(A Different) Mr. Brett's Genius Penis

i have a friend who is a tax lawyer, enjoys football, gadgets and the occasional tasty microbrew. his penis weighs 7.82 oz and is an undetermined length.

i am indeed homosexual.

mr. brett's genius letter from god

I'm sorry about the sun
How could I know that you would burn?
And I'm sorry about the moon
How could I know that you'd disapprove?

And I'll never make the same mistake
The next time I create the universe
I'll make sure we communicate at length
Oh yeah

But until then, better off dead
A smile on the lips and a hole in the head
Better off dead, yeah better than this
Take it away, 'cause there's nothing to miss

I'm sorry about the world
How could I know you'd take it so bad?

And I'll never make the same mistake
So if you're looking for a patsy
Why not try the entire human race
Just to play it safe

But until then, better off dead
A smile on the lips and a hole in the head
Better off dead, yeah better than this
Take it away, 'cause there's nothing to miss

Better off dead, yeah better off dead
Why don't you try pushing daisies instead?
Better off dead, yeah better off dead
A smile on the lips and a hole in the head

And I'll never make the same mistake,
The next time I create the universe
I'll make sure you participate
Oh yeah

And I'll never make the same mistake
The next time I create the universe
I'll make sure you participate
Just in case

http://www.last.fm/music/Bad+Religion/_/Better+Off+Dead

odd awkward awesome rare pop culture moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1lrVBLnBY

the closest i've ever come to public service

in 2004 i successfully campaigned to restore vanilla caramel fudge to the ben and jerry's lineup after it had been taken off the market. the letter:

“Vermont’s Finest”
Grassroots Politics and New York Bodegas


Vermont’s finest taught me the lesson of grassroots politics this past week. And Howard Dean can still only look on from afar, tongue wagging. No, my lesson was not handed down by the Governor of the (nickname for Vermont) state and former Democratic presidential candidate, rather I learned from a source with a sweetness most politicians can only dream of.
Last winter, like many hard-working, fairly poor New Yorkers, I had little salvation from the bitter conditions outside. Yes, amidst the snow, the freezing rain, the garbage, the rats, the stress, the subway, etc, my only solace was the thought of walking into a warm apartment, shedding my many layers and basking in the promise of what awaited me in my freezer: The sweet serum of Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Caramel Fudge. Ah, yes, the Vermont treasure, the golden goose of all ice creams, a king among royalty, the classy roost. The greatest ice cream flavor in all the land. Every bite a succinct apportionment of the tremendous troika. First there’s the ample base of smooth vanilla ice cream made from only the finest natural ingredients. Then there’s the perfect fusion of silky fudge ribbons and spiraling caramel, always soft, always perfectly blended. Unparalleled.
Then one day after making the trek to the office in seven-degree weather I check my inbox and find an email from my brother with a link to the Ben & Jerry’s site. Ice cream being the last thing on my mind after feeling my marrow gently solidify for ten blocks, I close the email. Later in the day, bored at work, I click on the email again. But this time I realize it’s not just a link to the B & J site. It keeps staring at me: benandjerrys.com/graveyard. I panic. I know what it means. The end is near. Our run is up. As I click on the link I still have hope that it’s all a joke and that “graveyard” means something else. The page downloads at what feels like a file a minute. But then there it is with little fanfare, mixed among the other outcasts, VCF had been moved to the “Dearly Departed Flavors” list and would no longer be made.
For a few weeks, I coped. I tried to put it out of my mind, partaking in various other treats, pastries, cakes and even Ben & Jerry’s B-level caramel concoction “Karamel Sutra”. It wasn’t the same. The fudge chips were too large and rigid, the blend was all wrong, the ice creams were overly rich, among other problems.
Dejected, I decided I needed to take action. I called Ben and Jerry’s headquarters in Vermont and spoke with a nice hippie named Lisa. I explained my plight and she understood. She told me it was her favorite flavor too! Though Lisa sympathized, she explained that she only had so much influence. She did suggest however, that if I get as many other VCF loving friends as possible to call, that could help my cause. By the time the week was out seven friends had called to voice their concern. She sent us all some free coupons, a personalized letter suggesting similar flavors and a promise that she would put the word in.
Several months go by and nothing happens.
Then one day last summer I receive a letter explaining that because of a tremendous public outcry for VCF, it was being reinstated and will be pulled from the “Dearly Departed Flavors” list. It was back! I felt very excited. That night, in celebration, I went out and bought some Haagen Dazs vanilla, some hot fudge and some caramel syrup. Lisa said to give it some time before the real stuff would appear at my local grocer.
I waited patiently for eight months, every now and then poking my head into various bodegas hoping it would be there. Occasionally I would think it was, but to no avail. It would always be a Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch (they both have the same font and lettering style).
On March 13, 2004, one of the coldest nights of the year, I wandered into the deli/grocery on the southwest corner of 47th Street and 9th Avenue to escape the frigid air. It was warm inside, the heat blasting. In the store window, a now Kelly green “Dean for President” sticker. The hunter was gone. In the store freezer, a full shipment of Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Caramel Fudge. “$3.95 each,” the clerk said. I would’ve paid anything.

Energy Independence

is homeland security.

Fascinating Article - very well done.

The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians

by Steven Morris, in Free Inquiry

"The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.

This is patently untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New testaments.

Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
From:
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9 (Republished 1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)

George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of heII) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
From:
George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)

John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievments" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". Late in life he wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"

It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
From:
The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.

Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
From:
Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814.

James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
From:
The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.

Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of Independence, said, "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words." In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally "denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian." When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised "to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those "written in the great book of nature."
From:
Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, p. 40 (1968, Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY.) quoting preface and p. 352 of Reason, the Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History compiled by American Heritage Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New York, NY.)

Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, said:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion...has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble." He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his time, to be a Deist, not a Christian.
From:
Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting letter by BF to Exra Stiles March 9, 1970.

---

The words "In God We Trust" were not consistently on all U.S. currency until 1956, during the McCarthy Hysteria.

The Treaty of Tripoli, passed by the U.S. Senate in 1797, read in part: "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." The treaty was written during the Washington administration, and sent to the Senate during the Adams administration. It was read aloud to the Senate, and each Senator received a printed copy. This was the 339th time that a recorded vote was required by the Senate, but only the third time a vote was unanimous (the next time was to honor George Washington). There is no record of any debate or dissension on the treaty. It was reprinted in full in three newspapers - two in Philadelphia, one in New York City. There is no record of public outcry or complaint in subsequent editions of the papers.