This weekend we had sky-writing (more on that another time), showing that the church funds scammeddonated for this purpose are certainly not helping anyone in need.* Wonder how many people could have been fed, watered, clothed or vaccinated? The dollars involved in sky-writing make my contributions to (genuine and secular) charities e.g. Oxfam, Fred Hollows foundation etc (By all means go donate too!) look trivial. I wonder if instead of spending money fixing people’s eyes Fred Hollows would prefer the dollars collected to go to writing up “Fred Hollows = vision” in sky writing.

I’d wonder why God can’t just settle this once and for all without the need for hiring planes to do what an almighty all powerful being could do with the snap of the fingers. Pull that burning bush out of storage and wave it around the sky if nothing else.

Jesus couldn't just do this himself? Or at least turn the wind down a bit, because it was gone in a matter of minutes.

*Unless your need was to have the sky drawn on for the briefest of moments before the wind blew it away.

The goal of the campaign was to encourage discussion on a mythical figure that has most certainly been discussed ad nauseam for, oh, about two thousand years or so with no conclusive results and no evidence forthcoming to back up the wild supernatural claims. Certainly no need for millions of dollars to be spent on the hope of converting some “cynical Sydney-siders”.

Jesus isn’t about life

I’d have to question whether the campaign knows anything about Jesus. Saying Jesus was all about life is kinda silly when the whole Jesus concept is “God creates son to be sacrificed so that said god will be able to forgive mankind for various accumulated sins”.

The Jesus mythology is pretty clear that the whole point is blood sacrifice (e.g. DEATH): without the end of crucifixion there is no life-death-rebirth type mythology. Sure you can gloss over this and claim that he died for humanity to live, but it’s some pretty spectacular doublespeak to get to “all about life” from “all about death”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the symbol of Christianity a tortured guy nailed to a cross?

Jesus: all about death. Nailed it!

Doesn’t look like much of a life eh?

Childish (and child targetting) posters making ridiculous claims

Check out some of the posters here (warning 3.2 meg PDF): here.

Let’s look at the claimed creation of a giant chair.

Chairs made by Jesus?

The poster thanks Jesus for it. Hmm.. Funny, because I found this little picture that shows a bunch of PEOPLE making this.

The real creators of the giant chairs

Funny, I don’t see Jesus in there or maybe he’s running the crane.

The real creator is Giancarlo Neri and the piece is called “The Writer”. Of the things claimed as inspiration I didn’t read anything about Jesus either (see here for a PDF archive of a tonne of articles on the work). There’s no mention of the word Jesus and one reference to “my god it’s vast”.
From an article on it:

Neri calls the design a “monument to the loneliness of writing” but says he hopes people in London will make of it what they will.

No dedication to Jesus there. But I guess the Bible Society made an ad of it to promote their religion without any basis. *shrug*

Another “bizarre” one mentioned in a newspaper article thanks jesus for hot chips: have these people never been into the local fish and chips shop? It sure as shit isn’t Jesus accumulating oil burns over the deep fry vats.

Then there’s one claiming Jesus created parrots (I’m a little fuzzy, but I don’t remember any mention of Jesus being around until long after genesis).

Poor evolution gets screwed again. This time outside the USA for a change.

So can just anyone claim natural processes as their own without a shred of scientific basis? I’d like to claim rights to the natural process of cow digestion so that I can claim royalties every time the churches put out future religious bullshit. Since my taxes are subsidising this sort of rubbish, it’s only fair I get my cut.

Then there’s the one I really think crosses (boom-tish) a line  (or two) that shouldn’t be in a public place directed at children. The R.I.P. cartoon one. Here it is:

Some disclaimers missing from this. Oh, and evidence.

Clearly aimed at children (or those of a childish mind I guess) and I think a pretty clear violation of the relevant advertising/marketing code for Children.

Firstly: there’s absolutely zero proof that there’s an afterlife. None. Zip. Zero. If this was a medical product making claims about care it’d need disclaimers and hard evidence.

Secondly: Substitute anyone’s name in there and it would have equal proof. If Christianity can claim it with no proof, why not (other) corporations?

Ronald McDonald looking after the dead. Just as much proof and just as misleading.

Muslims could run an identical ad thanking Allah or Mohammed for looking after their dead mother. Scientology could thank Xenu or thetan alien spirits whatever it is they believe in.

But perhaps more accurate would be the following (which falls within the findings of effectiveness of prayer studies e.g. like this one showing prayer not only doesn’t aid recovery, actually made recovery statistics worse):

Proof that praying really doesn't work that well.

Or perhaps if they’re going to claim parrots and other man made or biological things as the realm of things to thank Jesus for:

Also fair to say huh? Thanks Jesus for cancer, AIDS, pig flu, poor eyesight, birth defects etc.

