On Waste

I was just surfing TV channels and end up in the Democratic debate going on in South Carolina. . . and the next dude who starts talking about using "our military strength" is definitely not going to get my vote. It seems to me that a presidential election is about who's the most "Macho Man" who can flex the military muscle the most.

Stop wasting money in the military and start spending money on people: us, the fucking people that pay those taxes! No more money going towards more nukes, ultra-intelligent bombs and billion dollar warplanes. The world doesn't need another aircraft carrier, nor another nuclear powered submarine carrying a ton of nuclear weapons. Let's slice a big chunk of the money that goes towards new weapons and put that money into helping people in everyday life.

Where would we be today if instead of spending half a trillion dollars in the military machine we use it towards peaceful purposes?

BWD!

Every morning I browse different news sites to find out what's going on in the world. Over time I have been changing and rotating them in my favorites; some have been added and some deleted.

Just like everything else in life I enjoy some news services more than others: run away from those that carry stories that run for pages and pages at the time, and crave those with concise and precise information. I believe the effort has to be on the side of the writer -not the reader, to cut trough so much crap and needless information and down to the core of the news, without being just a headline. I do believe in quality, not quantity.

Perhaps one of the most important news this week was the death of Boris Yeltsin. . .

The reason why I check CNN only once a week or so is because every time I do it I get disappointed. Today in their front page there's not a single reference to this event (it happened yesterday). Not a headline nor a picture gallery, not a little line, not even a tiny little obituary. Nada. If you click on the "world" tab you might find a headline but that's about it.

But there's a headline close to the top of the front page with a link to a video about BWD!!!* I'm glad to know the people at CNN have their priorities straight when it comes to informing the world. . .

*Blackberrying While Driving (?!).

On a Couple of Recent Miracles

If I remember well from my biology classes in high school, mosquitoes can live for few days; dogs are able to sustain their owner’s leashed walk around the block for around seventeen years; human beings can easily live pass seventy years old; elephants can outlive any human being and reach ninety years old; and turtles can live for more than a 150 years… And even more so, there’s buildings that have been standing for decades; and even some of them like the pyramids have been around for centuries! …… so what’s the problem with good‘ol Jean-Francois taking a break from his blogging duties for few months?! Once you put stuff in perspective, then it doesn’t look like if it was ages since the last time this little corner of the internet was updated, does it?

There is a lot of things in my mind that I want to talk about today: topics ranging from the mortal to the divine; stories about my exciting live and my beautiful gurlfriend; little stories on everyday situations narrated in my very own style; big philosophical topics involving the immortality of the body and the mortality of the soul (no, is not the other way around bitches!); Hell, I was even thinking about disclosing in these very same pages the secret of life once and for all! But once my fingers touched the keyboard it all vanished and my tired mind was left in its natural state: empty.

But as empty as it is I do want to touch a little topic that caught my attention few days ago: the Sainthood of the last Pope. And let me dive right into it and say that Sainthood is a whole bunch of bullshit tide up together, served fried and with a cheap beer. Religion is based on the unknown, the incomprehensible, the impenetrable and inexplicable; religion is sustained by the ignorance and fear of the masses and the divine word is interpreted by some auto-chosen human beings who claimed to have some direct-er connection with the creator. And these people with their direct line with the Intelligent Designer, not surprisingly, use it to promote, sustain and justify all kind of atrocities in the name God against their fellow Romans. In their urge to stir all their followers towards salvation and/or Paradise, they do make their follower’s lives hell in the real paradise: Planet Earth and everyday life.
I’m sorry but every time I start speaking about religion my blood starts to boil. Yes, I might have the devil inside, but more about that at some other time.

Going back to the sainthood of John Paul II (JP2) and the topic of this post, turned out that one lady nun who was suppose to be affected by Parkinson, prayed to good old JP2 and he cured her! Yes, just like that: Boom! One day she was unable to hold a pen in her hand and the next she was jumping of joy and smiling to the cameras of all news services in the world. No shit, go ahead and read this this or this and you’ll also be cured!

But that’s ok; actually I don’t consider it a big deal. Last Saturday something just like that happened to me. Right before noon I was sitting in front of the TV set and I prayed to a can of Diet Coke, that I was holding in my hand, to please have an Ultimate Fighting Championship marathon all day… and believe it or not once I tuned the TV to channel 325 guess what was on…? Go ahead and guess brother, don’t be afraid of the truth… Yes! There was not just a UFC Marathon but a fucking Triathlon of the Ultimate Fighter! No shit brothers and sister and could I please have an Amen here?! A whole day of UFC fights that made my poor girlfriend and her sister roll her eyes and pray for a power outage!

And I said that what happened to that nun it’s ok, because it just happened to me too; I prayed, it got heard by the wholly Diet Coke and a miracle was performed. The only difference is that I ain’t claiming no miracle and no canonization of my can of Diet Coke.

My actual rage comes from the fact that every single news source on this planet –and heaven and hell and every thing in between- ran the story without any single proof of anything! No cross reference, no in depth interview, no facts on the table, no nothing. We should only take her word that she didn’t pray to a hard and juicy dick but that she actually, being in a very advanced stage of Parkison, had enough brain power to think about JP2 and get cured… Kaboon! One day she’s tweaking and shaking and the next morning she’s jumping out of her bed like back in the days when she was in high school and used to screw the priest from her local parish.
And needless to say the flesh and blood people at the Vatican, in all their wisdom and with that direct connection they have with God, didn’t miss a minute disseminating that lie everywhere like a fact.

Even if that lady nun did get cured inexplicable, even if her ailments went away without any precedent, and even if she was indeed suffering from Parkinson -and considering that she wasn’t misdiagnosed-, there’s no way to prove that she asked JP2 to be cured and that he was the one who did it. Maybe she prayed to God, Jesus, the Holly Spirit and Mary for hours and right before helping herself to bed she said “Oh, and by the way, JP2, if you could please give me a hand with this sickness I’d really appreciate it”… and boom! Cured!
The Catholic Church has a long history of neglecting their nun population, which is not as straightforward as their discrimination towards females of course, and also a loooooog and very well documented history of secrecy, so besides their own words and facts there’s no way to have an accurate investigation on what actually happened in that nun’s body before and after that “miracle”.

You really have to consider all people on the face of this planet a whole bunch of idiots to believe for just one second that they’ll believe such story. Or better yet, to just consider for a second that any serious news service will carry that story is to really ask for a miracle…. Oh shit! I guess that proves that miracles do exist after all!