Month: September 2012

Miss Margot watches the screen

A couple of days ago Margot was sitting on her tuffet in the den while Jeff was copying files.  She watched intently as the files flew between the folders, and then for yuks Jeff started shifting the dialog box around, and she watched that too.  Eddie never watches TV although occasionally he responds to sounds from the speakers.

Margot needs a bath, she’s getting a bit pee-ie, and it’s Jeff that has to put up with her rank rear end.

I have a new phone, an HTC One S (I bought it on Thursday last but it was DOA so I replaced it).  I am very much liking it but I’m still getting used to the keyboard.

Rantoglot

The new Kside word is for the weird almost English raving that shows up in youtube comments.  Also known as trollspeak.

Sue’s dad died.  He was over 100 years old, and she was planning on visiting him this week.  Now her mum and dad are dead, her mum passed last year.  She’s not the only person I know who is over seventy and lost a parent.  mOm I am glad you made that scarf for her.

I09 talks about epistolary novels today.  In SF format.

I am actually working on an epistolary sf novel.  In my family there is a cousins’ letter that rotates between numerous people over the course of about three years. The cousin will write whatever he or she wants to and then send it along.  Once it gets back to the origination point it is collected by mOm and the next iteration fires up.
The novel follows the cousins as they a) attempt social work with a trispecies gang in an orbital (blocked out) b) sell tickets to the only real tourist attraction (but it’s a doozy) on a fleabag planet (in process) c) found a Unitarian church on a wholly-owned planet and accidentally become the lightning rod for a debate on interspecies marriage (this letter is written) d) join the Forces to see the galaxy, kill monsters and blow shit up real good (this is in process) e) have boring lives on Earth (anything but, climate change and volcanoes)  f) get old and have themselves uploaded so they can continue to work on family history projects they didn’t want to die in the middle of, thus becoming the de facto all purpose family elder.

 

Lovely!!!

Had a wonderful visit to Victoria with Keith.

It took 7 hours to get home, but it was a nice visit.  I am not very happy with BC Ferries right now, and having to drive Keith to his meetup afterwards because he was running late wasn’t a problem but it did add a lot to the drive.

I traded up phones and have still not been able to activate it.  I am seriously considering taking it back to the place of purchase and letting them know that if I have to spend three days trying to activate a phone there isn’t much point gamely staying with the same company.  The chat on line help has sucked as well.  Very disheartening.

I have to get a job, and the market is very poor.

I decided that since being conscious was actively causing me pain that I should take refuge in sleep.  As soon as I was decently unconscious, and far away from my back pain, BC Ferries and the utter pointlessness of life, the phone rang and it was somebody from church reminding me to bring the checkbook to service.  Serves me right for going to bed so early.

It is now 2:35 in the morning.  This is not a good time to be writing blog posts as they are likely to be rather grim.  Oh, sorry, too late.

I hope today will be a better day.  I’m going to get a glass of water and go back to sleep, if Morpheus is kind.

 

aaaand Robert’s back in my inbox

He is now accusing me of setting his inbox ablaze with Christian spam.  Oh . Your . God, as Bender might remark; I would rather hack my feet off and eat them than trigger a spam blitz on somebody, even somebody as relentlessly and obstreperously obtuse as our dear Robert.

I wouldn’t do it.  Nope, not if I was offered payment.  Fortunately he’s on Gmail so he can adjust his spam filter and never deal with that crap again.

Put those Mennonites and Quakers on the rotisserie….

…. this is what I want my mother to knit me for Christmas.   And no, she doesn’t have to, and I’ll be fine if she doesn’t.

 

Just remember folks, I wrote a song once in which I said, “And my heart’s an 88” and I WAS referring to the forward cannon on a Panzer.  So nobody should be too surprised if I get all gooey over some artillery themed slippers.

Robert is a man who doesn’t get it.

So he responded to that last email with:

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 7:25 AM, robert white <passionatepiper@gmail.com> wrote:
There is no message when the delivery is so repugnant.

 

And here’s my response.

Precisely.  When you talk about the tone of an atheist’s comments using sexualized and demeaning language, you have no message.

I’m glad we can agree on that point.

Your delivery was repugnant; it lacked any demonstration on your part to show “responsibility to be as dignified, intelligent, rational, measured and believable as possible”.  Those are your stated standards, by the way, not mine.  If you are really committed to being dignified, intelligent, rational, measured and believable in your protestations of atheism to a deistic world, why be undignified, immoderate and hidebound towards a fellow atheist?  The deists are clever buggers on occasion, and they’ll catch you being inconsistent and give you a hard time.

