Thursday 24 December 2009

Fiction

(crossposted from Ficly - short stories in 1024 characters)

Worth Waiting For

Mary, the last Christian lay dying.

No priest stood beside her to administer the Last Rites. No Charismatic Fundamentalist was there to condemn her to Hell. Sick of waiting for the Rapture, the last of them had committed ritual mass suicide four years ago. The Zion-Mecca World War over the last decade had cleaned out the belfrys of both of those houses of religious adherence. The Hindis and Buddists were still out there however, just getting loonier and loonier. Ah well.

Mary died.

Awestruck, she walked down the blue tunnel of light to meet her maker – the One True and Only God.

The One True and Only God sat on His throne at the end of the tunnel, observing Mary’s approach.

And so it was that Bumba, the Congo God of Vomiting arose and looked down on His newest angel.

Welcome to the afterlife!Bumba intoned, and projected a massive torrent of steaming emesis at Mary.

You were expecting Thor?”, He asked rhetorically, before repeating His Godly speciality, and not for the last time…

Sunday 20 December 2009

Beaudy Mate! Aussie Saint at Last! Trot out the Gold Plated Chunder Buckets!


It was finally announced today that Our Very Own Blessed Dead Aussie Nun Mary MacKillop is to be officially gonged a saint after a hundred years of struggle by a bunch of Catholic Australians who apparently had nothing better to do with their time.

This was finally achieved after a second miracle was attributed to Mary's rotting remains. The miracle - that they could successfully pin a miracle on a long dead ex-penguin and get a sainthood out of it - has been voted conservatively #6 in the list of dumbest reasons for canonizing corpses.

Catholics across the continent are expected to go ape-shit crazy today while a breathless, reverent media runs big bannered stories and pretends to be hugely chuffed.

HUZZAH!

Wednesday 16 December 2009

Gee thanks Steve. Thanks Kevin.

...

For nothing.

Applauded by the right wing Australian Christian Lobby, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has given the green light to bringing in legislation to censor the Internet. Already dubbed the "Great Firewall of Australia" it will hopefully have a terminally rocky run through the parliament.

And anyone who actually understands the absurdity of the proposal is laughing. Here is a typical non-Australian view:


I voted for Labor at the last federal election, not a Theocracy. But Golly! Gosh! Jeepers! Shazam! ...that seems to be what we are ending up with here.

Our nanny Prime Minister Kevin-07 is a conservative Anglican, and co-nanny Conroy is a conservative Catholic. And the good people of the Australian Christian Lobby could not be much smugger about it.

"FOR GOD'S SMEGGING FUCKING SAKE - THINK OF THE CHILDREN! THEY MIGHT SEE NUDIE THINGS! AIYYYYEEE!"

...more or less sums up their brilliant arguments for filtering. Filters that will slow the net. Filters that will ban sites that shouldn't be banned including, for instance, Wikipedia Articles that might discuss banned or politically inconvenient subjects. When anyone plays the "think of the children!" card, you can be guaranteed the underlying arguments are crap.

While no sensible person would want to expose their children to the dark side of the net, this sort of filtering just doesn't work. Bad guys with minimal technical skills will still do bad things and the rest of us have to wear the collateral damage from living behind the inevitably self-bloating firewall. Just watch that blacklist grow.

Just like in the great democracy of China.

Sorry Kevin-07. I won't be voting for Kevin-10.