The Scathing Atheist - 560: Heckles for Shekels Edition

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

On this week’s episode: The Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy is only in favor of one of those things ... The Speaker of the House worries that a gavel counts as handling wood ... And Tom and Cecil will help us kick off "Vulgarity for Charity" with a zing. --------- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: [e-mail] To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --------- Headlines: House Speaker Mike Johnson and his son are each other's anti-porn cops: https://www.wonkette.com/p/arewere-mike-johnson-and-his-teenage Tim Ballard faces new allegations involving LDS leader Utah AG Sean Reyes: https://kutv.com/news/local/tim-ballard-faces-new-allegations-involving-latter-day-saint-leader-utah-attorney-general-sean-reyes-in-lawsuit-filed-trafficking-rescue-missions-couples-ruse-operation-underground-railroad High School Teacher’s Satan Costume Causes A Hell Of A Controversy: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/high-school-teacher-satan-costume-mesa-arizona_n_65413c18e4b032ae1c9d01b6

Warning, we say all the swear words on this show, except for shit pigeon. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by My Sheets Rock and by Marjorie Taylor Greene's favorite fashion outlet, Clan Taylor Loft. And now, The Scathing Atheist. This is Allie and Sarah from the Humanist Trek podcast. It's a Star Trek podcast about the humanism in Star Trek. We assure you we did in fact evolve from filthy we are the board we will add to our filthy

monkey to our own resistance is futile It's Thursday. It's November 9th. And it's Chaos Never Dies Day. We gotta stop letting space marines name days, guys. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Derek Jeter's New Jersey and Derek Jeter's Michigan, this is The Scathing Atheist.

On this week's episode, the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy is only in favor of one of those things. The Speaker of the House worries that a gavel counts as handling wood. And Tom and Cecil from the Cognitive Dissonance Podcast will be here to kick off Vulgarity for Charity with a But first, the diatribe. In the grand scheme of things, I wasn't that close to death, but proximity to death, it's one of those things where the only meaningful measurements are relative ones. And it was definitely the closest I've ever been. It's one of those things where the only meaningful measurements are relative ones.

And it was definitely the closest I've ever been. It happened, it wasn't really during their heart attack itself. It was during the catheterization afterwards. So if you're not familiar with the procedure, apparently they start off going in through your wrist and they snake their little doohickey all the way around your heart. But that's not always a viable route. So they reserve the ability to go into your femoral artery through your groin if that fails. So what that means for the patient is that I'm laying on the table with my hands strapped down like Dexter's about to collect a blood sample. I got a hospital gown pulled up to my neck and a little towel draped over my dick after I've been forcibly manscaped by two old ladies doing shtick.

And then they start pumping me full of drugs. Needless to say, it was all a bit surreal. So I'm laying there. I'm drifting in and out of consciousness throughout the procedure. They don't knock you out. They just give you good drugs. And they start off going through my wrist, right?

But apparently my veins spasmed too much and they had to switch to the femoral artery. And I didn't really understand what was happening. All I knew was that something had gone wrong and there seemed to be a palpable sense of panic in the room. Now, to be fair, there probably wasn't. I was still drifting in and out and dreams were freely commingling with reality.

But what I sensed was panic. And I've been conditioned by TV and movies for decades to think that anytime anything goes wrong during a surgery, it means the patient is going to die. And in that moment, I felt exactly that. I felt like I was going to die. exactly that. I felt like I was going to die. But strangely enough, none of the emotions that I expected to find at the end of my life were there. I didn't feel sadness or fear or regret. Instead, I felt, I don't even know if there's a word for what I felt. I don't think there is. The closest I can get is satisfaction. Like if I died, my final thought would have been something along the lines of,

all right, but you got to admit, I did all right. Of course, I was on pretty good drugs at the time. So that was probably a big part of it. But I think there's more to it than that. There was this brief moment of epiphany where I realized that death wasn't cold and it wasn't ugly and it wasn't final. No, hear me out. I didn't have a fucking religious experience. Don't worry. Didn't see the face of God. Didn't ask Jesus for forgiveness or anything. I didn't become a fucking dualist. I'm going to get a bit esoteric here, but I'm not going to go

all spiritual on you because yes, death is an end. It's an end to continuity, but that doesn't mean it's the end of self. And self is the part that matters. I mean, consider the nature of self. One might be tempted to define self as one's body and all that's contained within it, but that's obviously not right. A dead body has all the same stuff in it minus the self. So where is the self? Now, for the longest time, we tried to stick it into a soul or some other type of animating force, but science kept shitting on that concept until we had no choice but to flush it.

