The Zombieslayer

Thanks Tweety.  My brain has gone offline, so it’s a good thing to get tagged or else I’ll probably write a stupid post.

1. Wrapping or gift bags? Gift bags.  They’re easier and reusable.

2. Real or artificial tree? Artificial.  It’s easier to deal with and  you can reuse it forever.

3. When do you put up the tree? Mid-December.

4. When do you take the tree down? Jan 2nd.  I’m usually too exhausted on the 1st.

5. Do you like eggnog? Love it! Especially with rum.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Too many to list.  I loved Christmas, and loved everything I’ve ever gotten.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? No.  I should, but I don’t.

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? No complaints.  I even loved getting clothes, especially if they have the Green Bay Packers logo on them.

9. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail.

10. Favorite Christmas Movie? When the Pacific Northwest Ballet did The Nutcracker.  Does that count as a movie?

11. When do you start shopping for Christmas? The very last second.

12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? I could write a post on this alone.

13. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Colored.  Clear lights are boring.

14. Favorite Christmas song? Anything in a minor key.  For some reason, I like those ones better.

15. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home this year.  Not sure what we’ll do next year.

16. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Nope, not anymore.  I suffer from C.R.S.

17. Angel on the tree top or a star? Varies.  We have both.  Right now, nothing up there yet.

18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning? Eve.

19. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Drivers.

20. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme or color? No.  We got a lot of hand-me-down ornaments we use.

21. What do you leave for Santa? Nothing.  Maybe next year I’ll leave him a girlie magazine.

22. Least favorite holiday song? That Grandma got run over by a reindeer.  I hate that song.

23. Favorite ornament? The green alligator.  When we were kids, we used to play hide the green alligator in the tree.  My parents have it, but it’s still my favorite ornament.

I’m going to break the rules and not tag anyone.  If anyone wants this tag, by all means take it.

I don’t get moved easily, but the reason this one hit me is it came from Canada, not the Middle East.

A 16-year-old Canadian girl, Aqsa Parvez, was strangled to death by her own father for not wearing her hijab (a traditional Muslim head scarf). Her father had beaten her before for not wearing it, and she had gone to school having to cover up bruises. She had been fearing for her life and actually had been living with a friend to escape the violence.

She had also been followed around to make sure she was wearing the hijab. Sadly, she had predicted her own demise, telling a friend of hers that her father was going to kill her for not wearing it.

Her father Muhammad Parvez has been charged with second-degree murder.  Waqas Parvez, her brother, may be charged with obstruction of justice for intentionally trying to mislead investigators.  Waqas Parvez is on bail for $10,000 and had to surrender his passport to authorities.

A friend of mine who I have a lot of respect for and I got into a slight argument about overpopulation the other day. He thinks the world isn’t overpopulated. I say it is.

Overpopulation is the cause of most wars nowadays. Just like the animal kingdom, when people are too close together and don’t have enough resources, they’re pissed off. Those experiments have been done with rats. You think humans are no different?

He says that the world still has plenty of wilderness. Sure it does - in Antarctica, Siberia, the Sahara, the Arabian desert, Mongolia, Greenland, Northern Canada, the Amazon Rainforest, and the deserts of Australia. Can anyone guess what those places have in common? My point exactly.

It’s just wonderful we have an administration that wants to block global family planning funding. Yeah, that will work really well. You want more wars and even more terrorists? Add more people to this world that don’t have enough to eat.

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I was talking to a girl at work today. 26 years old, maxes out her 401k, maxes out her IRA, invests in stocks on the side, and has a comfortable savings account. Wow. I told her I wished I was that responsible when I was her age.

She told me she was socially liberal and fiscally right-wing. She’s highly against taxes, and went off on parents who want her to pay for their f*** trophies (her word, not mine). Heh. She expects parents to be responsible for their own actions? Like that will ever happen. Someone got all butt hurt on another blog when I said that they should pay for their own day care instead of expecting my tax money to cover it. You can guess which political party they were affiliated with.

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I saw Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s new movie, the other night. If you don’t know who Mike Judge is, he’s the guy who brought us Beavis and Butt-head and Office Space. I’ll do a review on that later. For now, have a wonderful weekend.

