What is Religion? What is all ths Anonymous stuff?

Well, Webster tells us :
RELIGION (re·li·gion)
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈli-jən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back — more at rely
Date: 13th century
1 a : the state of a religious b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

Anyone who has watched my facebook pages will have seen an inordinate number of posts regarding the cult/business known as Scientology and the actions of a group known as Anonymous whose aim is to take away the cults tax exempt status, expose it's abuses and crimes and dismantle it systematically and it's money grabbing, family destroying, life ruining and even murderous practices (all WELL documented) around the world.

It has become a bit of an obsession with me. For those above reasons and more. They feel aids is a state of mind not a disease, that gays and lesbians are aberrations that need cured and if not put away, and early transcripts and recordings clearly show his pure racism against non whites.

I won't list all their crimes and the accusations against them, go to xenu.net or google clambake, scientology, anonymous.

So why the obsession?
My wife asked me what is it to me to be a Unitarian Universalist? Do you not feel it is a religion? First, no, it isn't. It is a collection of people with different spiritual beliefs (some even atheist) that meet in a church. It is a church, it is religious and spiritual in nature but it is not a singular religion. It is a collection of beliefs that serves a greater good to it's people and it's community and idealy teh world.
it doe sNOT dictate policy it does not attempt to control lives beliefs or families.

Scientology is a false religion that is a failed pseudo self help program with a massive business plan and an attitude that only comes close to being religious in that it is a cult.

Consider this quote:

In the late 1940s, pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard declared:
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion"

Hubbard later created the Church of Scientology...

Look at the methods it uses to control, trap and bleed dry financially it's adherents.

the e-meter and auditing a primitive ineffectual "lie detector" used to collect sensitive information that is supposed to be destroyed but has been proved to be held as a method of black mail.
It's fair game policy:

In his confidential Manual of Justice of 1959, Hubbard wrote "People attack Scientology. I never forget it, always even the score." He advocated using private investigators to investigate critics, who had turned out to be "members of the Communist Party or criminals, usually both. The smell of police or private detectives caused them to fly, to close down, to confess. Hire them and damn the cost when you need to." He said that in dealing with opponents, his followers should "always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace. Don't ever defend. Always attack." He urged the use of "black propaganda" to "destroy reputation or public belief in persons, companies or nations."

So why should YOU care? again go to the sites listed
xenu.net
What is this anonymous?

Initially a bunch of hackers and pranksters running amok on the net creating havoc and nuisance? Well, sadly yes, there was that element, but mostly free thinkers with a goal of uniting and sharing information all information, fun stuff, serious stuff and silly stuff. at that point there really wasn't an anonymous, save a collection of /b/ posters.

Then, om youtube, this video leaked out from a scientology awards show honoring tom cruise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0

scientology moved in and the video was removed, other posts freely posted started to move, some satirical many posting the problems within the cult, a trend was growing
and the free thinking netsters were not happy, then the /b/ reply came out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ&feature=related

and a movement exploded.

Why my interest? I grew up in a home where reading was encouraged, fostered and free thinking was pushed. make your own choices, be free to think, to express, to believe or not believe as I saw fit. But like power, with great freedom comes great responsibility.

Tell me I can't read a book, (like Huck Finn being banned in many schools) Now I want to read it. Tell me a film is bad (Deep throat) I want to see it.

Tell me it's because YOU know better and are protecting me? I get rebellious. Scientology is just one arm of a movement that wants to suppress the last free frontier of expression, what we can and can't see, read, watch.
I don't care if you are conservative or liberal, you impinge MY freedoms I'll stop you.
Should a woman be free to be al she can be? Should that glass ceiling be shattered? YES.
But why replace it if she wants to be a cheerleader? (See Penn and tellers Bullshit on how feminists are actually hurting girls by restricting cheer leading a status that will recognize it as a sport)
Now I don't care about cheer leading, I don't see it as a "competitive sport" like football, but especially these days, those are dangerous, skillful athletic moves
and they deserves a sense of protection and guidelines to ensure safety.
Are beauty pageants silly? YES but if that is what a girl wants god bless her. And if she wants to put on camo and carry an M-1, then you go protect this nation girl. Kick ass, be what you want to be as feminine or masculine as you wish. same you guys.

Saying I am sexist because I find soft sexy, subservient, girly, women sexy is wrong. That's what attracts me. IF, IF I expected ALL women to fall into that role? Yes then I'd be sexist. I don't deny a persons sexual freedom any more then their reading, religious, social or political views. Even if they differ with mine.
Take away my music, movies, books you'll have a fight. When it comes to these things I am a flaming, gay rights supporting, tree hugging pagan, liberal.
With one big difference which may alienate my UU familyand friends...
Don't take away my fucking gun either. Because if the government, or the scientologists or any suppressive/oppressive group comes in trying to oppress my rights, my friends my family? Oppress my rights as happened in early Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, China, or Cuba....they're going to have a fight on their hands.
250 years ago a rag tag army of subversives tried to stop an oppressive government with far more then scythes and pitchforks.
They fought to establish and sustain these very rights under attack to day.
Scientology is just one target to this oppression, Westboro another.