Or at least those of us who are being intellectually honest had no choice but to flush it. In place of a soul, we found that self is an emergent property in the brain, right? Like self-awareness and self turned out to be the same thing. And as much of a blow to immortality as that was, there was a consolation prize hiding inside it. Because if self-awareness is self, then at least to some degree, so is awareness. I'm not the only one who thinks about me. I certainly spend more time thinking about me than anybody else does. I mean, probably more than everybody else does put together.

But I don't have a mental monopoly on me. Nobody does. So when I die, my awareness ends, but myself doesn't have to. My story doesn't have to. And I'm not just talking about echoing right through this show or through the Facebook posts I put up or whatever. That's what I realized on the table. I can continue to grow and influence and do? There are plenty of historical examples of people who did way more after they died than when they were alive.

Vincent Van Gogh, Karl Marx, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe. No, I'm not saying I'm fucking Van Gogh or Emily Dickinson, right? I'm not, but I don't have to be. I just need to do enough to persist in a single mind. I need one person to think, I wonder what Noah would have said, thought, done.

And then I can say and think and do. I get to live on. Self isn't just a thing that happens inside of us. It's a thing that we project into the world. It's not self until we project it into the world. And that means that you, the part of you entirely contained within your body, are more than anything else a steward of the world's memories of you. That's your purpose in so much as you have a purpose. Of course, this isn't going to be as comforting

to most other people as it is to me. I freely admit that I'm coming from a place of extreme privilege here. If I died on that table, I'd have done it with way more strikethroughs on my bucket list than most people get. And I would, for the lack of better term, die louder than most people. This kind of thing comes to no comfort at all, I'm sure, to extreme loners or people who have lost very young children. And it might be kind of terrifying for those people who will mostly be remembered by people who hate them. I mean, by this logic, death is primarily the point where you lose control of your narrative. And turning over your narrative to your enemies is as close to hell as atheists can get, I think.

But it does offer a path. It offers up a reason to do good and give of yourself and be a person worth remembering. And it does it from first principles. It does away with that poisonous religious idea that somehow being a good person deep down inside counts. It gives you a reason to reconcile with anybody who you want to reconcile with and to forgive anybody who remotely deserves it and to respect everyone around you if but for the self-interested knowledge that they are the future vessel of you.

It gives you a reason to love conspicuously. And if none of that helps, just, I guess, try to die while you're on really good drugs. Now, a quick note that really doesn't belong here. I am not quite back to 100% yet, so I'm going to hand the reins back over to Heath and Eli right now. Morgan cut it out, but I still have to take breaks to get all the way through a diatribe.

I'll be back soon. But in the meantime, thanks so much to them, and thanks to everybody who's reached out, but I still have to take breaks to get all the way through a diatribe. I'll be back soon. But in the meantime, thanks so much to them. And thanks to everybody who's reached out as I hope this diatribe makes clear. It meant everything to me. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is the hall to my oats, Eli Bosnick. Eli, you ready to make dreams come true? All right, but I hear it might be hard to handle. Okay. Your kiss is on my list.

In our lead story tonight, whether you're playing a game of catch or bequeathing control of a multi-billion dollar corporation, the bond between a father and son is sacred. Sure, a mother's boundless love, that's irreplaceable. But there's something to be said for the old-timey dad and his stern guidance, his

off-putting ideology, and his pre-approved conversation. And thanks to apps like Facebook Messenger and FanDuel, of course, it's easier than ever to keep in touch with the man who was just sober enough to remember the day you were born.

I don't think most people talk to their dads through FanDuel, Heath. Is this a secret ad for BetterHelp? It feels like a secret ad for BetterHelp. Once BetterHelp. So we'll get to that later. We have a story about one father's paternal bond with his son that dares to go a step further and also uses a smartphone app to strengthen their connection. Of course, I'm talking about newly appointed House Speaker Mike Johnson and his 18-year-old son, Jack, whose name is incredibly fitting for reasons that will soon become clear.

