God's Plan doesn't extend to Health Care

Norm: Does God answer your prayers?

Chris: Yes, of course. I have a strong personal relationship with God. I pray to him many times each day. Jesus hears my prayers and, through his grace and the grace of the Holy Spirit, my prayers are answered. I am blessed every day by God.

Norm: So if you prayed to Jesus for something, would he answer your prayer?

Chris: Yes. Of course. Jesus promises in the Bible that he answers prayers. We see prayers being answered constantly.

Norm: Why pay for health insurance if you can pray and God will cure you? Why do people need doctors, prescriptions and hospitals?

Chris: Sometimes it is not God's will to answer prayers.

Norm: But in John 14:14, Jesus says, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it." James 5:15 says, "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well." Why would God ignore your prayers?

Chris: God is not some Santa in the sky. He does not answer prayers like that.

Norm: Didn't you just say that God answers prayers? In the Bible, doesn't Jesus promise to answer prayers?

Chris: God does answer prayers. I can show you millions of examples of God answering prayers. I have 20 books on my shelf at home filled with answered prayers.

Norm: Then why do you need health insurance?

Chris: Because, sometimes, it is not God's will to answer a prayer.

Norm: Why do you say that? "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well" is completely unambiguous. But when you pray for a cure, in a lot of cases nothing happens. Doesn't that mean that Jesus is lying?

Chris: No. Jesus is perfect so Jesus cannot lie. When God does not answer a prayer, it is not part of his plan.

Norm: So you go to the doctor anyway?

Chris: Yes. Of course I do.

Norm: Aren't you defying God's will? Aren't you ruining God's plan?

Chris: No. God does not intend for me to be sick.

Norm: Then why doesn't God answer your prayers and cure you himself?

Chris: There is no way that we can understand the mysteries of our Lord.


*Reprinted from the brilliant website, Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

Squicked

squick
1. Noun. The physical sense of repulsion upon encountering a concept or situation one finds disgusting.
2. Noun. A situation or concept which engenders this reaction.
3. Verb, transitive. To cause someone to have this reaction.
4. Verb, intransitive. To experience this reaction.

The concept of the "squick" differs from the concept of "disgust" in that "squick" refers purely to the physical sensation of repulsion, and does not imply a moral component.

Stating that something is "disgusting" implies a judgement that it is bad or wrong. Stating that something "squicks you" is merely an observation of your reaction to it, but does not imply a judgement that such a thing is universally wrong.

DO NOT WATCH THE FOLLOWING VIDEO IF YOU ARE EASILY SQUICKED!! I POST IT MERELY FOR HILARITY'S SAKE!!



Retrieved from http://www.somegreybloke.com/

Unwellness

So...

I've been a bit unwell this last week and I really haven't got the energy or brainpower to come up with anything interesting to say. Consequently, I'm settling for posting these vids from somegreybloke.com ...

Two And A Half Hours I Won't Ever Get Back...

Ok so tonight I went and saw Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen, knowing full-well that it would be mindless trash, having seen the other terrible films that make up Director Michael Bay's life work, including its predecessor, Transformers. At the end, I found myself quite unable to articulate my feelings on the movie I'd just seen, so and so when I got home I perused the Interwebs to find something, ANYTHING, that might get the verbage going again, my brain having been for all intents and purposes liquified by the seemingly endless explosions and gunfire I'd witnessed. Below, I've copied and pasted the two reviews that I feel come closest to capturing the essence of this cinematic abortion...

The Empire Strikes Out
Retrieved 02/07/09 from http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2009/06/062309transformers_revenge_of_the_fa.html

I’m certain that someday it will be acknowledged that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is like the most totally awesome artifact ever of the end of the American empire. It’s so us, a preposterously perfect reflection of who we are: loud, obnoxious, sexist, racist, juvenile, unthinking, visceral, and violent... and in love with ourselves for it. And Michael Bay is the high priest of our self-engrossment. It’s not enough that we like blowing shit up: the blowing shit up must be transubstantiated into something religious by having, say, a ridiculously gorgeous girl humping a motorcycle, her face aglow in the golden hour of sunset as she watches the shit get blown up, her glossy lips parted just a little in orgasmic joy.

What we have right here is the Easter Island statue of our legacy. People 1,000 years from now will gaze at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in wonder and mystery and marvel how we just couldn’t see. How could we not see?

I liked the first Transformers, two summers ago. It worked because it pretended to absolutely nothing, aspired to absolutely nothing beyond being a big dumb loud brainless advertisement for toys. Unlike every other propagandistic Michael Bay film, which all revel in their jingoism about justice or patriotism or heroism, Transformers felt no need to bother. If only Hollywood could have left well enough alone.

