Badtux the Snarky Penguin

In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.

Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.


Thursday, July 26, 2007

Animals

If we are just animals, just meat around bone stuffed into a skin sack like a sausage, does that make our lives futile and worthless?

Mencken would like to strongly disagree. His life has purpose. He eats, he sleeps, he gets palm-on-fur action from his alpha cat (me). He brings furry warmth to the nightly bed. He is kind to his apartment-mates, though he is not afraid to give them a warning whack with the paw if they're starting to irritate him by, like, grooming him when all he wants to do is sleep (yeah, The Mighty Fang is so mean with that biz of always wanting to groom Mencken). What more is there, in the end?

Seems to me that the deranged hairless monkeys with delusions of grandeur who call themselves "human" have a lot to learn from Mencken and his ilk. If these "humans" behaved like animals, rather than like lunatics, this would would be a lot nicer place to live methinks. Humans should be proud to be told "you're acting just like an animal!", rather than viewing it as an insult. After all, what animal (other than the hairless monkey ones) has ever started a war based upon lies, or killed another animal based on what he thinks some imaginary sky demon whispered in his ear? Hmm?

-- Badtux the Animal Penguin

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Posted by: BadTux / 7/26/2007 12:54:00 AM  3 comments  

Monday, July 23, 2007

The common ground

What do Santa Claus, Israel, Iraq, the United States, Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Christians, Tuxologists, the Great Penguin, Jehovah, Allah, and the Easter Bunny all have in common?

I'll give you a hint. I point a human being out to you. Can you show me the "Jew" or "Christian" in him? Can you point it out to me, hold it up to me so I can see what it looks like? If I fire up Google Earth and show you a piece of ground, do you see any lines drawn on that ground that say one side is somehow different from the other?

I guess the first and last items should have made it clear what I'm up to. It's all imaginary. Made up. Just the overheated delusions of jumped up monkeys with delusions of grandeur. There's the world, there's us, there's the stuff in the world, that's it. All this religion and nationality and ethnicity and shit is just made up bullshit. There ain't one single bit of genetic difference between the monkeys who call themselves "Palestinians" and the monkeys who call themselves "Jews", for example. They just made up that silliness and use it as an excuse to kill each other. There is no such thing as some invisible sky demon called "Jehovah" or "Allah" or "The Great Penguin" who strikes down evildoers with lightning bolts or fire from the sky or rains of herring. There's just a bunch of monkeys who try to avoid the knowledge that they're just monkeys by making up invisible sky demons to make themselves feel bigger than other people.

I've been called "anti-Semitic", "anti-Muslim", "un-patriotic" anti-lots of things. But what I really am is anti-bullshit. If you can't smell it, touch it, sniff it, measure it, or otherwise interact with it on a real life basis, it's just made-up imaginary bullshit. And if you come around flogging made-up bullshit, then you deserve the flamethrower you'll get.

The reason you'll get the flamethrower is that bullshit has consequences. "America" may be made-up bullshit, but the guns being carried by monkeys who believe in that made-up bullshit kill just as well as if there was a such a thing as "America" that could be smelled, touched, sniffed, measured. But I can't go and pick up something and show it to someone and say "this is America". I can show people a piece of dirt, but that's dirt. I can show people a building, but that's brick and stone and steel. I can show people a piece of paper with some blotches of ink on it, but that piece of paper isn't "Islam". There really isn't a such a thing as "America" or "Islam" or whatever that you can see and touch. It's just made up bullshit by monkeys with too much imagination and delusions of grandeur.

What we are, friends and mammals, are animals. We are just animals. Animals with big brains and a propensity to spout imaginary bullshit, but animals all the same. We are born, we eat, we defecate, we grow up (can't really say "mature"), we fornicate and reproduce, we grow old, we die. Just like every other animal on this planet. We're unique amongst animals in that we've figured out ways to communicate stuff between us, and figured out ways to build impressive crap, and figured out impressive ways to kill each other and other animals. But in the end, we're just meat. Meat stuffed into sausage skin and wrapped around bone. Meat that has a bad tendency to flap its meat at each other and slice open each other's sausage wrappers to let the meat fall out, but meat all the same.