You see, Mike and Jack are each other's porn policemen. They both use a special anti-masturbation app to hold each other accountable for any smut consumption and to make sure neither person is ever succumbing to self-gratification. So, that's a real thing to do. And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon.

I know this one. I know that one. And before our audience says that that's weird or something, I just want to point out, right? Anna has a way of knowing whenever I'm watching porn. It's when there's internet in my house. The internet.

Sure. Yeah. Sure. All right. And a big thanks to Jacqueline for the link. Scathingnews at gmail.com. If you want to help out. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Heath, you're telling me that not only can the good folks like Jacqueline send us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com, but if they do, when we jerk off, we are... No, I just had a heart attack. Can we not? That's fair. No, that's fair. Come back to me. Okay. Also, no. So here's how we learned that there is a fap for that. Bravo.

In a newly exercised clip from 2022, Bravo. In a newly exercised clip from 2022, Mike Johnson appears on stage during a conversation about technology at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, Louisiana. And despite all the technological expertise on stage in that moment, it was not the font of wisdom regarding the cutting edge that you hope for from a Baptist church in Louisiana. But it's here that Johnson willingly reveals his allegiance to the masturbation accountability software called

Covenant Eyes, which monitors his online habits and scans for any adult or unsavory content, ensuring neither a single T nor a single A slips past unflagged. And here's the exact words we got from Mike Johnson on that stage. Quote, it scans all the activity on your phone or your devices, your laptop, what have you. We do all of it. It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He's 17. So he and I got a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I'm proud to tell you, my son has a clean slate. End quote. Okay, so I looked into Covenant Eyes

and I think it might be entitled to its own what the fuck is segment in the future. But the funniest thing that I found out about it is that when Covenant Eyes finds an image that it thinks is porn on your phone, it blurs it out and then sends it to your accountability buddy, which means a bunch of the time

it sends people like a lady in a beige top and then there's no way to check if that was boobs or not. Okay. And also, that's not going to ruin it for me. You blur out some part of it. Whatever. Exactly. Still good. So, I'll start by saying

fucking yikes. Yep. Lots. That's the number one. And lots to unpack there. I'll try to whittle down the endless unpacking list for us. Let's just go ahead and ignore the fact that there's no possible way both Johnsons do not have separate devices to use for their filthy business. They're liars. They have those devices. Correct. Yeah.

software on their non-secret phone inextricably links their sexual urges to their own bloodline, which can only lead to, I'm sure, sound mental health and well-being in the future. Or the opposite. Who's to say? We're going to give him a pass on that. But we're not going to skip over the but her emails angle, because absolutely not. Assuming Jack hasn't since emancipated himself and gone into witness protection, I feel like the continued use of monitoring software might pose a security risk. If not for like the average user, maybe just for the guy third in line to the presidency now. Yeah, maybe. But Heath, I checked the website and they told me they use HTTPS levels of security.

S I say. Yeah. They used an incognito window. They're safe. But here's the thing. Most importantly, even if we grant that Mike Johnson is using the software all the time, he's not,

but grant that he is and that his Yank addiction sponsor in the form of his son is helping out and he's never masturbating. I don't trust you now because you're never masturbating. Either you're lying from the start or I don't trust you because of the terrifying truth that you just told. Either way, no trust. Yeah, exactly. You lose, lose, lose, lose for sure. Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Hey, Keith, have you seen the bags of ice I bought for the... Dude, what are you doing? I have created a crevice in the bed made of ice bags. What does it look like, Eli?

No, sorry. I see that. Why did you create a crevice in the bed made of ice bags? Because I'm a warm sleeper. If I don't do this, I wake up all hot and sweaty. This fixes it. I mean, Keith, if you're a warm sleeper, why don't you just try the regulator sheets from MySheetsRock?

What are the regulator sheets from MySheetsRock? MySheetsRock created the regulator sheets, which are designed specifically to keep hot sleepers cool and cold sleepers comfortable. They regulate temperature, wick moisture, stay breathable, and are so soft you'll sleep comfortably every night. That's because these sheets are made from best-in-class bamboo rayon, the holy grail of sheeting. Best-in-class bamboo rayon, the holy grail of sheeting. This miracle material transfers body heat two times more effectively than regular sheets and reduces humidity by 50%, so you can experience your best night's sleep yet. Okay, but have you tried them? I sure have.

