I was watching an interesting debate the other night on BBC about Europe failing its Islamic population. The debate centred on freedom of speech and women rights, as expected. That made me think, once again, about religion and personal freedoms.

What about what just happened in Nigeria? It seems that hundreds of Christians, including many women and children, were killed in ethnic violence near the city of Josin Nigeria during the weekend. The latest attacks by Muslims are said to have been reprisals for the January killings by Christians. The circle of violence continues.

As some of you may have noticed, I have been absent from this site for a few months now, so Antigone was constantly winging in coming up with a new story. She claims that I lost my mojo and cannot write anymore. As usual, she's wrong. I do have what it takes to write another story and I don't even need palm notes like Sarah Palin to remember what to write or say. I don't even have to think hard about what to write these days. All I have to do is think of Sarah and her TEA Party supporters.

Surely, some of you have heard Sarah Palin had mistaken South Africa for a continent rather than a country. I do not know if this is true but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.  However, the average American's ignorance of the outside world is downright astonishing. It's not a secret that many N. Americans do not know much about the world and seems damn proud of it. Check, for instance, this Youtube video. I am sure that this is not representative of the people, especially MY American friends, but the fact remains that there are many Americans who know nothing about the world, as this link further proves.

I've about had it with these religi-whacks trying every which way to jam their holy intentions down my throat. While I find the bumper sticker bearing, Tea Party attending Christian fundamentalist activists wholeheartedly obnoxious and intolerable, I've come to discover I'm more irritated by those who adopt the more subtle, seemingly innocent approach to raping you with their religion as part of their subconscious need to save the non-believers from ourselves and recruit us into their cause.

You know the type to which I refer. They're the ones with the email signatures like 'God bless', 'have a blessed day', or some faked up string of biblical verse gracing the end of their emails. Why must people do this, I ask myself? Are you so dead-set on showing off your Christianity (ie stupidity) that you want to shout it from the minarets? Ooops, sorry, wrong religion. 

When someone really faked off my dad, his most common and fiercest reply was "Why don't you go fak yourself and see how that works out for you?" In the spirit of that feeling, I take the liberty of tweaking it a bit to apply to the latest row between Google and my favorite place on earth: China. You know, China, where the internet is free, and the rest of us are being unreasonable imperialist faks.

Unfortunately, religion will probably always exist. Even if we're to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there is no God, there'll be some unreasonable character who will doubt the proof based on faith. Tis all a matter of faith after all. How I detest that as a pillar of argument!

Religion thrives for various reasons but probably most strongly because humans - even the dumbest ones - search for answers to questions for which there are no answers. What is the meaning of life? What is the point of all of this if we're only to die and go nowhere else? Why should I be good if there's no one to answer to in the ‘next life' because there is no ‘next life'? How could something so bad happen to someone so good?

Unfortunately, the title is not referring to a skilled sniper waiting on the top of a building targeting you because your own government leaked your CIA ‘secret’ identity to get to your husband; that would have been a really cool story if it could have ever happened in real life….I am referring to guys sitting at the top of tall buildings wearing fancy suits and sitting around board room tables talking about how to save their company big bucks, putting more money in their own wallets, and denying you health care coverage, all at the same time.

At the moment, everyone is focusing on what they think is wrong with the new health care reform bill so I thought I would take some time to focus on what is totally faked up with the current private insurance business.

To document the passing of another Halloween, it is only appropriate to talk about the ‘Hell House’ craze which was originally started by Jerry Fallwell and has now spread throughout the US. Thanks religious fanatics for another awesome scare tactic/guilt trip to send more people into religion-induced states of brain inactivity! The more crap like this starts to pop up around the US the less it becomes “fanaticism” and the more it becomes the “norm” which to me is scary as hell!

Congratulations to these Christians for actually frightening an atheist with some of your contrived bullsh*t. Ok, it didn’t scare me into being religious and worrying about “being saved” but now I’m faking terrified about my actual life, the one I have now!