Robert Zend: "Office Memo"

OFFICE MEMO

Dear God:

Before presenting your Annual Report on the State of the Cosmos to the Congress of Aeons, we are taking the liberty of returning it for further revision. First, kindly reduce the manuscript to 15,000 pages, as all the other Gods have done. Second, kindly eliminate some of your incidental remarks (as, for instance, on the bottom of page 9,127, where you devote 4 lines to that parasite on Planet 3 you call something like Uman).

Thanks,
Your Super god.

--- Robert Zend, From Zero to One, translated by Robert Zend and John Robert Colombo (Mission, BC: The Sono Nis Press, 1973), p. 54

Psychology of Jewish humor

When simplicity hits the mark, it's genius. This Jewish joke, distilling an aspect of social psychology to its essence, could not be more priceless. What's funnier than Jewish humor?

A man gets shipwrecked on an island that’s less than half a mile around. When he’s rescued years later, his rescuers discover that he’s built two synagogues! “This one,” he says, bringing them into the sanctuary, “is where I’ve gone every week to talk to God and to keep my sanity. And that one,” he shouts, pointing at the second synagogue, “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that one!”

History of Pastafarianism

We're Not in Kansas Anymore
Cerebral Boinkfest (blog), Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Linda Hedrick runs down the history of Pastafarianism and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Shit happens

I can't remember whether it was two or three decades ago that I saw my first "Shit Happens" T-shirt. There are many variations of the list, but they're all about the various religious views of why shit happens. There are numerous listings on the web. I haven't checked to see which is the most complete. This one, from the infamous journal Maledicta (Volume 12, 1996), claims to be complete:

The Complete "Shit Happens" List

Some of these are quite funny. Note, thought, that the first one listed here is also the first one you will see on all the T-shirts, namely: "Taoism: Shit happens." And seriously, that's all there really is.

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (5)

Dawkins, moved by the technological prowess of physicists poised to penetrate the secrets of the universe, extols  the Large Hard-On Collider.

Sherwin Wine: Laughter not worship

From a CD of podcast highlights of the Humanist Network News I acquired at the World Humanist Congress last week:

Rabbi Sherwin Wine on humanism and spirituality:

"One of the things that you do in the celebration of humanism is you talk about the human condition, and what we all know is that the human condition is absurd. . . You celebrate the absurdity of the human condition. So . . . people often ask me, what's your substitute for worshipping God—you worship people. Never. Never! And the alternative to worship for me has always been something I treasure; it's laughter."

You can't beat Jewish humor for perspective! The official podcast of the American Humanist Association can be located at HumanistStudies.org/podcast or AmericanHumanist.org/podcast.