Reverend Rick: JESUS IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

Reverend Rick the Anglican Rebel

And so the Reverend Rick, yo, yo, yo, hath this to sayeth unto thee from out of his mouth. If thou hath ears,  listen:

Jesus said: I am the reflection of the emptiness that is the root of all things. Split a piece of wood and I am there. Lift up the stone and you will find me there.¹

Now brothers and sisters, before it’s too late, think about your options.


On the one hand you have Satan who wants to be your friend. On the other hand you have Our Lord Jesus Christ who wants to be your saviour.


Let’s say you choose Satan. Satan wants to be your friend. At least he says he does. He even sounds like a friend, maybe your best friend. 

He agrees with everything you do. He concurs with everything you say. His advice sounds just like the advice you’d give yourself.

His dreams are just like your dreams. He feels just what you feel. Who could want a better friend?

Want to clear cut that forest, or dig that open pit mine, well Satan’s got ten reasons why you should and by the time he’s done you’ll feel pretty good about environmental degradation and genocide.

You want to shovel another million tonnes of CO₂  into the atmosphere Satan is there to pat you on the back.

What a pal you have in Satan! What a good friend! 

Now say you choose Jesus. Well I say to you now you’re in for some trouble. You see Jesus doesn’t want to be your friend. Jesus doesn’t need friends.

Some of you have hundreds maybe thousands of friends on Facebook. Jesus isn’t on Facebook, or Twitter. Jesus doesn’t own a Blackberry, or an I-Phone.

You get up in the morning and you say I am going to clear cut that forest, or I am going displace those irritating poor people and pollute their rivers and land with an open pit mine. Don’t expect Jesus to hand you the chain saw. Don’t expect Jesus to put on a hard hat.

You want to juice up the C0₂ level in the atmosphere don’t expect Jesus to hand you the Cuisinart.

Jesus is not your friend. But he might just be your savior.

It’s up to you to choose. If you choose Jesus and the Kingdom of God you might just salvage your decency and the lives of your grandchildren.

If you choose the Kingdom of Satan well then you will surely save yourself and just as surely destroy your grandchildren.

Before it’s too late think about your options.

This Post is brought to you by my new eBook:

Dispatches from the Belleisle

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1. Jesus’s quote is hybridized from the Gospel of Thomas adapted by Elaine Pagels from the Marvin Mayer translation. From Beyond Belief, by Elaine Pagels.

Ask a Twelve Year Old

TVFP, always on the lookout for new sources of wisdom, has been inspired by Porn Actress Samantha Ardente. She was reported in the Toronto Star as saying she only went ahead with her plan to start her own Adult film company after receiving the approval of her twelve year old daughter.

We know proudly present a new online help desk featuring our twelve year old niece Claudia entitled:

Ask A Twelve Year Old

Dear Claudia:  Recently I found my wife in bed with our neighbour’s German Sheppard. What should I do? AJ in Ajax

Dear AJ in Ajax;  It’s not unusual to sleep with dogs. My Mom and Dad often let Scamp our Cocker Spaniel sneak up into the bed. The only problem as I can see is that you get a lot of dog hairs if you’re not careful.

Dear Claudia: Recently we were camping with our children and I saw a woman up to her waist in the water. She was cradling a baby. I looked away and when I looked back the woman was coming out of the water, but the baby was nowhere to be seen. What should I do? Sally in the Soo

Dear Sally in the Soo: I go camping at the lake with my parents and brothers every summer. My little brothers sometimes try to gang up on me and try and dunk me in the water, but it doesn’t matter because we’re all having so much fun. Vacations are all about fun and you should try and have as much as you can.