MySheetsRock sent us a set to try when they first became a sponsor, and since then, I've bought three more sets. That's why I, Eli Bosnick, personally endorse the regulator sheets from MySheetsRock. I don't know, Eli. What if I think you're a liar? What if I don't believe you? Don't believe me? Their five-star customer reviews speak for themselves.

Plus, they offer a 90-day risk-free trial and free shipping and returns. Check out MySheetsRock at mysheetsrock.com slash scathing and enter our code scathing for 10% off and free shipping. That's my sheets, rock.com slash scathing code scathing. Nice. Thanks. So you want to get up or I may also have been tricked out of a kidney by a

cheese monger again. Again? He had free samples. We'll call a hospital. It's more ice. I need more ice. And in QAnon snooze. Fantastic.

If you didn't recently attend a sold-out movie screening in a theater full of empty seats, then you might have missed Sound of Freedom, the unintentional QAnon comedy farce about human trafficking that churches and conservative groups bought scores of tickets for to boost the box office numbers. The film was liarly based on the life of Tim Ballard, the Mormon founder of the very tone-deaf anti-trafficking group who calls themselves Operation Underground Railroad. And now, more famously, Ballard is the guy who had to resign in disgrace from his anti-trafficking group because of his sexual misconduct. And now,

things appear to have grown even worse for the latter-day taint. In addition to five lawsuits by women credibly accusing Ballard of sexual coercion in the name of committing to the bit as a fake couple so the bad guys won't realize we're vigilante spies during our absurd mission. Yes, that's really what he was doing. On top of that, new allegations allege that Ballard enlisted both the Mormon Church and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes to intimidate his accusers as well as target wealthy donors to finance his fraudulent operation. Okay, so we have two asks in this meeting of the church.

And I want to say at the outset, it's going to seem like they're contradictory, but hear me out. Hear me out. Don't say anything until the second one is done. Don't answer yet. And a big thanks to Brady and Richard for the links. Scathingnews at gmail.com.

You can jerk off to us. Nope. It's not better. Not better. So the amended complaints point to church elder M. Russell Ballard. No relation to Tim. Are we sure? Are we sure?

We're not 100 sure, but allegedly no relation to Tim. Also points to other church leaders. They all allegedly provided Operation Underground Railroad with church tithing records. Those records listed information on large donors and wealthy LDS congregations. That's information the Mormon church claims to keep private. Well, except of course, when they get caught having billions of dollars in tax evading hedge funds and real estate companies that claim to be religious charities. But that's all the cost of doing business,

churching, whatever you want to call it. The idiot with the backyard special ops team, on the other hand, and his implosion is not something the church was ready for. Yes, which is why podcast listener, I don't have the password to any of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm's Patreon accounts.

You're welcome. Your information is safe. So the new filings also cite Sean Reyes, that attorney general of Utah, as Operation Diverall's de facto general counsel. And Reyes is being accused of

witness tampering in the form of contacting Ballard's accusers and pressuring them to not participate in the investigations. And while the Mormon Church, they may not have an eye for like, you know, fashion, dance, art, they nevertheless saw the writing on the wall and decided to officially distance themselves from both Ballards in September, saying their behavior was morally unacceptable. The Mormon Church said that. Yeah, I'm sorry. These women are way too old to be your second or fifth wife. Read some scripture, Tim. This is inappropriate. Yeah, so things look incredibly bad for Tim Ballard right now, and should they get any worse, might even do the unthinkable and start envying the life of Jim Caviezel. And speaking of Jimmy Caves,

the passion to the movie is in the works. And it is not clear the extent to which it's going to be a sequel to Sound of Freedom or a sequel to The Passion about Jesus or both. Oh, I'm excited.

We'll find out. Yeah. And finally tonight, in No More Teachers Dirty Hooves news, anyone who's had a principal force them to turn a t-shirt inside out out. And finally tonight, in No More Teachers Dirty Hooves news, anyone who's had a principal force them to turn a t-shirt inside out can tell you what constitutes school appropriate

wear is vague and never set in stone. 30 years ago, kids couldn't get away with a shirt with Bart Simpson stating he's proud of being an underachiever on it. But nowadays, it's hard to say if Marge wearing a ball gag would earn similar reprimand. But as the end of October nears...