So, I went around the web, reading newspaper accounts, editorials, and blogs about the incident. I’ve read from American, British, and Islamic sources.

Apparently, in the West, there was a lot of outcry among moderate Muslims because obviously, this makes Islam look bad. And I’m glad moderates are speaking out. For the sake of P.R., speak out more, by all means.

Here’s the full story of what happened. The school teacher asked her 7-year-old students what to name the class teddy bear. They decided on Mohammad. No biggie, right? Well, when the authorities found out what happened, she was sent to trial and sentenced to fifteen days in prison.

Protests erupted, and some of the protests led to riots. Many of the protesters, carrying swords and clubs, demanded death, as “that bitch” (words of the protesters, not mine) was intentionally mocking Islam and committing blasphemy.

The Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir originally declared the sentence fair as is until a British delegation met with him and convinced him to pardon her.

It amazes me. Dead silence when 220,000 people are killed in Darfur, but a teacher allows some seven-year-olds to name the class teddy bear Mohammad and all hell breaks lose. Yeah, that will really boost the Sudanese tourism industry.

And to those who think I’m being unfair picking on a poor, backwards nation, pick up a history book, will ya? Sudan had a jumpstart on us American newbies by about 2600 years. The Kush once conquered Egypt and actually ruled for a dynasty. They built pyramids too, just not as neat-o as the Egyptian ones so they don’t get all that warm and fuzzy tourism money.

After the Kush came and went, the Nubian Christians were quite powerful for their time, before the nation converted to Islam over a period of many centuries. The whole country isn’t Islamic, as there is still a sizeable Christian minority, as well as pagans.

I won’t get into the whole British imperialism crap and the civil wars; I’m just saying Sudan wasn’t always ass backwards. Maybe this will be a wake-up call to get with the times. Or at least, we can hope.

My God. You got to be kidding me.

Is it possible to be more hypersensitive than the Islamic religion? I mean, seriously, can anyone be more hypersensitive than Muslims? I make fun of politically correct liberals all the time for being hypersensitive, but his is a whole new level.

Now, I wish I was making up this story, but I’m not. This is true. In Sudan, an English schoolteacher is going to jail for 15 days for naming her teddy bear Mohamed. Supposedly, she narrowly got away from a even more harsh sentence of forty lashes. In Sudan, protests erupted and many of the protesters complained the sentence was too lenient. She deserved death. Yes, death.

The audacity! No Christian who ever lived named their teddy bear “Jesus” and I’m sure no Buddhist who ever lived named their teddy bear “Buddha.” Why, I’d be so offended, if someone named their teddy bear Jesus, I’d stop what I’m doing right now and go to their house and shoot them so full of holes, they’d be picking up pieces for days! Weeks! Years!

I’m being sarcastic of course, but I assume you know that. I’ve seen Cradle of Filth twice live and Dimmu Borgir once. I know they’re offensive, but their music is good. Had they said a tenth of the things about Islam that they say about Christianity, they’ll have more fatwas than the number of games the Detroit Lions choke (that’s a lot of fatwas).

I don’t know about you, but I’m embarrassed for my Muslim relatives and friends. I’m embarrassed the same way I was embarrassed by Mark Chmura’s (a Christian and a Green Bay Packer) dumb ass who refused to visit Bill Clinton because of moral reasons, then he proceeded to have a sexual affair with his underage babysitter.

In the sake of Islamic P.R., I call on moderate Muslims to break this woman out of jail and beat some of these whackjobs’ asses. This makes you look bad, really bad. I’m serious. Really, really bad. No other religion is this hypersensitive. No other religion is doing crap like this.

You’ve become the laughingstock of the 21st century. Don’t give me poverty as an excuse. There are Hindus that are a heck of a lot more poor than you, yet they don’t put people in jail for making fun of that dude with the elephant head or that chick with the six arms.

I am not against Islam. I will make that clear. I will also make clear that I will call someone an idiot when they’re being an idiot, and those people are being idiots. I will also make it clear that Islam needs some serious P.R. work, especially when crap like this makes international news.