Dear Claudia: We live downstream from an open pit mine. This fish are dying and my husband and children are sick all the time. According to officials the mine meets acceptable environmental standards. Ally in Alberta

Dear Ally: My Mom swears by ginseng. She buys raw ginseng in Chinatown. It comes in little beige slivers. Whenever we start to get sick she takes a teaspoon of the ginseng and steeps it in water. Then she adds a little sugar and lemon. We hardly ever get sick and Mom says the ginseng is a fraction of the cost of Cold FX which she says is just ginseng tarted up. Mom is English and so she says things like tarted up and bees knees, luv and of course never misses the Queen’s Christmas Message.

 

MrUn Intergalactic Lifestyle Correspondent

TVFP continues to expand its coverage of local, national and world events. Now we are able to offer you the perspective of an intergalactic raconteur. We would like to welcome Mr. Unpronounceable Name from the Planet Unpronounceable Name as our new Intergalactic Lifestyle correspondent.

Mr Un currently resides in a distant quadrant which may or may not be the French Quarter of New Orleans. He is a frequent visitor to habitable planets in our little neck of the universe. He is ET at large for the Unpronounceable Name News Service, the UNS. He contributes travel, food and lifestyle columns. He is in earth terms about three thousand years old. He is humanoid in form, about six centimetres in height, white as Wonder Bread with black hair and black eyes.

TVFP posed several questions to our new and esteemed contributor:

TVFP:           Best restaurant in Parkdale?

MrUn:           Bacchus without a doubt. The vegetarian roti is heavenly.

TVFP:           Heavenly, what does that mean to you?

MrUn:           Nothing really. I pick up the lingo.

TVFP:           Meaning there is no God.

MrUn:            No, not in this universe.

TVFP:            Are you saying there is another reality where there is a God and a Heaven?

MrUn:            Sort of. I’m saying all your SciFi writers have pretty much got it right. You know

                      warp drive, folding space, weird looking creatures, phasers on stun, it’s all out

                      there.

TVFP             How do you get around?

MrUn             My slingshot.

TVFP             Seriously.

MrUn             Yes.

TVFP:            What do you do to relax?

MrUn:             I call it Cockroach Safari. I hang out in Chinatown or a similar place. I get a needle, crawl 

                       through a mouse hole and you know, hunt cockroaches. Me against them. Keeps me

                       young. Protein is nice too, a little soy sauce.

TVFP:             Do you have any advice for aspiring lifestyle writers.

MrUn             Yes. Editors are the scum of the universe. Believe in yourself and do your

                       Homework. For instance Truffade*.

TVFP             We’ve never heard of it.

MrUn             It’s the original poutine. The recipe is from Auvergne region of France. That is an

                      an area on the Lot River between Lyon and Toulouse. I reproduce it here for four.

1 kg potatoes

30 g unsalted butter

3 tbs oil

large pinch of salt

freshly ground pepper

150g Tomme fraiche de Cantal cheese, cut into thin slices

150g young Cantal cheese, cut into thin slices

2tbs parsely, finely chopped for garnish

3 large cloves of garlic

                      And basically you dice the taters, fry them and add the cheese. Just be careful not

                      to burn the garlic. Voila.

TVFP             Do you have any insights on the future of the earth?

MrUn            Yes. Humanity will survive, located in mostly in cool regions such as northern Canada and
                      Scandinavia. The outlook isn’t pretty, as you can imagine. But there it is. Nothing do be

                      done, except of course to manage, as best you can, the rather vicious but unavoidable
                      business of downsizing from around 14 billion to say a 100 million give or take.

TVFP             Is there truly nothing to be done?

MrUn             Other worlds have managed it using technology and cooperation, but really I don't think

                       that's in the cards for Earth. Do you?

TVFP            We like to think there's hope.

MrUn             Ah, well, you could put up an awning. It's been done but you would still have to reduce,

                      almost immediately, greenhouse emissions to pre-19th century levels.

TVFP            Will you be covering our demise?

MrUn            I think not. It’s rather a common occurrence around the various universes. There are a lot of

                      tribal carnivores out there.

TVFP            No hope, then?