As for all that other stuff.... it's just bullshit. Made up. Imaginary. Ladies and germs, the Easter Bunny is not real. Neither is "Mexican". Neither is "Jew" or "Muslim". It's all just made up silliness by monkeys that have lost their bearings and lost track of what is true and what is real. What is true and real is that, in the end, we are all just monkeys (well, except those of us who are penguins!), and all the rest of that stuff is just bullshit that we ought to just ignore while we get along with living our little monkey lives in peace. Sadly, though, deluded fools who think made-up bullshit is, like, actually real, keep using those psychotic delusions to give them excuses to kill other monkeys. Pathetic. Simply pathetic. If you're going to kill someone, at least do it for a reason that's real, not for some made-up imaginary nonsense like "race" or "religion" or whatever....

-- Badtux the Bullshit-spottin' Penguin

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Posted by: BadTux / 7/23/2007 11:06:00 PM  9 comments  

Thursday, July 05, 2007

About a girl

I am thinking about a girl. On the cusp of woman-hood, staring out upon a cold sea with goose-bumps showing on her arms and legs, I am wondering, what is she thinking? There has been a war on ever since she was old enough to be aware, a war that is increasingly a disaster and that her generation and the generations after her will be paying for, a war that has resulted in tens of thousands of crippled soldiers coming back from Iraq-nam to be dumped on the streets like so much garbage. Maybe her brother is in the Army. Maybe a boyfriend. Like so many of her generation, perhaps possessed of a cynicism and world-weariness beyond her years, as it becomes increasingly clear that her generation will be cleaning up this nightmare for the rest of her life. Is this cynicism hiding anger at the situation in which she will find herself in when she becomes an adult?

I wonder, what does she think of my generation? What does she think about how we have dealt with things? What about the baby boomers, what does she think of them? I fear that it is not going to be positive. What happens next, I wonder? Will the anger simply simmer, simmer, simmer, turning into self-hate and self-disgust as the years go by? Will she become as "bought" as my generation, leashed to our endless cycle of debt and work? Or will the destruction of the American dream by the Busheviks and their ilk result in something more explosive, more violent, more... revolutionary?

If the last, I fear for my own life and safety, for I have certainly done nothing to help make this young lady's life easier. Oh sure, I donated a few bucks to John Kerry and voted for both President Gore and for Kerry, but really, is that all that I could have done? I doubt it. I doubt it. And I doubt she thinks so, either. And really, who can blame her?

-- Badtux the Pensive Penguin

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Posted by: BadTux / 7/05/2007 07:48:00 PM  3 comments  

Monday, June 11, 2007

Jennifer Lost The War

Dead children at My Lai, March 16, 1968 A dead child in Iraq

I came across an interesting song while cleaning up my hard drive.

"Jennifer Lost The War"
The Offspring, album: The Offspring.

Jennifer lost the war today
They'll find her burned and raped
Through it all she must have wondered
What have I done
But nobody really cares today
The world's a busy place
Guess she must have really sinned

I guess we're all just soldiers
She was only six years old
Left to die by strangers
Her family waits
And if we're all just soldiers
Is it so wrong to be afraid
Jennifer lost the war

Phoebe lost the war today
There must be some mistake
Say it happens all the time
And it's said and done
Little Miss 15 65
Your soul remains unclaimed
Guess you must have really sinned

Morality won't help her
When she lies silent in a morgue
And all our sorrows left her
But will the morning headlines
Even say that it's a shame
What are we heading for
Jennifer lost the war

Seen it all before
Silent on the ground as he's walking away
And I wonder how many more
Everybody take it like it's nothing at all
Jennifer lost, lost, lost, lost the war

Now I guess we're all just soldiers
She was only six years old
Left to die by strangers
Her family waits
And will the morning headlines
Even say that it's a shame
What are we heading for

Primal punk. I've seen video of them singing this song in 1987. Yes, twenty years ago. And My Lai was almost forty years ago. The more things change... (And yes, I know the backstory on this song, which had nothing to do with a literal war, but even if you don't know the backstory, the fact is that the same damned thing just keeps happening over and over again).

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

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Posted by: BadTux / 6/11/2007 12:51:00 AM  9 comments  
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Name: BadTux
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I am a black and white and yellow multicolored penguin making his way as best he can in a world of monochromic monkeys.

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"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce." -- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007 "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

-- Plato

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