Catholicism is just fine...

Father Ricardo Seppia, yet another priest sent up for child abuse.

Pictured: Proof Religion is good.

I'm really not sure how much more of this shit will be put up with. It outrages everyone who hears it, it hurts and scars countless children, it destroys lives, minds and bodies. And that's just from the outside perspective. What must the church be doing to counteract this? It keeps happening over and over, it's been highly publicized and yet these cretinous monsters continue in their abuse. They claim to be a guiding light and then act like horrible human beings. It's almost like there is no real weight to any of their claims of supernatural guidance and power....

Here's an excerpt:

 Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said.

 Now, I wouldn't presume to be so general as to say all Catholics are evil or all priests are child molesters, but clearly there are a lot of them and they continue getting away with it. It would be naive to assume that this was the last one and now it's all stopped and everything is fixed.

Ironically, the Vatican picked the very week of this story to send a letter to all bishops with advice on reducing child molestation among clergy. They sent a letter. That's the huge fucking child saving step they are taking. A sternly worded memo. How about background checks to start? Maybe follow that up with another level of authority that monitors Priests day to day activities? A little check and balance, you know? If the abuse primarily happens in the church, then how about removing all the doors from the buildings. Make rules that prohibit unsupervised contact between a Priest and anyone. Are these too extreme for you? Maybe infringing too much on the rights of the innocent priest's who have done nothing? Maybe we should just continue to wait for the bad ones to get caught before we put extreme measures into effect at their location. These may not stop it all, but at least make it harder for these sons of bitches.

What about closing down a church where an offender worked. Oh no, how could the locals possible get by without their weekly dose of myth?

Can you think of any other organization at the world that would be allowed to continue with business as usual after even just one count of paedophilia? Why is the Catholic church given immunity from outside interference?

Florida Fails Humanity

So Florida got a little out of hand today.

They tried to pass a law against bestiality and wound up banning the fucking lot of us from fucking even a little within their state borders.

Yes, it's stupid and yes I know that they aren't referring to humans as being the same as animals because we don't like to think of ourselves that way, but tough shit. We are animals. Just because we have bigger brains and the capacity for abstract thought doesn't mean we don't all have the same great great great great great (times a googolplex) grandparents.

It's ignorance like this that frustrates me to no end. If the people running the goddamned government don't understand basic principles such as this enough to incorporate it into the language of the Fucking Laws they are making, then what else are they going to screw up.

Why must intelligence be such a scarcity in the general public?

Osama and other drugs

Pictured: Official terrorist greeting.

On September 11, 2001 I worked at Blockbuster video on the west coast. We'd had some sort of inventory morning which meant I was working from 4 or 5 am. I finished by 6ish and got to go home earlier than all the other losers/friends/coworkers. I remember that as I entered the house, the phone was already ringing. It was one of my high school friends (I'd just graduated) telling me to turn on the news because it was World War 3.

The second plane hadn't hit yet. Smoke pouring from the building. Replaying the footage over and over. Home video, people screaming, crying. Was it Saddam? Was it an accident? Who was responsible? By the end of that first day we had our name: Osama.

All of our anger, our hatred, our indignation was directed toward that man. He would not have the last laugh. He had no idea the can of worms he'd just opened. Then he became impossible to find. He made some videos, we thought he was dead once a couple months later, but we were wrong, he just slipped off the grid. Living in caves, they said. Needle in a haystack.

Now two invaded countries and ten years later, we got him. A violent end for a violent man. And I'm glad.

Ironically, I was at work when I found out. I was at work for a unusually late night, as opposed to an unusually early morning. I immediately raced home to catch the speech, to get the details, to learn everything I could. I was excited, I was overjoyed. Finally, a face had been brought to justice, even if his machine continues working without him, at least we got the bastard.

My coworkers however seemed less than enthused. Like I was telling them about who won the Best Screenplay Oscar or something. Mild surprise ("Oh, really?") then back to work, back to life. Over it before it began.

This is shocking to me, but I guess all the hubbub, violence and disappointments over the years have desensitized some of us to the original momentum. It's hard to see the value of more violence when we've been waste deep in it, psychologically anyway, for nearly as long as we've been hunting his ass down.

Maybe that's his final victory. Maybe terrorists only need be patient enough to wear us down so that we lose interest in defeating them. At any rate, at least we can stamp one more figure on the side of our cockpit.

I leave you with this: