It could be argued that anything which is dynamic – be it organic or inorganic; could be subjected to a form of evolutionary process.

Traditionally accepted evolution does tend to favour a gradual shift which is generally considered beneficial in that it promotes the survival or adaptation of a species or organism to better perform in its environment.

Language and the use of language is something that changes as new mediums, in which it is used; appear.

I would stop short of calling changes in language “evolution” however as the alterations are often bastardisations.

I am going to discuss one of the most overused and bastardised terms that one encounters during ones online experience:

• LOL

Being a keen student of language and the nuances contained therein, the proliferation of the Internet has caused me a vast amount of pain.

I suppose that it isn’t the proliferation of the medium itself that has caused the pain, it is more likely that the greater exposure to literary laziness has been at the root of the pain that I have felt.

The proliferation of said medium has merely enabled exponential access to my synapses by anyone who is moderately capable of mashing their sweaty paws on a keyboard.

Being reasonably ancient, I have been exposed to the ‘net in various forms for nigh on a score of my life.

My first modem was about the same size (and weight) of the original PS3 and ran at a ridiculously low baud rate.

At any rate, I have been exposed to this medium for quite some time.

I remember, back in 1996, whilst using ICQ – which was a sensational program until AOL purchased it… as were Netscape and Winamp… (what is it with AOL ruining everything that they acquire?) – the first time that I was confounded by a spate of acronyms that had appeared on my screen.

LOL, ROFL, ROFLMAO…

When they were explained to me, I was a little disgruntled.

The things that I said may have been worthy of someone laughing out loud, but they certainly were not rolling around on the floor laughing (unless they had been indulging in a bit of the green) and I hope that they had not been deprived of their buttocks.

I found it somewhat lazy, but didn’t bother too much about it.

It isn’t all that difficult to type in “ha ha” or similar and really only a couple more keystrokes.

To me, it was like the person who signs off, in their corporate auto signature; with “rgds”.

That is the height of laziness. Ssomeone who couldn’t be bothered to type three extra characters into an auto signature should be summarily dismissed from both their job and the human race.

I digress however.

It hasn’t been until more recent years where the abuse of the language through the medium of “LOL” has reached such epic proportions.

It disgusts me that it has, for some people; become a form of punctuation.

Not only that, but these serial abusers of the language are generally too lazy to even bother capitalising it.

For example:

“got a chopa gnr on wasteland teh othr day lol”

- lol is not a period.

“was walking down the street the other day lol and saw this fag wearing scoops”

- lol is not a comma

The acronym itself is a bastardisation of the language, however the use in modern day for, texting, chat and the like is a bastardisation of a bastardisation.

It is a mutation upon a mutation.

To suggest an analogy: if the modern day use of the term were a foetus undergoing pre-natal testing, the obstetrician would counsel the couple to consider an abortion.

I used to fight against the spread of the term in its pure format – “LOL”, but that battle has clearly been lost; much to my chagrin.

It isn’t too late however to attempt to fight against the overuse and bastardisation of the term; for it is a slippery slope my friends.

If we aren’t vigilant, pretty soon we will end up with people using the term as a pause in spoken sentences instead of a breath.

Furthermore, there are additional bastardisations of the term:

“I lol’d” or “I lold”.

This translates as:

“I laugh out loud’d.”

Strictly speaking, the term really should be:

“I l’dol”.

It is akin to “shan’t”

Whilst that is a contraction of shall not and doesn’t really make sense when you look at it – it should be “sha’n't”, it would make much more sense to “l’dol” than to “lol’d”.

The bastardisation of the language that has been seen through the mutations of the original acronym of LOL has lead to an almost complete breakdown in the ability of some people to effectively communicate – and indeed, others to decipher their jibberish.

For example:

“lol teh othr day u wer pwnd when i pwnd ur ass 2 many timez”

That is painful to read.

Whilst I often do things “for teh lulz”, I have never “lol’d” (or indeed “l’dol”).

It isn’t the acronym itself that bothers me any more; it is the overuse, bastardisation and improper use of the acronym that has me somewhat confounded.

I fret for the future of this country, and indeed, the world at large when I see this kind of degeneration of the written word as surely it is but a microcosm of the greater ills of society at large.

Some would suggest that “LOL” has become a word in and of its own.

I would vigorously contest this suggestion.

The accepted arbiter of what can be described as a word in the proper sense of the term, I would suggest; is the Oxford English Dictionary.

This mighty tome of reference lists it as an acronym derived from email, internet or text chat.

In fact; most dictionaries seem to see it in that light.

I would suggest that LOL is no more a word than GNU, SOS, PC, PS, PS3, BP, BPM, STD, RSVP or any of the commonly used acronyms that have been used over the years – many for a period spanning many more score years than this blight on the language.

It could be argued that this is not the case with RSVP – as people often request someone to “RSVP” – though I believe that this could be seen as a correct usage despite the repetition of the “please” – “please répondez s’il vous plaît” = “please please reply” and could be seen as somewhat pleading or begging.

“LOLling” or having “LOL’d” is, I submit, akin to replying “I was PS3ing” or “I PS3′d on the weekend” when a caring friend requests that you share knowledge of your activities.

I don’t believe that I have validated the use of the acronym as an expression, merely accepted that the acronym, like the common cold; is here to stay.

The premise of my diatribe is that people have attempted to turn it into a verb and/or an adjective (and indeed a form of punctuation) – which in my opinion, it should never become – and in doing so, have done it incorrectly.

It is a blight on the language akin to “ur” and must be stopped!

Join with me my friends to fight this plague, this disease.

Buy a fucking badge today.

I prefer direct evidence, logic and reason.

It is interesting to note though, that in the past 48 hours, there seems to have been a pattern of what appears to be a deliberate attempt to silence critical opposition to reason.

Firstly there was the sustained and continuing DDoS attack on the atheist convention website http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/.

Due to the technical nature of what has happened here, with the attacks moving to the IP after the domain name was null routed and then the new IP being subsequently attacked, one could make the assertion that this was a targetted attack on logic, reason and freedom of thought by those who feared it in some way.

There is an article in The Age on the attack on the atheist convention website.

Today, we have seen the twitter trending topic “no god” suddenly disappear and be replaced with “know god”.

The “no god” topic, started by a theist http://www.examiner.com/x-8776-Boston-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m10d20-No-God-war-raging-on-Twitter seemed to backfire when rationalists, humanists, secularists, atheists and free thinkers decided to have a bit of fun.

Religious types became somewhat outraged by this, though in their outrage, assisted the topic in trending by repeating the phrase and adding the #nogod hashtag.

A war waged, with the theists becoming increasingly upset and leading many people to speculate that twitter had censored the “no god” topic due to pressure by religious organisations for fear that they may offend them.

As we know, one is not supposed to question “faith”, it just isn’t polite to suggest that a grown adult has conversations with themselves inside their own mind (unless of course they have a certificate).

Perhaps it wasn’t due to pressure by the theists, perhaps it was just due to “operational reasons” and the amount of fail whales that began to appear as the topic trended, but both of the aforementioned events raise an interesting point:

Why do religious types feel so threatened by people advocating logic and reason and daring to question their unsubstantiated “faith”?

The DDoS attack on the atheist convention website is clearly the work of persons or groups who are offended or outraged by the thought of a viewpoint that differs to their own and, instead of engaging in robust debate in a supposedly free society, they seek to silence any opposition to their view.

Perhaps they have gnawing self doubts and are terrified that and exposure to critical thinking, reason and logic will disrupt their blissful ignorance or perhaps they are just conforming to the theistic stereotype that makes a wonderful argument for the “slippery slope” that leads to such wonderful things as theocracy.

The outpouring of outrage by theists when “no god” was trending is another example of this. Instead of engaging critically, there was, to paraphrase the Nazarene; “much wailing and gnashing of teeth”.

Typical of the “very christian” sentiment espoused is this lovely piece:

“@PrttyBella All #nogod supporters shouldve been ABORTED & im against it but ima have 2 do an exception #GOODISGOOD!!!!!!!!!! ( #No God )”

One does wonder why a group, so convinced by their beliefs and “faith” that some of them are willing to die for it (and all of them are content to abdicate reason) would need to behave in such a manner that seeks to silence their opposition, rather than one that seeks to prove their postulations.

One possible reason could be that they know that their position is untenable, and, like a petulant child that covers its ears and screams out “lalalalalalalala” when faced with a request that they wish to ignore; have chosen to create white noise and interference instead.

It is sad that human nature has yet to evolve to the point whereby we can all engage critically and without fear; and that some people use the technology that science has bequeathed us with to engage in modern day crusades.

An evaluation of the trending topics in this debate can be seen here:

http://religionlulz.blogspot.com/2009/10/twitter-censorship.html

Footnote: It seems as if the “Know god” trending topic has now been given the ability to search for either “no god” or “know god” from twitter’s website:

http://twitter.com/search?q=”Know+God”+OR+”no+god”

The topic name as represented on the site however has been changed from “no god” to “know god”

Conspiracy theories aside, that seems somewhat suspicious.

Without digressing too much into matters of my mental state however, I shall forge on with the train of thought that I briefly alluded to a mere paragraph ago.

I watched an old episode of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” last night from season three. It was called “family values” and the objective was to lay to rest the notion that the “traditionally accepted” nuclear family comprising of one man, one woman and offspring; was the only acceptable form of a family.

In their own inimitable way, they did a wonderful job of laying waste to the conservatives of our world have touted as being the only acceptable kind of family unit.

It would be surprising if anyone with a differing viewpoint was swayed, however compassionate and compelling the evidence though…

They canvassed various scenarios:

• a lesbian couple raising children
• two married couples who cohabited and had an all encompassing communal love
• “normal” marriage
• a “gay converter” (who apparently used to be gay – and in reality still is, he wasn’t foolig anyone)

They took views from people on both sides of the fence, and for mine, it did more than just highlight that we are a society that consists of many varied lifestyles, choices, beliefs, relationships, creeds and sexualities; it gave rise to some feelings of deep anger.

The anger was borne of the extrapolated consequence of the fact that there are some sections of society who deem it appropriate to discriminate against people based upon their sexuality.

Fear not dear reader, this isn’t going to turn into a gay bashers bashing rant, though that will form a pivotal point of the hypothesis that I will eventually meander around to.

I am straight (much to the disbelief of people in some of the establishments I frequent) and would probably class myself as being around 0.5 on the Kinsey Scale – the only reason that I wouldn’t be a 1 is because the thought of homosexuality is just a little too messy for me to get off on it (that and a lack of sexual attraction to men) though the notion of balls slapping together during double penetration has some kind of drunken kinky appeal – but enough of that.

Even though I personally find the thought of sucking another mans cock unappealing, does it mean that I should be outraged at the thought of two consenting male adults to whom it does appeal; offensive?

Of course it doesn’t.

Fuck me, I am kind of envious that it is something that doesn’t appeal to me – imagine those nights on the piss with your mates when none of you picked up and all ended up back at someones house playing Playstation or Euchre or just dribbling shit into the wee hours.

How much better would it be if you were all bi and could just fuck one another before retiring?

Anyway, that isn’t my point.

My point centres on two issues:

• hypocrisy
• intolerance

I will make some assertions here:

- I have never met an atheist who:

• is homophobic
• opposes polygamy
• believes that morality is defined by sexuality

- Conversely, a large percentage of the Christians I know:

• are homophobic (thank you Leviticus)
• oppose polygamy (except for the Mormons if they count as Christians)
• believe that morality is defined by a sun god and a dusty old book

To wander off for a moment…

The primary issue I have with organised religion is not the concept of an old bearded man who sits up there in the sky:

• casting judgement
• exhorting his followers to commit acts of vileness
• demanding obedience and obsequiousness
• sanctioning bigotry
• encouraging the abdication of responsibility
• giving his minions the desire to attempt to cast scientific though back thousands of years
• threatening all those who use reason to disbelieve with an eternity of sodomy in hades

… and everything else that one could argue a deity encourages in feeble of mind…

My primary issue with organised religion is that; without question; it engenders hypocrisy.

