THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND

I don't understand embalming the dead.  The Egyptians can be forgiven for it since they believed that their actual bodies would sup with the gods.  But nobody thinks that anymore.  We spend vast sums of money for caskets and vaults, then buy a piece of land to bury it all.  What's the point?  To have a place the mourners can visit? Not a strong enough reason for me.  I have a friend who said he wanted his ashes placed in the local Wal-Mart, so he could be sure his wife would come visit him twice a week.

I think that most people do stupid things because everyone else does it. I think we all should drive on the right side of the road.  I think we should all stop at red lights, etc, but do we all have to dress alike, smell alike and believe the same fantasies?
It may be that our lemming nature is due to just doing what we were taught as children. But we don't believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy anymore. I think that using the "that's just the way I was brought up" argument is weakest of all. If that were permissible then there could be no such thing as war crimes. My parents were not that well educated and I would no more blindly accept their explanation of the meaning of life than I would accept their explanation of the cause of cancer or the physics of the universe.

Speaking of humans' lemming nature, my faculty was forced to endure a "team building" workshop and one of the instructions was to line up youngest to oldest without speaking. I was the only male on the faculty.  I just got in line and various people were using hand signals and such to inform me that I was in the wrong place.  I whispered, "She will never know, now leave me alone." My woman teacher cohorts was shocked...SHOCKED! that I had broken the rule of silence.  That the exercise was stupid and a waste of our time never entered their minds.  That I could cheat without punishment was so foreign to their lemming nature that it frightened them.  Now recall this sentence from yesterday's blog: "Advancement in jobs is a game, and today women don't know all the rules."

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I don't understand inconsistency.  The paradox of scorning burka wearers and lauding habit wearing nuns never enters most westerner's minds.  Picking an isolated verse out of the Quran as proof of it's violent nature is okay, but picking a very similar verse out of the Bible is not.  Correction: It's not that it isn't okay, it just never occurs to the Christians to look for it. Or I've heard people say, all those commands to kill anybody that does just about anything was the old law, forgetting that Jesus was a Jew and these were his instructions from his very own dear old dad.

A recent survey of religious knowledge, here is the standings:

1-Atheist/Agnostic

2-Jewish

3-Morman

4-White evangelical Protestant

5-White Catholic

6-White mainline Protestant

7-Black Protestant

8-Hispanic Catholic.

Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the term "blind faith" don't it.  That religious people are so ignorant of their own beliefs does not surprise me.  They simply ask no questions. It's easier that way. They don't seek THE truth, they seek A truth...the most comfortable.  Big, big difference in the two.

One of the most disturbing questions that half the Protestants didn't know was that according to church teaching, the bread and wine used in Holy Communion is not just a symbol, but becomes the body and blood of Christ. (freaky that)

I agree with the conclusion of the survey that most atheists are people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, but not without a great deal of reflection and study.
They also tend to be much more educated.  No surprise that.

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I don't understand why toilet paper is not wet.  I mean, have you ever had really dirty hands and just wiped a paper towel over them and said, "There, that's good enough, let's eat"?

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I don't understand self-loathing.  These poor bastards are probably good dads, they hold down a job and help their neighbors.  But religion is grounded in the notion that man is inherently evil.  I simply don't believe that.

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I don't understand nomenclature distortion.  We know what the NAACP stands for, but I am not allowed to call one of its members a colored person.  How illogical is that?
Image this conversation between a white guy and a black guy.
BG: "Yeah, man, this nigger grabbed my ho's ass so I busted his ass up but good."
WG: "Why did the nigger do that?"
BG busts the WG's ass up but good.

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I don't understand some language usage.  I heard this phrase today: "...cells that are sensitive to one or more wavelengths of light."  One or more?  Isn't that like every fucking  positive number in the world?
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I don't understand how we think we are going to continue to feed all the people. Further, I don't think we should give to the poor...it only encourages them to breed.  Case in point: Russia had a place that had a couple of thousands starving people, so it shipped them grain for years.  Then this year Russia had a bad year and shut off all grain export.  So now instead of a couple of thousand people starving, there are a couple of hundred thousand people starving.  So, were the Russians doing a good thing or would it have been more humane to let the few die so that the many wouldn't have to suffer later? I would like your opinion on that.