Gimsons. Yeah. There it is. There it is. But as the end of October nears, one assumes that dress codes enter a sliding scale of appropriateness

in reflection of the holiday. That is, unless you're a high school teacher in Mesa, Arizona, where wearing devil horns and carrying a plastic pitchfork during the school's Halloween spirit week could cost you your job. Come on, seriously? That's not even what Satan looks like in your book. He looks like an angel of light because he's famously a great deceiver. Read your book.

Read your book. Yeah. So first off, big thanks to Aaron for sending us this story. Anyway, Christian Panic went into full overdrive in the Southwest recently when an unnamed high school teacher was put on paid leave after wearing light devil wear in class, swirling a plastic pitchfork in the air and repeatedly saying, Hail Satan. Most of the students laughed or ignored the dorky adult's antics like any teenager would,

but one sophomore squealed to the principal and his school board dad about the life-scarring pitchfork waving that he had witnessed. Okay. We need a Christian narc jingle, I think. We'll figure it out.

Yeah, for real. The piss-ants family then scurried to the media to complain and cry victimhood about seeing dime store Halloween imagery on or around October 31st. Yeah. Strangely enough, they were all fine with the people wearing big white sheets and a hood. That was fine for them to see plenty. Yeah. No difference. Exactly. The teen told local news that he was, quote, kind of insulted because of my faith, because I believe in God. And his dad, Chris Hamlet, was similarly solipsistic. Quote, I was livid because I am a Christian as well, obviously. Why would that be obvious? What really tipped it over for me is he kept telling him no, and the teacher kept persisting.

End quote. Okay. So, hey, fired teacher, you're officially a Satanist now, and your sincerely held beliefs are protected. You're actually not fired at all. And now you can get aggressive with the costumes, actually. Have some fun with it. Just like douse yourself in tiny little milks all the time.

Go to town with it. Yeah. No, do it on the 50-yard line and the Supreme Court will agree with you. They have to. So, yeah. The Mesa Public Schools Human Resources Department is going to investigate the matter and the teacher will remain on paid administrative leave while they do. In his absence, maybe the teen victim can reflect on how

witch hunts and knee-jerk accusations have consequences that affect other people's lives. Or failing that, perhaps an atomic wedgie could remind him that not everything needs to be personally sacrilegious. And on that note, we're going to wrap up the headlines. Eli, you want to sign us off? Mew, mew, mew. And when we come back,

we'll have Tom and Cecil online for some heavy roastiness. Well, it's the time of year once again where we here at The Scathing Atheist come to you hat in hand, eyes dewy at the thought of the folks we'll help and the good we'll do by saying the meanest shit we can think of

about strangers. That's right. It's Vulgarity for Charity once again. Our comedy roast for a good cause. Heath, welcome back to the program. So weird. Already here. And speaking of good causes, we're accompanied by our favorite picadillos, the jobless junkman and his

can of beans, Cecil and Tom. I would yell at you, but I just got back from the line of unemployment, so I'm very exhausted. Somebody promised me beans. Somebody said they were going to be beans. That's fair. Now, before we get to the ribbing tonight,

Cecil, why don't you tell the folks who might be new at home who we're doing this charity drive for? So once again, we're doing this drive for modestneeds.org. They're a 501c3 charity that helps folks who have fallen on bad luck and come up short on bills, but for a variety of reasons are ineligible for other kinds of assistance. Plus, modestneeds.org has a donor who will match

our first $100,000 of donations. So what you donate counts as double for now. And in the past, we have also gone over that and they have gone out of their way to find other donors. And that may happen again this year. Yes, they have. And speaking of that, how much have we raised so far, Tom? So far, we've raised just over $30,000 without the matching donor. Ooh, you'll love to see it. What's up? So if our audience hears some of our rivaled japes and wants in on the action, Cecil, what should they do?

Okay. Well, you donate 50 bucks or more over at modestneeds.org and then send proof along with who you'd like us to roast to vulgarityforcharity, that's the word, not the number, at gmail.com. Right. And if they're not a famous person, send us a picture and a description, a little bit of information. So we have something to work with. Yes. And no dogs. All right. Before we start with the thanks and the use one last reminder for the new folks, this is a comedy roast for charity. If you're not familiar with comedy roasts,

the joke of a comedy roast is that you say very mean things that you don't mean to humorous effect. I mean them. So. I'm going to need to rewrite a lot of these. If you're a, I don't know, humorless drag, maybe turn off the podcast now. Jesus Christ. Spend the rest of your life making excuse after excuse about why you alienate everyone around you with your smug sense

of superiority, making yourself further and further from your friends and loved ones until the only person you have left in your life is the self-image you don't even recognize and wouldn't like even if you did. Feels like infringement on Tom's stuff.