This has always been my foremost concern – probably because I was raised a Catholic, but that is a tale for another day.

Without meandering too much further, this hypocrisy can be illustrated in no better way than in the issue of tolerance/intolerance.

The push to repress homosexual men and women does not come from the secular portion of society, it comes from the theistic portion.

It is based not upon the teachings of “Jesus” with whom many of them (men included) claim to have a “personal relationship“, nor on any of the “teachings” of the new testament, rather it is based on the anachronistic diatribe of the old testament, particularly Leviticus.

I wont go into it here, @Monicks has already posted a superb article on it here – but the point is that the outrage shown by modern day Christians toward same sex attrition and unions is based upon the ramblings of uneducated, superstitious peasants.

It isn’t because these supposedly moral people who follow the teachings of a man who paradoxically said advised both:

“If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also” (Luke)

and

“I come not in peace, but to bring a sword” (Matthew)

… choose to discriminate based upon sexuality, or indeed discriminate at all:

It is because they bleat constantly about tolerance of their beliefs, their “faith”, their religious views and how terrible it is that they aren’t allowed, in a secular society, to foist them without restraint upon others; yet refuse to offer other people the same sanctity that they themselves seek.

They demand “religious tolerance”, so long as it refers only to their particular flavour of fairytale.

Whilst we live in a supposedly secular society, you can’t buy take away alcohol in some states in Australia on “Good Friday” because the Christians want us all to sacrifice something for their beliefs.

Every year, we hear some Christian religious leader on television and radio bleating about how “Christ has been taken out of Xmas”.

We hear Christian political leaders droning on and on about how marriage is the “sacred union between a man and a woman and needs to be respected”.

The leader of the Catholic church in Australia, a certified bigot, Cardinal George Pell refuses to give communion to gay Catholics and yet demands respect for the “Christian traditions” of Easter and Xmas (despite the fact that they were plagiarised from the pagans) by secular and non Christian society…

Is there a pattern here?

Do unto others only as I wish to do unto them, so long as it fits in with my rigid and antiquated, arcane belief structure and doesn’t contravene the contradictory teachings of superstitious peasants from many thousands of years ago, despite what we now know about morality and science.

It annoys me greatly that people are capable of demanding respect for their “faith” – something that they have chosen to immerse themselves in despite all logical evidence to the contrary, yet refuse to respect people based upon the sexuality that they were born with; and to play devil’s advocate; that their god created them with.

It is the “do as I say, not as I do” mentality, the inherent hypocrisy of so many religious types that annoys me more than their illogical belief structure, their fear of their own mortality.

What annoys me more though, is the damage that this hypocrisy has on innocent, moral, decent people who are merely living out a life in accordance with the way that genetics and evolution designed them.

My final word on the matter is:

If religious types want secular society to respect and tolerate their beliefs (which it has been for hundreds of years), then they need to reciprocate and begin tolerating others.

They could do a lot worse than following the example of @FatherBob.

“So what star sign are you?”

My answer is always the same:

“I don’t have one”.

This answer produces a myriad of reactions – from amusement to incomprehension to indignance. If I haven’t already made up my mind about someone prior to them asking such an inane question, their response to my answer certainly seals the deal.

To some, astrology may be “fun to think about”, but to me it is a ludicrous pseudo science with the potential to cause harm in much the same way as religion if taken too seriously.

I believe that there are two types of adherents to astrology – casual newspaper readers and “sun sign” devotees. The boundaries between them can tend to blur however.

Before I forge on however, I will declare my hand.

I became an atheist at about age eight, yet I held on to astrology for some reason for another four or five years. I am not quite sure why that was, religion and astrology share so many common factors:

• neither are backed up by any form of logic, science or rationality
• both involve worship of the sun or suns (as a god or some kind of influential factor)
• both were ideas framed by superstitious peasants not fortunate enough to have access to the reasoning that science has provided us with
• both make assertions that are highly improbable and require a leap of “faith”
• both fill holes in vacuous minds
• both give “hope” to the weak and fragile

There are many more commonalities, but I think that you get the drift.

