Anything you do with a gorilla is bad ass by definition.

Wilson's experiences with space aliens and pookahs and angels and shit were always presented as being just as likely his own brain playing tricks on him. His basic point is that it's impossible to rely 100% on our experiences of reality as truth, as we don't experience the world empirically - we experience it through…

I know nothing of the "backpedaling" you speak of - I followed the man until his death just a few years ago. He counted George Carlin, Tom Robbins, Timothy Leary and others amongst his admirers. I'm happy to keep company with them.

I'm sure he's not the only pot smoker, but he may be the only one who went through a murder trial. Either way, he's fun as hell live.

I shouldn't take the bait, but which one is the pseudo-deep novel and which one is the once-trendy fraud?

The strength of marriage as an institution has absolutely no reliance on Christianity. There are plenty of other cultures whose marriage traditions have no relationship to Christianity and they have much lower divorce rates than our "christian-based" culture.

It means that his digestive system rebelled after eating meat for the first time in three years.

Books and more books
These selections are possible a bit trite, but I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as an 18 year old. I had been slowly descending toward atheism since I confirmation class at age 14, and Zen gave me a lifeline to meaning. It made me realize that there were alternatives to the…

How does it impose difficulties on future Christians to allow gays to marry? Because I'm pretty sure there was nothing in there about making the Christians of the future get gay married.

The one true religion:

I think if the "point" is ridiculous enough, it does make a religion 'bad."

I am absolutely interested in them making fun of any or all religions. I think that's where South Park does its best work. The Scientology episode still ranks amongst their best.

Yes, because being the children of a mob boss who's in a loveless marriage and who murders peoples and cheats with strippers on a weekly basis had absolutely nothing to do with how those kids turned out.

@laym - I say a good gumming into the jugular is an order of magnitude more interesting than that played out biting business.

Ruin it? More like finally made it big enough for the likes of me!

I'm pretty sure they played the role of suckee more often than sucker.

Doesn't the obviously scientifical device that is their flying observatory whosawhatsit undermine their overall anti-science/pro-miracle stance?

^Agreed. Swallowed me up and pooped me out, it did.

But what about Ferris Bueller? Or do you hate America?

It's still sitting on the bottom of my "to read" pile three years later. I actually read the first 25 pages or so, but then got distracted by something far less impenetrable.