See? Roast jokes are like that. That's what a roast joke is. Anyways, let's get started. That was from my $100 to Bulgaria. All right. But first, we got to thank our favorite form of donor. Those who give and ask nothing in return. Truly, you are the service bottoms of Charity Roasts, and we salute you.

Big thanks to John D., Margaret T., Anne L., and Justin B., who gave $50 to Charity just out of the goodness of their hearts. We also want to thank Sarah S., Bill G., Sage B., and David B. for $100 a piece. We like you twice as much as those last people. Indeed we do. All right, let's dive in. Heath, we'll start things off with a request for you. Josh would like you to roast the adulation of billionaires. Okay, good pick. So for all the people listening who do that with billionaires, adulation is a word and it means liking really bigly. There you go. So you have an idea of the stupid fucking thing you do. And you fell for the worst scam in the history of politics and economics. You think billionaires are these delicate geniuses.

They're the only ones who could have ever done blah, blah, blah. No, wrong. Most of them either started with a giant pile of money to make it easy or a giant pile of blood emeralds, or they like stole an idea from creepy twins and a chest nerd. And even if they started with nothing, they all just rolled a nat 20 a bunch of times in a row. That's what happened. When the world is constantly rolling D20s, and that's basically what's happening, a handful of people are going to hit the jackpot. It's guaranteed. It's not delicate genius.

But you're convinced it was all skill. And most of you are also convinced that you're just about to, like, invent something in your sad garage and become a billionaire yourself. You will not. You're not doing the jump to conclusions map and becoming a billionaire. coming a billionaire, but you want tax cuts for job creators because somebody told you about trickle down economics while you were snorting bad Coke and poop ions in a bathroom stall together. And that made sense to you because you don't understand how anything works and you never bothered to learn. It's actually pretty simple and easy to understand why that's dumb, but you're a lazy piece of shit. We should just take a big chunk of money from all the billionaires.

If we did that, nothing would go wrong. In fact, a bunch would go, right. We can have a giant wealth tax on rich people tomorrow, but the Republican party is still managing to trick you and millions more like you.

This like everything I'm waving at everything. This is your fault. It's all your fault because you're stupid. I hope you die. All right, we found it. All Republicans die. I'm not allowed to hope all Republicans die. Wow. We talked about

aspirational hoping for the death of others in so many meetings. I have to let you hope. All right, Cecil, I think this next one is for you because the name is long and maybe that's like something you know. Anyways, Jacqueline would like a roast of Marjorie Dennefenlesner. Crushed it.

This is the lady that was Donald Trump's campaign pro-life coalition leader. And she looks like someone did a police rendering of a person who physically assaulted a cashier because there wasn't enough whipped cream on their mocha. Why can't these judgy church lady weirdos worry about their own flock and let people decide for themselves that they want to have a baby or just a rumpus womb, you know? Exactly. Rumpus womb.

Exactly. And of course, I'll help myself to a roast here as well. Josh would like me to roast people who play Pokemon Go while driving. So for those people, first of all, congrats on being the first person to successfully travel from 2016 when Pokemon Go was popular to today. Bad news is you picked a really terrible time to come to. You're going to want to go like a lot further forward. Make sure you stop for a second in the blasted wasteland, maybe snap a pic,

then carry forward to monkey society. But while you do that, look up from your fucking phone, you idiot. You're going to flatten some kid on his way to soccer practice for the eighth worst Pokemon experience a human can have? What are you going to do next?

Accidentally unplug a little old lady's life support so you can play Dig Dug? Drive to your destination and then sit in your car like a masturbating pervert like the rest of us and steal a gym from a six-year-old as God intended. It's not hard. It's not hard. And Tom, this next one's for you.