I fell into the casual newspaper reader category for a short while before exploring it further and even as a young teenager, knew that it even were one to become a devotee, the premise behind it was flawed. Why I didn’t desert it as soon as I became an atheist, I am not quite sure. I suppose that it was “nice to think about”.

The simple fact of the matter is that this pseudo science was created over 4000 years ago, prior to most of the planets and stars we now know exist having been discovered. The “charts” that are used to plot ones life path, “destiny”, future are flawed and incomplete.

Even if there was any rationality behind this trickery, the premise would be flawed for that reason, but also due the fact that the light from the stars upon which this court jestery is based comes to us from several million years past.

Withholding disbelief for a moment, say for example that astrology carries any kind of weight, are you going to tell me that simply because of where some celestial bodies were at the moment I was born, the path of my life has been preordained?

If that is the case, why on earth do we have any crime/misfortune/famine/disease/war etc etc in the world? Surely if this pseudo science had any merit, there would be teams of astrologers working away with the birth records of every one of the 200,000+ children born every single day, plotting their charts and making recommendations of infanticide to the appropriate authorities in various regions throughout the world.

You see were astrology in any way, shape or form; real – it wouldn’t suffer from the paradox of free will and omniscience/omnipotence in the same way that religion does.

Its proponents claim that based upon the date, hour and minute of your birth; your nature can be explicitly defined, with no room for error.

If you are this sign, you are stubborn, if you are that sign, you are loyal, if you are another, you are sexual… fuck me, we are human beings, each subject to completely unique experiences, born with unique abilities and moulded by our unique environments – a person with a modicum of intelligence may just give a moderate amount more weight to such things than the position of the stars and planets when one is born…

What really concerns me though, is the amount of atheists that I have met who continue to afford this charlatanry any kind of credence.

Three of the most devout devotees to astrology I have met were also devout atheists. One would think that their atheism would engender rationality. Sadly, attempting to have a discussion with them about astrology was met with the same kind of response as one would encounter when discussing relgion with a fundamentalist theist. ’twas most perplexing to me to say the least.

I know that that is hardly a scientific sample size, but to me, it illustrated humankinds irrational desire to seek a higher purpose, something other than themselves; almost as if we have an innate desire to abdicate responsibility for our own choices and the path that our life takes.

To me, this makes astrology potentially as dangerous as religion when in the wrong hands and I sincerely believe that the slippery slope principle applies equally.

The only difference is that there is no vengeful deity who will smite you, should you choose not to worship the stars.

Perhaps that is what makes it comforting for “weak” atheists – they want to believe in something, just not an angry bearded guy in the sky who will smite them if they disobey…

I am not going to waste time on a meandering post detailing what this place is all about, its name should convey that.

One thing I will outline clearly from the start though; this is not a blog there is no such thing as a “blog”, the term is merely a new age wankword.

Anyway, onto matters of greater import.

There is an entity that has angered me. That entity is a large multinational whom I shall not name at this point, though I will say that they are a bank.

Is it a coincidence that bank rhymes with wank? Methinks not, but I digress…

The trend to outsource menial tasks such as internet tech support (Optus, I am looking at you), sales (yes Optus, I am now gazing directly at you) and the like is not a new one, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere.

Should our personal and financial information be given to people who bathe in The Ganges? Personally I think not; but more on that later.

Happily I am a human being of moderate skill and intelligence and am capable of making decisions as to what I purchase, from whom I purchase it and when I purchase it. If I want something, I shall have it. If that means forcing myself out of my dwelling and interacting with other human beings; so be it. If I can order it online, all the better – though I tend to be somewhat of an impatient fellow so braving the great unwashed is a task that I force myself through from time to time.

I know that we are supposedly in a global financial crisis (though with the Australian economy growing 0.6% in the past quarter it would seem not – thank you Paul Keating), but is there any need to create salesperson roles for those who would be better suited cleaning amenities facilities at the local park?