Of course I’m forgetting the golden rules of this “God” concept which is:

• responsible for all good, even if you did it yourself
• testing your faith or a deserved punishment if bad stuff happens

Anyhow, I lodged a complaint with the advertising standards bureau because I think these ads breach a number of the standards on advertising for children. We’ll see how that goes. If making any and all unfounded claims to promote the Jesus corporation is fine with them then what’s to stop other businesses from doing so (assuming Religion doesn’t magically deserve an exemption to the rules about deceptive advertising and misleading children targeted information).

If you’re going to productise Jesus then just like other product advertisement you can’t make unfounded claims. Keep it nicely contained in that little book of fairy-tales and it isn’t as much of an issue.

Other links:

• Jesus about life (parody site as the idiots forgot to register the .com)
• The official site is here

Now THAT is a transformer!

If I want some welding done on whatever “mad-max” vehicle I’m driving in the post apocalyptic/post comet strike world: I’ll be giving this guy a call to see what he’s coddled together out of scrappy wires, string, cardboard and metal.

Update: Image had died. That’ll teach me to rely on the internet!

But let’s face it: if the 10 pints of cheap beer and chips (erm.. crisps!) the typical kebab shopper has consumed before they’ve suitably damaged their self preservation instinct to utter the drunken “Letsh get a kebab Ihm fukken starvin’” haven’t damaged your health: a kebab with nasty stuff isn’t going to make much difference.

While most were clean, five per cent were discovered to be a potential health risk from salmonella, E.coli, staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus spp.

Given that the article talks of how a greasy kebab contains almost the entire day’s calorie intake for a woman it’s probably best if it does just pass right on through you via food poisoning.

Tips on how to statistically improve your chances of a squirt free kebab:

The researchers found that cucumber, which is handled for chopping, was most likely to be contaminated. Chilli sauce was the biggest risk of the various sauces.

For the Muslims/Jews with their ridiculous pork phobia, it’s quite likely a bunch of them are going to hell:

Also, a number of kebabs do not include the meat claimed.  Some sold as Halal and so suitable for Muslims were even found to contain pork, which is banned by the faith.

Given there’s no way to tell if beef is Halal other than if you know it has suffered more by bleeding to death (thousands of years of progress and animals are still essentially sacrificed by throat slitting to appease religion): I’d say a good portion of that would be just whatever beef they could buy cheaply, and thus another ticket to hell.

What makes a good Kebab?

Kebabs for me are like Indian food: it’s not really the taste that’s most important.

What truly matters is if you don’t get sick.

If your stomach doesn’t complain then it’s good. If you have a few stomach gurgles the next day then it’s “okay”. If you eat there a handful of times and your friends who have eaten there also have not been sick AND it tastes ok then it qualifies as a “great kebab”.

That’s really the only criteria that matters with any food that’s traditionally associated with liquefying your insides for days on end. It goes into your stomach already looking like vomit and occasionally comes back up looking the same. Thankfully I battle hardened my stomach in HK and tend to survive dodgy food pretty well. For those who haven’t gone through the bouts of 3-4 days of hellish food poisoning it takes to get a cast iron stomach kebabs are a potential landmine. So the more used to bad food your stomach is: the wider the range of “good kebab shops” there are.

Now I’m sure everyone’s got a “oh but I know a great kebab place”. Sure, when you stumbled there last time you were drunk and the sweaty looking guy managed to slice some half cooked substandard meat resembling spam off an inadequate cooking device and squirt the flavour out of a big squeezy bottle over some chopped tomato and parsley without wiping his nose while you were there: great. Such chef level skill required!

They all generally taste good because there’s typically enough grease in the meat for it to taste good regardless. Case in point: if you let the “juice” (e.g. fat, grease, sauce mix) soak into the wrapping too much you tend to find you’ve started to eat it (sometimes even the aluminium foil). Is it variety that might make a good kebab? Not likely! The thought of offering something “exotic” like sour cream, or avocado is enough to trigger many a dodgy kebab shop a small grease induced heart attack.

What really matters is how well they cleaned their hands, how many years old the meat was (see below for a German story on that!) and how long the stuff’s been sitting there. It shouldn’t matter, but that’s how it works currently.

The dodgy Kebab in the News past

Some other great kebab triumphs:

• 160 people get food poisoning from one Kebab shop
• Aussie snooker ace struggles after bad kebab
• A dodgy kebab turns out to be a baby
• 150 tons of spoiled 4 year old frozen meat thawed out and sold to dodgy kebab makers in Germany

But..

All that said, they do pack a good grease hit and who says you want something healthy after alcohol anyhow? Find one that doesn’t result in the squirts the next day and you’ve got yourself a “good dodgy kebab place”.