Nick gave us $51.43 for you to roast Peter Dutton, but so did April, Amanda, and Tony, who collectively chipped in 370 smackaroos for the privilege. So let fly. All right. Well, like the rest of the world, I don't follow Australian politics, so I admit I had to do some reading on this one. And one of the articles I came across described Dutton as Trump without the charisma. What? Rough. So just think on that one for a moment. Like, I'm not saying that Trump is charismatic because he is most definitely not. But I am saying that if you strip away even the possibility that he might be, then what you're left staring at is a fetid lump of discarded humanity so remorseless and beyond redemption that plunging it down the shitter would be a disservice to the shitter. And so we are left with Dutton, who is just, he's what?

He's evil for sure, but he's worse because he's garden variety evil. He is the miracle whip of political monsters. He's a bastardization, a has-been who never was. Dutton's sole purpose is to be held up as an example, as a comparison. A man who has so little courage of thought or originality of purpose that he is only ever noted to describe what he is not, what he lacks, where he is deficient. Dutton is, in essence, not even a man, but a man-shaped absence. It is right in times like ours to fear these black holes for their destructive potential,

but let's not pretend they are real, that they have depth or gravity. They do not. And in the final accounting, like all things Australian, he won't matter enough

to be counted. I love like the cartoon image of the shitty person shaped black hole that you conjured. Sure, yeah. Absolutely. Tom's roasts are like Christmas.

Even though they come around every year, somehow just gets more magical. Next up, let's do a round of special requests. These roasts were pressed lovingly into your hands like a sweaty $20 bill from your grandmother or whatever Cecil's grandmother gave him. Noodles? Doesn't matter. Either way. An empty tin of cookies.

An empty tin of cookies. Orange a lot. Yeah. Either way, why don't you go first? Chris would like you to roast executives who lay people off.

I wish there were a show like Undercover Boss, but instead they take one factory worker and they let him do the CEO job for one day. And then the very next day, that guy is on the floor

changing the widget makers into machines to stamp guillotine plates. They are walking up to the CEO's office and they are dragging him out to give him his pizza party bonus as his last meal.

And you know that the CEO is going to try to pull the butler family crap. And look, CEO, we are. But you just get to play the part of old yeller after the rabies. Exactly. Go on. All right.

No, I'm going to shoot you. Eli, this next one's for you. ST gave us 50 bucks for you to roast her husband, Brad. Yeah. Brad looks like Alan Tudyk took a shit that contained all his recessive genes. He looks like an extra in Harry Potter and the Several Generations of Incest. Also, Brad, Esty wanted me to let you know, liberals aren't coming for your guns. We're coming for your chinos.

And it is a mercy. It is a mercy situation. All right, Heath, this next one's for you. Tom P. gave us $100 for you to roast the Ohio State versus University of Michigan football game. Ooh, the game. Tom P., bring it in. Take a knee. I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I can hear the crowd at the big house, the UM football stadium, from my apartment.

The amount of importance in this epic rivalry game is exactly zero. It matters. None amount. Nothing happens. Sports don't matter. And here's the saddest part though. They've had this rivalry since 1897, but the university of Michigan is just so much fucking better than Ohio

state. Like as a university, which is the name of their things, UM is just objectively better at all the university-ing. So, all that's left for Ohio State is being like, yeah, alright, you're better at every single

academic thing, but we're better at fucking football and traumatic brain injuries. We have more seats. It's like Donald Trump being like right now, okay, Joe Biden, rock, paper, scissors then is how we will solve it. It's so very sad. And even worse for Ohio State, they're not better at football.

Michigan is winning overall, including the last two years in a row. And that's because Jim Harbaugh knows how to cheat like a fucking boss. Yeah, he does. He also stole all your signs. He knows what plays you're about to run. Fucking get good. This game is everything. Football is life.

Go blue. All right. Whiplash. Got a whiplash from that one. Sorry. There we go. All right. Roast with a twist.

Forgot what was happening. Yeah, I like it. All right. Tom, Mary would like a roast of her dad, Jim. All right. Roast with a twist. Forgot what was happening. Yeah, I like it. All right. Tom, Mary would like a roast of her dad, Jim. All right. Mary, one thing we have to realize is that being a parent is a role we fulfill rather than a skill we possess. And skills are things we learn rather than things we possess.