I'll peacefully, even silently, openly and if needed behind Guy Fawkes face stand to protect against them..if it gets hard, But I am not rolling over and letting anyone walk over those freedoms. not without a fight.

They are anonymous
they are legion
they do not forget
they do not forgive
expect them......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QubW_LhiqDY&feature=related

An open rant to Mc Donald's, Dunkin Donuts and other places who add Cream and sugar in my coffee

(and the like) PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Stop adding cream and sugar for me. No one ever , EVER gets it right. I don't know what marketing nitwit came up with that one but
I've been to dozens of McyD's and other establishments that "helpfully" add cream and sugar for you, and it always ruins the coffee (or tea).
Dunkin Donuts CAN'T DO IT RIGHT, YOU CAN'T DO IT RIGHT NO ONE CAN.
Starbucks gets it right because they have a little creamer bar where I can add to my taste. I've talked to a lot of people and they all agree, places that pre-add extras screw it up every time. Maybe not enough to wright you but I'm fed up enough to bring it up.
Skepticism in "marketing" and customer service assures me that I'll get a pre-fabricated reply that doesn't really fix the problem just apologizes for the inconvenience, or assures me that extensive marketing shows that consumers who blah blah woof woof what ever marketspeak BS you have for sweetly saying "sorry sucks to be you, but we ain't changing it" reply and maybe sends a free coffee/burger coupon. Weee.
But I have small hope that maybe, without spending a fortune on research some bright bulb will say, "Shit, he's right! Let's give them the opportunity to add their own cream and sugar. They are adults they can handle it"
Here's to hope in common sense in corporate America.

la fée verte

My new lover, a simple fae creature I call "la fée verte" or for the more provincial lot, the Green Faery.

She feeds me bitter sweet lies that I know I can count on.

Enough and a warm glow of yellow green haze mutes my sight, with a muted clarity. Too much and I beseem a stumbling fool.

She is an unforgiving mistress, but when she gives her all, she is fairer then any angel sent from heaven. Abuse her gift and she takes more then most men can endure.

Who is this fair sweet sylph? Her home the wormwood plant, her lies born of Thujone.

To this day, modern science has failed to provide any comprehensive answers, even though scientists had documented the effects of thujone by 1916. Recent research did confirm one thing: the alpha-thujone found in absinthe causes "CNS cholinergic receptor binding activity" in the brain, which, scientists claim, improves the brain's cognitive functions. This will come as no surprise to practitioners of natural medicine, who have long prescribed thujone-rich wormwood for the improvement of thinking and memory.

The muse of artists, and you know what to expect, even honesty lay within her lies.

I had a ployp...

I had a polyp removed from my colon and not the cool flying polyp (A flying polyp is a member of a fictional alien race (also called Elder Beings or Polypous Race) in the Cthulhu Mythos. The creature first appeared in H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow out of Time" (1936).)I guess it started when I got fat. Major fat. I was tipping 350 when, after many failed diets and zero tolerance for exercise (sorry it's to tedious and boring, and I am nothing if not pleasure driven) I ended up getting gastric bypass. I lost about 125 pounds then crept back up to about 240 pounds where I seem to be holding. Not aesthetically pleasing, but a hell of a lot better then 350.

In the first two years I had sudden unexplained severe ulcers. In one I all but bleed to death (that's another blog) only to discover that about two weeks after prednisone treatments for poison ivy ( I get it bad) a terrible reaction occurs and a horrific ulcer ensues.

So no more prednisone, even so, a year ago I started getting odd pains ( save the last, my ulcers were painless if not very bloody) so an endoscope and colonoscopy were scheduled and yes another ulcer. Today I had the colonoscoy. So for twenty four hours I had nothing but clear liquids and some wonderful meds in massive quantities that emptied me out.

I've heard phrase "I shit my brains out". I felt like that. Not fun. But I guess a necessary evil. Now the real evil is, after midnight you are NPO (nil per os, or nothing by mouth) Now one reason I reached Bacchanalian proportions due to my pleasure driven mind set is I enjoy eat, drink and Merry, or Mary, or Sue or well you get the idea. In teh 70's we called it Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll
One vice I have is coffee, and like Pulp Fictions Mr. Wolf, I like mine "lots of cream, lots of sugar (bonus points if you can identify that quote in regards to Bobby Kennedy's assassination)

So why is it that the endoscopy department is placed just past the hospitals coffee shop? And why does a coffee shop have a gourmet coffee shop?

So anyway, the woogyologists gives me a massive dose of some white liquid that makes the room go away and I wake up with a sore ass, and a polyp, well the polyp was taken out, but now I wait to see what the biopsy shows (I'm a bit nervous as my dad was taken by cancer)

So on my way to Neato Burrito I get a cup of coffee and go home to watch season 5 of Weeds and drift in and out as the drugs wear off.

I'd rather I had flying polyps, with those I'd probably not have to do this once a year now...ugh