MrUn            Well you will still exist as a species. Two hundred two hundred and fifty thousand

                      years down the road the CO2 levels get back to pre-industrial revolution levels

                      humanity may stage a comeback. You have to admit, that’s not bad.

Please visit my website:

www.jimread.ca

for links to sample and  purchase my short stories on line.

* The Truffade recipe from Mourjou, The Life and Food of an Auvergne Village, by Peter Graham.

The Queen's Christmas Message



As you may or may not know I have been dead for some time. Rather a long time in some respects, however from the perspective of infinity I have voyaged barely a heart beat from mortality. Heaven is rather nice.The company, with a few notable exceptions, is very white and bland, exactly the sort of people one would want to populate a place like this. The cucumber sandwiches are exquisite.

However, there are some oddities, some of whom I rather like. Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, a dear girl, with the most amazing dark eyes. There is this bald gnomish looking fellow Levesque hanging about the garden with a cigarette constantly burning at his mouth. He speaks French with the most dreadful accent. It sounds rather like he is chopping meat. He's rather clever and insouciant for a peasant.

Nevertheless, I am convinced there is a side door entrance to heaven, or perhaps these people get in through the coal chute.

Now, I want to speak primarily to the Empire, or what was the Empire and is now known as The Commonwealth. I rather think there are too many of you and I think you should do something about that. I address this specifically to my coloured subjects. Starvation, civil wars and this AIDs business do not appear to be doing the job. My wish is that you immediately institute a program of mass sterilization of females as, it seems, most of you would rather fornicate than go to church.

Now, I want you to pay attention. There is no email in heaven, nor is there a postal system. Prayers do not always work and when they do come through they are invariably of a frivolous nature. It is not my job to help you. I cannot cure your child of cancer. Have another child. I cannot extricate you from bankruptcy. Try St. Jude. Do not pester me with unanswerable questions such as, what is the meaning of life. Only a fool asks a question like that.

Goodbye until next year. Merry Christmas and may God be with you.

Victoria Regina

The Parkdale Liberation Front on Kyoto: The I Am A Joke Page

News Update: The Federal Government has announced Canada will bail on the Kyoto Agreement. The Government contends that the Kyoto is deeply flawed as it does not require emerging countries to do their fair share. 

New Feature: 

The I am a Joke Page

A certain politician walks into a bar and orders a beer. He looks over his shoulder and sees a billion Africans, most of whom are starving, many of whom are woman, often cradling babies with distended bellies.

A certain politician walks into a bar and orders a beer. He looks over his shoulder and sees a billion and a half Chinese, a billion Indians, half a billion SE Asians, two hundred million Pakistanis, eighty million Turks, all lined up outside their slums at the entrance to the Temple of  Western Greed.

A certain politician walks into a bar and orders a beer. He looks over his shoulder and sees that the snow on the Alps, the Rockies, Urals, the Andes have all melted, the water washed into the sea and the lands in the shadow of the great mountains reduced to desert. He sees the world wide mass of starving humanity on the move.

A certain politician walks into a bar and orders a beer. Instead of looking over his shoulder he looks at his reflection the mirror. He says to the mirror, I was just a shill for these guys. Mickey Mouse taps him on the arm and says to him, I know how you feel.

Peter Kent on climate change  (about 40 seconds.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBjcykr8YTE&feature=share

Please visit my website for links to purchase my eBooks: Heart Simple, The Normal Universe, The Big Smoke Blues: Short Stories collections with a Humorous Edge:

www.jimread.ca

The Great White Mother Talks to Her Children

My dear children we have recently had tea with this Gitchee Manitou chap and he has been telling us all about these difficulties you have been having at somewhere called Attawapiskat. First of all we don't care for the name. We think, as a first order of business, that you need to come up with a new name for this place, something people can actually say with without sounding like their mouths are full of marbles. This habit of using unpronounceable Indian names just won't do. We suggest a name that promotes a positive attitude. Our suggestion is that you call it something light and friendly, like Happyville.