There are a number of creatures I am talking about here:

• The door to door salesperson
• The telemarketer

I am sorry – actually, I am not – but if I:

• wasn’t happy with my current electricity supplier, I would fucking drop them (this whole deregulation thing in Victoria has its benefits)
• wasn’t happy with my ISP, I would churn
• wanted to have The Age delivered, I would cancel my internet connection and procrastinate less at work
• actually paid for my mobile phone bill and wanted to switch providers, I know how to dial
• wasn’t a cat person and actually did feel like supporting a cause like “lost dogs”, I would give to the RSPCA and not to some dreadlocked hippy

… and these are just the motherfuckers who see fit to knock on my door.

Now I know that we have a do not call register here, but does it work? That is very fucking debatable.

I have been on it since its inception, but it doesn’t seem to stop Ashok and his crew from the sub continent calling up and begging for a moment of my time.

The thing is, that they always tend to call from a private number and become cagey when you ask for details of their organisation. It has become so bad that I have had to change my voicemail message to include a disclaimer about not accepting calls from a private number and I am tempted to mention overseas call centres as well.

The current saga that has lead me to this rant has been going on now for a couple of months.

They have evolved these telemarketers; and not in a way that would give Darwin cause for celebration.

It all started with the call one fateful afternoon at work, they called me on my mobile phone:

“Hello, may I please be speaking to a Mr Leaping Judas?”

Well, considering you have called my mobile, who did you expect? I know that in the sub continent it may be one per extended family, but it is a little different in Australia.

“May I ask who is calling?”

“It is Ashok, Mr Leaping’s personal relationship manager from [multinational deleted]”

OK, let us just halt there…

“personal relationship manager” ?

Christ, whilst I may be somewhat inept with regards to the management of my own personal relationships; the last thing that I need is to outsource it. If I am fucking up my relationships, imagine having them handled by someone several thousand kilometres away…

Now mind you, this particular bank who had chosen to call me, I have never had a relationship of any kind with and this makes the next bit a little scary…

The friendly voice on the other end of the phone then kindly deigns to inform me that before he could proceed with the call, that he would need me to:

“verify your full name, address, date of birth and mothers maiden name”

Yes, of course, and whilst I am at it, why don’t I give you my bank account details so that you can share the fortune of the Prince of Nigeria with me as well?

Upon my refusal to divulge such details, the “gentleman” at the other end of the phone became agitated and insisted that it was a matter of great importance. I promptly hung up.

He called back, several times…

I engaged him in some time wasting exercises for my own amusement, however it seems to have caused my number to have been placed on their hitlist.

Every couple of days since the initial incident, he or a colleague have called me, always pushing the “relationship manager” barrow. They are trying to sell me something, I am sure of it; and I know that it is something that I don’t want.

I am currently engaged in a complaint action with the said multinational, though it is going to be somewhat long and arduous I can tell… the point to my rant however is this:

• who came up with the term “relationship manager”, what does it mean and why are bottom feeding telemarketers describing themselves as such?
• how the fuck did some call centre in India get my mobile number (which is unlisted) and my name?
• why am I pilloried as being a racist when I ask to speak to someone in Australia regarding my harassment complaint?

Deep concerns my friends…

As mentioned earlier, if I want something, I will seek it out. I have at my disposal, the power of the realisation of Cyberdine Systems (google), a mind, legs, a wallet and a set of eyes.

Fuck you and your intrusive sales push you pack of bottom feeding cunts.

Stop sending people to my door, stop approaching me on the street, stop calling me – if your product is compelling enough, I will seek it out myself.

In harassing me with your sub standard salespeople, you are doing nothing for the image of your brand; rather you give it the impression of being a leper at a party with no Jatz.

It is 2009, realise that reputation is everything, particularly with social media spreading word of mouth like a Muslim with swine flu sneezing at a bar mitzvah.

Cease your invasive, intrusive tactics and embrace the modern world.

The old school sales model is dying. Its death need not be long and drawn out and your brand need not suffer in the process (and nor do the free market consumers).

Smarten up.