If things seem a little slow around here lately, fear not! Two of our most prolific posters, Stardust and Naomi, are currently off on non-GifS-related jaunts, and I myself can only pop in once and a while from work, that’s all (damn spam–!).

Gawd has been keeping himself busy, though:

Flooding the Midwest;

Throwing Hurricane Dean at Mexico;

And cutting the Peruvian people no slack in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Regretfully, The Old Git has resigned from GifS and has requested that all of his posts be taken down. I thank him for his time and written contributions, though we may no longer have the pleasure of reading them. I would have liked him to leave his posts behind, but we had to respect his wishes to remove them. Please do not ask further questions concerning details which led to his decision as it is not proper to gossip about old friends.

Peace be with you and wishes for the best, Old Git

Stardust and I have instituted a new policy on fundie trolls: We are no long “flaming” them. It takes too much time to do the alterations and the insulting is getting so fucking booooring…

We now alter their screennames, email addys and URLs–they are frequently porn-ish, by the time we’re done. Then we delete the body of their tiresome posts and replace it with this:

This post has broken a GifS Commandment: Thou shall not proselytize. Read Comment Policy Guidelines, for reference. Mods

It’s expedient, humane (even if they don’t deserve it!) and soothing to Mod-nerves.

If we were the sort who would invade their territory and smear feces on their walls, it would be only fair for them to come here and do the same. WE don’t–so THEY can’t, either! Honestly, now why should Star and I have to be the “bad guys” to the bullies?

(Usually, the little cowards lurk in the catacombs, leaving their dog turds out of sight of everyone but the Mods. However, one courageous little troll left a comment on Jesus Found, Alive & Well!; you can check out comment #10. The screenname indicated it was a female, and she was pimping her cheap-ass xian bumper stickers!)

As ChuckA would say: Of all da noive!

UPDATE from Stardust: It is easier for us just to copy and paste a standard warning and delete the objectionable content and not feed the trolls anymore–they seemed to love being flamed. I think that’s why they came, in the first place.

I want to make the point that Christians who wish to comment here in current discussions and participate in current debates, and are willing to abide by the comment policy they are more than welcome to…however…they should see by our banner what they are getting themselves into when they come here to proseltyze, warn us about hell, or tell us that gawd and jeebus love us. We can delete their “message of Jeebus’ luv” just as easily in the daylight as we can in the dark catacombs!

Just wanted to let everyone know that GIFS will be hosting the Carnival of the Godless Xmas Eve Edition…

You can find out more here, as well as at the top left of the main GIFS page…

Happy Hunting, Heathens…

And we can all thank RDZ for the awesome pic…

Thanks, dude…

We’ve had some server issues, but we’re back up now. Bear with the minimalist layout and such as we work out the bugs.

Please resume the blasphemy.

Like the rest of you, I was shocked and saddened by Sean’s death. And my deepest condolences go out to Bob and the rest of his family and friends in real life. I’ve had a lot of dealings with Sean over the past year as I passed the running of GifS over to him, and have very direct experience of his energy and enthusiasm, and also of the amount of work he put into building this site into what it is now.

Although Sean will be missed here more than I can say, GifS will continue. As the Old GifS Guy, let me just let you all know that the admin stuff is still being taken care of, and the bills are still being paid. And it’s my hope that this site has a rich future that helps to pay some small tribute to Sean’s memory.

I’m not exactly sure how to say this, but I’ll try my best…

Sean was found dead in his bed in a sleeping position in his San Francisco apartment on Friday, 10/6, two weeks to the day after the death of his father.

He had not been well for some time, and people were trying to convince him to seek medical attention. Sean, always the optimist, most likely thought that his body would bounce-back from whatever was ailing him at the time — since it had, in all honesty, bounced-back from more crap than most human bodies could ever handle.

As a person, Sean was simply incredible. He tried to overcome all the stuff that happened to him throughout his life, and this made him an extremely sensitive individual. He would often just give money and help to complete strangers without hesitation (sometimes to his detriment), and he always had a social conscience. The pain, suffering, and injustice of others moved him tremendously.

He also had a knack for coming up with very creative solutions. With his amazing knowledge of the internet and web design, he used his social awareness to create websites that challenged conformity and established prejudices (i.e., in addition to this one, which he did with Ron). He won several awards for his work, and I was constantly amazed at his abilities. When he talked to me about the stuff he wanted to create, I would just listen and smile, because I had no idea how the hell anyone could ever make anything like that. But I always knew that he could.

Sean also used his creativity to make movies, comic books, and comedy skits. He was a producer, editor, screenwriter, and director. And, there was his drawing talent as well. He created a comedy team that cut a CD way back in the day, and the skits were hilarious. He also wrote a novel and a number of short stories.

His humor was always complex, dry, witty, and filled with all of those great 70s and 80s references (”I mean, whenever she changed into Wonder Woman somewhere, there’s always, like, this huge explosion — and no one ever fucking hears anything? Give me a break!”).

And I always loved making him laugh. I used to make him laugh so hard sometimes that he’d actually roar — especially over the phone. I always loved hearing that, and now I’ll always miss it.

I could go on, but I won’t. You get the idea.

There is a simple reason why I’m writing all of this: Sean’s attitude toward this blog. It’s very difficult to overemphasize how much Sean loved GIFS, and how much pride he felt from both the purpose of this site, and how much it has progressed.

When this site started (way back), it was just a little blog with only a few people posting. Now, of course, we have all of these amazing people sharing all of their experiences (with all these cool pictures!) — and our numbers continue to amaze me. Sean used to tell me that the numbers were so good for this site that they left his (very public) work website in the dust — and he even wondered (I’m sure only half-jokingly) if he should leave work and just do GIFS full-time! His active recruitment of people will always be appreciated.

This post has gone through several drafts, and I hope I did him justice. But, in any case, please feel free to add anything that comes to mind.

And since this is my post, I guess I’ll take the first shot: Sean, I loved you like a brother, you asshole. And I can’t believe you’re gone, you sonofabitch. But I’ll always love you and what you gave me. So, sleep, my brother. We’ll take it from here.

Hey, gang. Nobody likes a braggart, but I was just talking to Bob today and it occurred to both of us that most people have no idea how this site has grown in traffic in the past year. You have seen the comment boards explode, but I thought it would make some of you — especially our amazing mods — proud to see what the numbers actually look like.

From Alexa.

Fucking cool, huh? To put our ranking in perspective, there are millions of web sites on the internet. You don’t even get ranked by Alexa if you are too low. And we’re a site about the reviled subject of atheism. I think we are doin’ okay.

(Pay no attention to the three-month recent downage… Take it from a pro: it’s summer. Watch what happens when the cold weather comes back.)