By your own standards, you have given everyone who reads that note to Skepchick permission to dismiss it because it’s repugnant and even if it wasn’t, there’s no argument / debate / dialogue / call for clarification.  Arguments against tone aren’t arguments.  They are, and always will be, an acknowledgement of rhetorical failure.  Throwing sexual insults into the mix while clinging to words like dignified makes you look … how?  How do you wish to be perceived?  On one hand you’re claiming the moral high ground, and then you throw it all away by the atheist equivalent of sectarian violence.  (Which of course leaves no one dead, making it intrinsically superior).

As for you being a militant atheist while alternately ignoring and railing against how your public speech and attitudes are not in step with the more forward thinking aspects of contemporary atheism, good luck with that. You remind me of the Catholic priests who continued to celebrate Mass in Latin after Vatican II.   Most Catholics were happy to ditch the Latin, but there will always be traditionalists.  Your version of atheism isn’t mine; mine is messy, fluid, raucous, fun loving, and inclusive of strange and queer and diverse and under-represented voices, even yours, if only as a cautionary sample of how the unscientific and undignified ways of misogyny penetrate even our lofty halls of intellectual superiority.

There was precious little reasoning or dignity in what you said to Skepchick, and you completely dodged any questions I asked.  I did not seek to censor, merely to understand, and if you can’t see how being a misogynist in public doesn’t serve atheism, I can’t see how talking to you any further would help either of us.

Good day to you, sir.

Allegra

 

I am wondering if Robert really is an atheist at all.  Some of what he says just don’t ring true.  However, trolls come in all shapes and sizes, I’ve been a troll meself, so I know.

Robert is a man who promptly responds to email

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 6:46 AM, robert white <passionatepiper@gmail.com> wrote:
As a militant atheist I place great importance on the quality of the
messages put forward to the world community on behalf of reason,
rationality, evidence based thinking and all things leading away from
superstition.

I wanted to make my comments as bitter and scathing as possible
because this woman is the antithesis of those desires of mine.

We have a responsibility to be as dignified, intelligent, rational,
measured and believable when presenting a reason based world view.
When this woman gets on stage and giggles like a valley girl, chuckles
at words like “dick”, interjects her drinking stories along with her
profane fan club letters, she does nothing but set back the cause. All
that’s missing on her are some profane tattoos and a nose ring.

You could profess to the world that the earth is round but if you do
so like some hopped up trashy teenager with a tourette like huffing
laugh between every other phrase and four letter word…no one would
listen.

Get it?

MY RESPONSE

Oh, I do, but the message you are sending is not the one you want me to receive.

So…. you were serious, and you refer to your sexist and misogynistic comments as ‘bitter and scathing’.  You specifically said that you didn’t find her sexually attractive.  Why should any atheists care that you feel that way (except to be amused or repulsed, depending on their attitude towards women)?  In what manner are you advancing the global progress of atheism by targetting a noted atheist woman for your ire?

If half the people in the world are female, and you are wishing to recruit more atheists (isn’t that what militant atheist means?), how is making disturbing and venomous sexually charged comments towards a person who evidently ‘gets’ popular culture (more- sic) readily than you do, moving civilization toward the light?  I think you’re being hurtful for the lulz, not to advance atheism.  You claim to be a militant atheist, as if that is somehow an excuse to trash other atheists whose TONE you disagree with.  At no point do you talk about the substance.  Just appearance and tone…. as flimsy as a theist in your ability to reason, alas.

It appears to me that you are angry because you aren’t setting the terms for the discourse.  You can’t.  Atheism is not a grumpy men’s club, nor is it a single stream, and even if it was it doesn’t help that you’re peeing in it.

Allegra

What kind of man are you, Robert?

Here’s the offending document, from Skepchick.

Here’s my response.

 

Dear Robert,

I was interested to read your email to skepchick.  I have a number of questions.  I am sure that your email box is full, so I’ll give you a couple of weeks to shovel your way out from under the uptick in mail volume to respond.  There is always the possibility you were pranked, so I am keeping my questions civil. Here they are.

Are you implying that your reaction to a woman’s appearance is more important than what she has to say on the subject of atheism?

Are you implying that because you do not like a woman’s appearance you have an obligation to ask her to stop commenting on atheism?

Are you implying that your personal preferences regarding a woman’s appearance should factor into whether she continues to make comments about atheism on youtube?

I ask to confirm that you were indeed serious.  If so, kindly direct me to your youtube account so I may critique your videos regarding atheism in the light of your personal appearance.  If you have none such, allow me to express disappointment, as the world of atheism would undoubtedly be better off with your contribution to it more readily accessible.  If you weren’t serious, please advise how I was supposed to know you were joking from the context of the email.

In the spiriit of tolerance and inquiry,

Allegra Sloman