National Pretend-To-Do-Something Day
1 May 2008 by Bob
For those who might not have known…
A beautiful response…
It’s time to raise our voice in prayer,
And pray to–well, there’s no one there.
No god to urge to do our bidding;
Go on and pray–just know you’re kidding.It’s time to all sit on our asses,
And pray forgiveness for trespasses
(Or is that to forgive our debtor?
Who cares, as long as we feel better.)It’s time we all embrace god fully,
Feel all righteous, good, and holy–
Or be some atheistic jerk,
Roll up your god-damned sleeves, and work!It’s time to say “I do not care
To join you in this day of prayer.”
Sure, a day off looks like fun,
But there is work that must be done.Our problems will not fix themselves
There is no god to send in elves
To do the work of human ranks
So… join, today, in prayer? No thanks.
1 May 2008, on 3:26 pm
These are excellent responses to National Talking to Skydaddy day. I stole the second link and posted it at my personal blog. Having a National Reason Day is a great idea. (or better yet, a Get Up Off Your Lazy Ass and Do Something Day)
1 May 2008, on 3:39 pm
I saw this at another site…
The wages of faith is ignorance,
and reason is a gift for a meaningful life through the powers of intellect.
Humans 6:23
1 May 2008, on 5:12 pm
I believe May 1 is also National Day of Masturbation.
1 May 2008, on 6:04 pm
National Day of Prayer? HAH. In Texas public schools we observe a “MOMENT of SILENCE” every single day. Teachers and administrators bow their heads, parents in the office stop and bow their heads, the SRO (School Resource Officer) bows his head, the Cafeteria Lady bows her head….The only ones left without bowing heads are the librarian (me) and our Jehovah’s Witness janitor. Atheists are outnumbered. Too much head-bowing for my taste. I believe this is known as the bubble of delusion…
1 May 2008, on 8:59 pm
Is it just a coincidence that the national day of close your eyes and beg like a four year-old also happens to be Mayday! Mayday!
Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch.
1 May 2008, on 10:51 pm
BarbieBrains,
As a former skool librarian I salute you with my AACR2.
[I know, there are newer revisions but it's my first and it's like the Velveteen AACR2 now lol!]
I experienced similar issues when I worked in the schools. In what is supposed to be a public school system they still enforced a morning prayer in the elementary schools. When I said something about it to the principal I was told that the question was “inappropriate” and the prayer was basically “none of my business”.
I can’t even tell you the number of fights I’ve had with parents who decided that the library didn’t have enough bibles or that the ‘Goosebumps’ series was satanic!
And then there was the high school! One of the english teacher’s used the bible as a text resource.
I know I wasn’t the ONLY atheist there but I was certainly the only one who would admit it.
1 May 2008, on 11:33 pm
Look at this load of crap
Bush hopes for world prayer day
2 May 2008, on 12:34 am
So…I guess Bush must have been praying during that “My Pet Goat” reading interruption…You know…the 7 minutes of sitting on his ass, after hearing about the 9/11 attack.
Something like?:
“Holy shit Lawd…WTF do I do now? Like, what’s the next lie I should perpetrate on all those idiots that swallowed my previous mindless scapegoating BS?
Hmmm…Will I still be able to kiss and hold hands with all those wonderful, extremely rich, Saudi motherfuckers?
In Jeebus name…I hope so!”
“International Day of Preying” or maybe… “International Day of Ass Smelling?”
Yeah…Just what the world needs…an annual “Shove your head FURTHER up your ass” day!
Indeed…
“With heads like that…who needs suppositories?”
“Aaaah….the smell of it!”
2 May 2008, on 2:12 am
““Over the last seven years, our country has faced many trials. And time and time again we have turned to prayer and found strength and resilience,” he said.”
…which goes a long way towards explaining the mess this country is in.
2 May 2008, on 8:05 am
I always love the day after Pray-yer day, because all the local papers have pictures of people with their hands in the air bein’ all Jeebusy-like, lol!
2 May 2008, on 9:53 am
I always love the day after Pray-yer day, because all the local papers have pictures of people with their hands in the air bein’ all Jeebusy-like, lol!
Travdawg, Yep…our paper has a whole section of photos of people with their hands clasped and eyes squinched as if trying to have a BM. Then today they are probably flipping the bird to drivers on the road, being bitches and pricks to store clerks, and just being all around crappy to others. But they talk to jeebus and ask for forgiveness for that, so that’s ok.
2 May 2008, on 3:30 pm
O.T. rant, please indulge.
Glad to see other Librarians lurking here! Yay!
I’m a cataloger (Academic librarian) myself.
I’m also bothered by the proposed mess of RDA replacing AACR2r2.
Oh, and this latest wisdom from on High at LC:
>”a future for bibliographic control that will >be collaborative,
>decentralized, international in scope, and >Web-based*change will
>happen quickly, and bibliographic control >will be dynamic, not
>static.”
Translation: “The Future of Bibliographic control will be one enormous, raging Clusterfuck” ™.
Or “Bibliographic control??? HAAH! We don’t need no steeenking bibliographic control…”
Have either of you read Earl Lee’s essay on the miscataloging of Freethought material in libraries? It’s a chapter in his book LIBRARIES IN THE AGE OF MEDIOCRITY. Very interesting.
2 May 2008, on 6:21 pm
Our Lady of Perpetual Motion…
LOL!!!! I cannot have the Goosebumps series (by District decree)or Captain Underpants or Harry Potter or Al Capone Irons My Shirts or Olive’s Ocean or……………..AACR2 is the unwanted stepchild only a librarian can love…that and Mr. Dewey.
2 May 2008, on 7:17 pm
JJR: I have not read the text but thanks for the tip. I was at the Texas Library Association’s conference a few weeks ago and got to listen to Alan November on the virtues of Wikipedia as well as gaming in the library…Yes, “Dance, Dance Revolution” is coming to your local library and even academic libraries are signing on. You could hear the gasps from the crowd. My two-cents worth: our obscenity-proof Texas libraries ought to consider selling buckshot and forget about E-rate discounts and CIPA and Internet filtering. LOL! BTW…you have a DREAM job. My main task is keeping the troglodytes from burning books. A few years ago it was Harry Potter. Now it’s Olive’s Ocean. Baptist mommies are a force from hell…and they travel in packs!
2 May 2008, on 9:49 pm
JJR
Thanks for the heads up on. I am interested in reading the article.
I felt my entire tenure was one long battle and a losing one at that.
I always loved cataloging. I wanted to make it my focus but it’s difficult to get into here. And then I found I couldn’t deal with the bureaucracy. Ugh! People! One of the best jobs I’ve ever had was cataloging at a museum library. Heaven.
BarbieBrains,
LOL! Troglodytes abound! One tightly wound pair wanted all the Goosebumps and like young adult materials removed and replaced with … bibles.
We don’t have baptist mommies, we’ve got ultra conservative catholics, protestants and some really scary jehova’s witless.
4 May 2008, on 8:26 pm
I like Georgieboy´s idea about the whole world praying at the same time. When it´s 10 am in Washington it´s 5pm where I live and I really wonder what Xians on Hawaii do since they would have to get up at 5am to get the magic done… Well, I wonder if he´s ever heard about timezones?
BTW, May1st is National Day of Labour where I live…
13 May 2008, on 2:58 pm
That poem up top is bloody brilliant, and it’s not even the best from its author. Has anyone here approached The Digital Cuttlefish to ask if we could put a link over on the right under “Other Atheist Blogs”? I’ve already bookmarked the site for myself.