Of course, in Hollywood, “well enough alone” means you wear out a franchise with 12 movies, until even the fanboys are complaining that it’s stupid and a budget-bloated sequel finally bankrupts the studio. We’re nowhere near that, though. Transformers 3 is coming soon to a theater near you, you may rest assured of that.

I was ready for Revenge to be as agreeably inconsequential as the first film, and I was perfectly happy to be enjoying that it’s so completely fuckin’ bonkers from the get-go, when we discover that the alien robot things have been on Earth from 17,000 BC, when they apparently fought off Stargate’s Goa’uld or something for the right to pick on the poor uncivilized cavepeople natives. But then I got lost beyond that, for -- unlike the first movie -- this one either assumes that you’re steeped in the laughable mythos that Hasbro invented for its toys, or else screenwriters Ehren Kruger (The Brothers Grimm, The Skeleton Key) and the team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III) invented a new laughable mythos. I’m not an eight-year-old boy, and I wasn’t in the 1980s either, so I don’t know which is which.

It’s something to do with an ancient bloodfeud between the good robots (the Autobots) and the bad robots (the Decepticons). You can tell which are the good robots -- they have blue eyes and are nice and round and shiny and look like Japanese motorcycles or something Paul Walker drove in Fast & Furious or gas-guzzling, all-American pickup trucks manufactured by companies now in bankruptcy -- and you can tell which are the bad robots: they’re very pointy and have red eyes. Beyond that, there’s a lot of high-falutin’ about wrongs done eons ago and such: it’s impossible to understand 90 percent of the Transformers’ dialogue, which is probably a blessing, because the other 10 percent sounds like Gandalf explaining to Frodo about the Ring, or Darth Vader grumbling about the damn Jedi Knights, but without the gravitas of either.

Apparently the good robots have discovered that Shia LaBeouf is Indiana Jones’s kid, because they send him on a mission to find an ancient doohickey from 17,000 BC in the North African desert. And luckily his superhot girlfriend (Megan Fox: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People) is along to gape in ecstatic joy at stuff blowing up and blue-eyed robots and red-eyed robots beating one another up over the ancient whatchamacallit, which is supposed to have the power to do something-or-other.

To call Revenge incoherent and bloated is to put it kindly. To say that Michael Bay fetishizes slow-motion and we still can’t see what the hell is happening the half the time is probably something he’d take as a compliment. But eventually I got so bored -- for these two and a half hours feel much, much longer than the same two and a half hours the first movie consumed -- that I lost track of the number of testicle jokes and taser jokes that flew by. The target audience will be pleased to know, perhaps, that yes: one joke combines testicles and tasers. It’s like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of frat-boy humor.

But it’s all good, because, you see, even though a Decepticon snatches the American flag from the Brooklyn Bridge as a show of contempt for us puny humans, it’s back later. America rules! Take that, Decepticons!

Welcome to Easter Island.

Viewed at a semi-public screening with an audience of critics and ordinary moviegoers. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material.


Small Penis Humilation
- by Dustin Rowles
Retrieved 02/07/09 from http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-review.php

I realize I’m stating the obvious here, but it bears elucidation in light of this review because it’s the single biggest driving force behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Michael Bay has a profoundly tiny dick. The man has a diminutive dangler — what’s known in medical circles as a micro-penis (less than 2.75 inches erect). And rather than seek psychotherapy for his small penis humilation, Mr. Bay deals with his itty-bitty anxieties by hiding behind his work. It’s classic overcompensation; all the symptoms are manifested in his person — long hair, leather jackets, sports cars — but none more evident than his pursuit of aggrandizement in Revenge of the Fallen. His desire to embiggen Transformers II over its predecessor — to make bigger in power, to enlarge our conceptions — is clearly an attempt to conceal his sexual inadequacy.

It’s sad, really. Mr. Bay has no ability to drive, thrust, shove or plunge. All he has in his arsenal is a malevolently irritating poke delivered with a toothsome sneer, the flick of his mullet, and a decidedly timorous and almost hopeful, “Do you like that, baby?” And so Mr. Bay takes these frustrations out in his films, and in Revenge of the Fallen his eagerness gets the best of him. It’s easy to suggest that the two-and-a-half hour series of explosions, cheesy toddler one-liners, and cacophonous, bass-heavy noises is all part of an ongoing big-dick swinging contest Mr. Bay has with McG, but if you look closer, you’ll see what’s really at play here. Revenge of the Fallen is little more than a series of explosions transposed with shots of Megan Fox’s cleavage and/or ass. Mr. Bay sees what he cannot have in the bedroom, and out of those phallic frustrations, he obliterates everything in his wake like a petulant little child who destroys the contents of his toy chest because he’s been denied an ice cream cone. Those Transformers are his toys; the big screen is his bedroom; and sexual competence is the ice cream cone that will forever elude him.