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I don't understand to brouhaha over dropping Pluto from the list of planets. I actually admire science for continually re-evaluating it's conclusions.  Nothing is beyond reevaluation in science.  But I guess Pluto just proves that size really does matter.

Further, I think that most lay people were upset over Pluto's demise because they had been taught that Pluto was a planet and they believed it.....like it was a law or something.  The exact opposite of the way scientists think. Scientists don't believe shit unless it can be tested every way possible, even though they know they haven't yet thought up the next test yet.

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I don't understand why people work in the city but live in the suburbs.  Oh, I don't want you to live in the slums downtown, but there are many places in the city limits that are very nice.  I am kind of proud that I have never lived in the suburbs, but I'm lazy.  That commute just seemed like a waste of my fucking time.

And I don't understand lawns. Why is it that Americans all want their lawns to look just like everybody else's lawn?  But again that might be my laziness, but to use very expensive machinery to trim all the little plants to the exact same heights, well......that's just fucking anal....look it up.....anal.

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I don't understand why eating mayonnaise on french fries never caught on in America.  You would think Duke's or Miracle Whip would at least try to get it going. I LIKE mayonnaise on my french fries...especially since learning that catsup is just liquid red sugar.

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If you lean your head back and pretend to shake salt on your tongue, you can actually taste salt.

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I don't understand why we bend over backwards for one religion and do everything in our power to piss off another.

In America we deny Americans the right to put a manger thing on the town square at Xmas time, etc, etc, etc.  But we force public buildings to install foot bathing stations for Muslims....foot bathing!?! That's so fucking archaic.  The foot bathing thing may have been cool back when nobody knew what a fucking zero was, but come on, man....we have shoes and socks and Dr. Scholls now. Our feet are probably a lot cleaner than those foot bathing stations.

Further, I have never understood the prohibition against having more than one wife...or husband for that matter.  What business is that of the state?  Do I smell a religious bias here?

I say a man or a woman should be able to fuck his neighbor, his four wives (or husbands), his horse, his fucking lawnmower or any damn thing else he or she wants as long as the union is mutually acceptable...and when was the last time you heard a horse object to being fucked in the barn by a rancher?  So there.

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(you didn't actually pretend to shake salt on your tongue....did you?.......oh, my god....you did!)

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I don't understand why more people don't appreciate the absurd.

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I don't understand why most people don't know the difference between the absurd and the down right stupid.  Take the Turd Twister....please.  Yes, it's a device you shove up your ass to make decorative shit.  But it does have designer template disks for every occasion.

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I don't understand why we can't always use U, R, Y instead of the actual words.  We already have an A and an I in use, so why not?

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I don't understand why people feel compelled to photograph every event in their lives; omitting the actual experiencing of the event. I think it's a very bad trend.
Put the cameras down and just look at something beautiful and/or special and let it touch you. You can't do that through a viewfinder.

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I don't understand why everyone doesn't have a unique tattoo. I hate tattoos that 97,000 people already have, but decorating your body with your "statement" appeals to me. I wanted to get a tattoo of a watch on my wrist, but my wife wouldn't let me.

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I don't understand why most parents allow their children to play violent video games and watch dismemberment movies but forbid the viewing or reading of anything containing fucking. Whereas one is abnormal and abhorrent, the other is natural and beautiful...as best as I can remember.

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I don't understand why more women aren't allowed to use the men's bathroom.
TRUE: My wife and I were in a club with another couple when the other woman was brought back to the table in handcuffs by an undercover policeman for using a stall in the men's bathroom. Another cop talked him out of taking her downtown, explaining that he would be the laughing stock of the precinct.

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I don't understand why more people don't stand in the shower with their clothes on and pretend that they are on a sinking submarine.

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I don't understand how a drunk can pass out while puking and not spill his beer.

 By the way, 23% of all fatal automobile accidents are caused by drunk driving.  That means that 77% are caused by drinkers of coffee, diet cokes and shit like that.  So be careful out there, three times the accidents are caused by those assholes.
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I don't understand vegetarians, unless it's an economic decision.  The whole "animals have souls" thing just doesn't work for me.

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I don't understand why I get such delight in captioning these images...

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