one option has a morality rating of 4.3, and yours only has a 2.7. You want to tell me 4.3 ISN'T higher than 2.7? You go get me a calculator and I'll show you, buddy."

Paul: "But then someone says 'Oh, these moralometers are all well and good, but where's the HEART? Bring back the dolphin judges, I say!'"

Me: "Why, they have TWO hearts! One in the dolphin torso, and one in the man-torso! You want to tell me two isn't larger than one? Go get a calculator! And the old men with the moralometers are all desperately pointing out that bringing back the Dolphin Judges has a much lower morality rating than keeping the Moralometer Judges, but nobody is paying attention, and anyways they're drowned out by the delighted clicks and whistles of the Dolphin Judges, who are being brought back in from the wilderness after their long years of exile."

BJ: "Where's my gum!?!"
Me: "I've got gum right here, you son of a bitch!"
BJ: "No, I want MY gum!"
Me: "It's my place, and you'll chew my fucking gum if I tell you to!" 
BJ: "I won't owe you anything!!!" 
Me: "Oh, if I could only breath flame at you right now...!" 
BJ: "I'd be smoking hot, that's what!"
Me: "...YES! But not in the good way, not like you're talking about!"
BJ: "I don't know how being smoking hot could ever be in a bad way... unless you're talking about breaking hearts!" 
 

I haven't been posting here much lately, so I felt like I should toss something up here, just to show I'm still alive and such. 

A recent conversation on the topic of atheism on 4chan's /b/ message board: 

Some christian (who was probably just copying and pasting this text from somewhere else) says 

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.

If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? It might be said that his life was important because it influenced others or affected the course of history. But this only shows a relative significance to his life, not an ultimate significance. His life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If all the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate meaning of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference.

Look at it from another perspective: Scientists say that the universe originated in an explosion called the “Big Bang” about 15 billion years ago. Suppose the Big Bang had never occurred. Suppose the universe had never existed. What ultimate difference would it make? The universe is doomed to die anyway. In the end it makes no difference whether the universe ever existed or not. Therefore, it is without ultimate significance.

About the only solution the atheist can offer is that we face the absurdity of life and live bravely. Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote that we must build our lives upon “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” Only by recognizing that the world really is a terrible place can we successfully come to terms with life. Camus said that we should honestly recognize life’s absurdity and then live in love for one another.

The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a world view. If one lives consistently, he will not be happy; if one lives happily, it is only because he is not consistent. Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap, because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God.

Without God, man is nothing.

To which I say: 

If that's how you choose to define the term "abusrd". Personally, I think that your use of the word "absurd" is itself absurd, because it is predicated upon a comparison between the universe as it observably exists and the false standard of how you wish it existed.

Besides which, This argument makes me laugh.

There is not one word here which suggests that your bronze age middle-eastern fairy-tale god is real. All it suggests is that you would like it if he were. This is a statement - indeed it is a wailing cry - that you hope you're right. It does nothing to validate your claims. All it does is show how insecure and emotionaly unstable you are.

You convince me of nothing more than your own deficiency.

So I was speaking to my friend Billy about the bizarrely nuanced age of consent laws in British Columbia, in light of his having apparantly become involved with a 16 year old girl. It seems that in BC it's legal for an adult to have sexual intercourse with someone over the age of sixteen, as long as it doesn't involve anal intercourse ("because they don't like the gays", he observed).

***

Billy: "This isn't really a problem for me, though, since I've never really even wanted anal sex with a girl". 

Me: "Never wanted it? I can understand never having had it with a girl. I was in this boat myself at one point. But never having wanted it? That strays into the realm of pathology! What are you, gay?!?"

***

And we both had a good hard laugh.

Speaking with my friend Ashley, about the fact that our mutual friend Ray isn't going to be able to make it to our game the very next day: 

***

Ashley: "I told him, 'You have to call Dave and tell him you can't come', and he says 'I don't want to call Dave!'"

Me: "Because he lacks the courage and fortitude necessary to brave the laughter and giggles I bring to those who wrong me!"

Ashley: "That's right"

Me: "You're twice the man that he is, and you don't even have a penis!"

So I was talking to my friend BJ the other day. Talking about girls.

He had brought up – as a part of a litany of complaints against him by a former lover of his – that he didn’t give her flowers enough.

“Did she actually say that?” I asked, “Was it flowers, specifically? Did she actually cite a lack of flowers?”

He told me it had come up.

“I don’t get that”, I replied, “What’s the appeal of flowers? What do you even do with them?”

“Watch them die?” He suggested.  

We shared some bafflement on this point; they serve no purpose, they’re short-term, they always end up hideous and awful by the time you have to throw them away… how can this be appealing? When he pointed out that it’s the combination of aesthetics and the thoughtfulness of the gesture.

“Now, that”,  I replied, “I get. I’ve given small, spontaneous gifts, and seen how pleasing this is. You know what else I’ve found girls like? Winnie the Pooh characters”.

“Girls do like those”.

“They do! I gave a girlfriend of mine a little stuffed Winnie the Pooh character once, and she was delighted”.

“You might be able to tell something about a girl by what Winnie the Pooh character she likes”, he offered.

“And if she doesn’t like Winnie the Pooh characters, she might actually be a transvestite. Indeed, that might actually be a warning sign. Like, if you’ve gone out with a girl for a while, and you haven’t gotten to second base, you could try giving her a Winnie the Pooh character, and if she doesn’t like it, you might want to look for an adam’s apple”.