Serial killers are often associated with small-penis syndrome and though there may be little veracity in that theory, it’s apparent that Michael Bay shares the same hedonistic soullessness of a Ted Bundy or Leonard Lake. There’s not an ounce of life in the Fallen’s script. But there is little denying that the man knows how to film an action sequence — 44 years of practice borne out of sexual insufficiency will make a person an expert. In Revenge of the Fallen, Bay sticks to what he knows, barely capable of poking his spectacle into a narrative framework. It’s a battle of good and evil. Autobots vs. Decepticons. Megatron is pulled from the sea to assist the original Decepticon, Fallen (a metaphor for Lucifer? No: For Bay’s limp junk). Fallen wants avenge an ancient slight against the planet Earth by finding an instrument hidden in a monstrous Egyptian obelisk that will allow him to stab out the sun (there’s some metaphorical wish fulfillment for you).

Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) spends all of one day in college, where he is attacked by a human-shaped Decepticon (Isabel Lucas) with a phallic tail, before he is recruited by Optimus Prime to act as an ambassador between the Autobots and the United States military, which has an uneasy relationship with the Transformers. That relationship becomes moot, however, when Fallen and the other Decepticons invade Earth in search of that sun-diffusing instrument, which Sam — along with the assistance of Megan Fox’s low-cut blouses and all powerful slo-mo cleavage — has to prevent while also retrieving a few shards and something called the Matrix of Leadership.

That’s essentially the gist of the nonsensical, incoherent, illogical ass-brained plot, and even the six-and-a-half minutes of story seems to get in the way of the other 144 minutes of shit blowing up. There are, of course, even more Transformers in the sequel, which only means it’s even more difficult to tell what’s going on, who is on whose side, and who is battling whom, which becomes particularly problematic near the end where everything is also obscured by a storm of sand.

John Turturro brings further indignity upon his career by appearing as a former government agent turned conspiracy theorist; it’s hard to say what the fuck he was doing in this movie — both Turturro and his character — except to bring shame on his family. Megan Fox is in a perpetual state of glisten and never stops pouting her lips; meanwhile, Shia LaBeouf continues his fast-talking douchenut ways. Rainn Wilson has an incredibly brief two minutes as a college prof — it’s the best two minutes of the entire movie, and the possibility he might return at the end of the film was the only thing that kept me in my seat. I’ll save you the trouble: He does not. [Actually... if the reviewer had stayed on to watch the credits for a few minutes - tedious as it was - he would have seen that this professor comes back for an utterly redundant and unfunny minute-long final scene - DR]

In addition to Fallen, there are a few other new Transformers, including a sand-sucking monstrosity that bites the tip off an ancient Egyptian pyramid (ouch); a senior citizen fighter-plane Decipticon who switches allegiances; a few mini-Transformers; and Mudflap and Skids, the Jar Jar African-American racial caricatures (gold tooth, hip-hop lovin’, bad slang, can’t read) of Transformers, who really are offensive, though it’s not too surprising: Racists have notoriously small dicks.

Lookit: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is Bush League, and I mean that in a purely political sense. It’s chest-thumping, racially-insensitive, sexually provocative redmeat bullshit designed to get needle dicks hard. And that’s fine, if you’re a hormone-addled pubescent Beavis who gets his rocks off on blowing up frogs. But you know that, and you don’t need a review to tell you that Revenge of the Fallen is an epic shit storm so bad you’ll wish you were watching Wolverine. And for a lot of you, that knowledge isn’t going to prevent you from seeing Transformers II, and I won’t begrudge you that. Your morbid curiosity may get the best of you. The confluence of your skepticism of critics, your overwhelming childhood nostalgia, or your desire to see just how awful it is may compel you into the theater. That’s cool — that’s what a manipulative, $100 million marketing campaign will do. But you’ll probably walk out of the theater fuming, itching to murder the one guy in the theater who attempted to start an ovation every time Optimus Prime appeared onscreen (he was met with a round of blank what-the-fuck stares by a sold-out crowd).

But even if you do help to contribute to the $150 million Revenge of the Fallen is likely to gross over the next five days, you can rest easy knowing that, no matter how much money Michael Bay has in his bank account or how many bloated, corporately jingoistic films that he makes, all he has to show for it is an estate that’s the size of Delaware and a babydick the size of your little toe. It’s small consolation.

Dustin Rowles is the publisher of Pajiba. He hides his small penis behind petty insults and personal attacks on Hollywood directors.