Now in that vein and moving forward there is nothing like a positive attitude to win the day over. Nothing beats a positive attitude.You can't go moping around, whining and complaining. People don't like to hear that sort of thing. It is much better to be bright and cheerful. A pleasant countenance will win you many more friends than a sullen frown, of that you can be well assured.

As you know from our previous Post drinking a little bit of your own urine every morning is the secret to a healthy complexion and a long life. We can't stress enough the efficacy of this practice. If you have trouble urinating in the morning it is quite alright to substitute the urine of a close relative or neighbour providing they are not Irish or Papists or both, as are most of those filthy sods.

Finally, my dear children, though things may look dark, remember every cloud has a silver lining. You should also thank the Lord your God that you are indeed not Irish, or at least so I am given to understand. There is no lower race on this earth than the Irish. Every man woman and child of them is a drunkard, a thief, a liar, and an idolater. They breed like rabbits. Kill one and before you can say Bob's your Uncle, three more pop up. Most disturbingly, they are unhygienic in the extreme. In short the Irish are a vile affront to all that is good and civilized.

If you enjoyed this post please visit me at:

www.jimread.ca

where you can find links to sample and purchase my short story eBooks.

Pic courtesy of Wiki Commons.

Occupy Toronto: Learn From the Pros



Joe Pennachetti wrote in his eviction notice: the City can no longer permit the appropriation of St. James Park by a relatively small group of people to the exclusion of all others wishing to use the park and to the detriment of those in the vicinity of the park. In addition, the current use of the park by Occupy Toronto  .  .  .  .  is causing damage to park  .  . .  .

Well, well!

Occupy Toronto has settled on about 3 acres of City parkland near the Toronto Financial District. One might say that its aims are somewhat diffuse however its direction is clearly aimed at corporate malpractice and governmental indifference.

Currently the forestry industry (a relatively small group of people) in collusion with the Provincial Government of Quebec is Occupying land in Northern Quebec the size of Belgium for the purpose of clear cutting timber. This Occupation will adversely, perhaps fatally affect the lives of the regions inhabitants. It will also damage, perhaps fatally, the region's ecosystem.

The forest industry (a relatively small group of people) in collusion with all levels of government Occupies land throughout Canada. Its clear cut logging practices are causing extensive damage to ecosystems, killing off habit and species, depriving people of their health, culture, livelihood and dignity.

Not so long ago the chemical industry (a relatively small group of people) Occupying portions of the city of Sarnia poisoned some people. It was called Minimata disease or mercury poisoning. The poisoning occurred through the contamination of food fish.

The Tar Sands of Alberta (owned by a relatively small group of people) Occupies an area larger than Great Britain. The Tar Sands, clear cut logging and other unsustainable or reckless business practices are depriving people of their health, their culture, livelihood and dignity.

Our governments don't seem to mind.

The tobacco industry (a relatively small group of people)  Occupies the leisure time of about 6 million Canadians. This Occupation is lethal.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Throughout the country relatively small groups of people in collusion with all levels of government Occupy our flesh, our minds, the land under our feet, the air we breath and the water we drink by emitting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of toxic substances into the environment.

Yeah, so:

At the end of the day where do I ride my bike?

Justice David Brown commenting on the Occupy Toronto movement.

Perhaps the Occupy Toronto movement needs to sit down with the men and women who rise every morning with a clear conscience and go forth to kill us and to maim and kill our environment. Often as not this relatively small group people make enormous profits for a relatively small group of people, say about 1% all told. Clearly they are getting away with it.

For further insight into the hypocrisy behind the City's decision to evict Occupy Toronto from St. James Park please read David Schneiderman's article in the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/torontos-protesters-have-the-right-to-stay-put/article2238749/

If you enjoyed this post and found it informative please visit me at my website:

www.jimread.ca

for links to purchase my eBooks: humour with an edge.