Parenting is not a proclivity or a talent, but a learning process. And if we fail as parents, it is not because we lack some inequality, but it is because we chose not to put in the work to become better at fulfilling that role. Jim chose not to put in that work. He chose to be bad at this, Mary. And I want you to remember that this is not accidental, not a trait of character, but the inevitable result of a series of choices. All of us, Mary, all of us, by the people who love us are owed some grace, a measure of understanding and forgiveness. It is, in fact, part of loving someone to do the work not of applying your own standards to others, but to see people for who they are and to measure them against themselves.

To give others grace to be themselves. But this is something Jim cannot do because Jim lives his life with the confident, marrow-deep personal assurance that he himself is a failure and he is right. deep personal assurance that he himself is a failure and he is right. Jim fixates on the disappointment he feels in others because he sees in himself the unvarnished truth of his own mountain of regrets, the vast chasm between who he wants to be and who he is. And rather than work to bridge that gap, he tries to fill the chasm with your tears. And that, Mary, is not love, but cruelty. And in the measuring of a man, it is the very definition of weakness. Jim is not disappointed in you or your siblings. Jim is disappointed in the world because all around him are the signposts

he cannot help but read and internalize that remind him of his pettiness and of the inconsequentiality of being Jim. In the face of cruelty, of intentional failure, it is well past time for grace because in the seeing of Jim, you should find, it is well past time for grace. Because in the seeing of Jim, you should find in your heart only the cold stone of truth

that Jim has put there and Mary, you should. Like everyone who sees Jim, see a man who has chosen to fail. If you deign to squint to see him, take comfort knowing that you, like the rest of the world, needn't bother.

Well done. I missed the poetic hate. I missed the world, needn't bother. Well done. I missed the poetry too. It's good. I like it. I got you guys. And that's the buzzer that I just pushed on my soundboard, which means it's time

for our very first Spikening Round. Category is political pests. The elected or nearly elected nuisances nudged us with their nastiness. So with thanks to Tom M., Ray K., Ryan H., and Emmy W., I'd like you to tell me what the following political leaders dressed up as for Halloween. And Cecil, why don't you start us off with Trisha motherfucking Cotham. So if you don't know who this is, this is the lady who turn-coded from Democrat to Republican in North Carolina. And I think she's going to go as Carter Burke. For those unfamiliar with aliens, he's the guy who pretended to be on your side the whole time,

only to lock you in a room, force you to get over-posited, and then plan to force you to come to term with the forced incubation. Just like the Republicans from North Carolina did with all the women down there. Sure the fuck did. Well done, sir. Wow. Alright, Heath, how about Ohio Governor Mike DeWine? Excellent.

Okay, so first of all, Ohio just yesterday made owning one's uterus an official law in the state constitution. And they legalized weed. So fuck your fucking face, Mike DeWine, fuck your face. And for Halloween, he wanted to be extra scary, you know, really tap into the fundamental human fear of that which we don't believe in and don't understand.

So he went as a childless woman with lots of money, having orgasms and being super happy. Oh yeah, for sure. All right, Tom, how about Judge Eileen Cannon? I think Eileen Cannon would dress as Lady Justice, but instead of being blindfolded and holding a sword and scales, she is blinding herself, choosing darkness as her permanent condition.

Or perhaps she'll dress as three monkeys since she so intentionally sees no evil and hears no evil, but she does speak only evil. Or perhaps she'll choose something gory and go as a killer, covered in gore from having worked so hard to kill democracy. Indeed. And of course, I'll wrap us up by reminding everybody that Ron DeSantis goes as the scariest thing of all this Halloween.

Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. Yes, well done me. All right, let's do one more round of the lucky ones and then we'll take on a few big money donors. Cecil, why don't we start with you roasting people who breed certain types of dogs and cats? Look, I should only be so big. Noses can only be so crushed.

What the hell are you doing to these poor animals? They're like an out-of-control TikTok filter, but people can't turn it off and the animal needs a Star Wars medic robot and a full bacta tank just to keep them alive.

I realize that dogs like to sniff their own assholes, but maybe we don't breed them so that the noses are pushed so far back that they don't need to turn around to do it. All right.

Dogs are unethical. Sorry. They're like the Edsel of dogs. Yes, exactly. All right. Next up, Kendalyn would like someone to roast dating in their late 30s. And while Heath technically did that the most recently, I don't think anyone would call that dating. So, Tom, why don't you have a crack at it?

Wow. I don't envy you, Kendalyn, but it's not because you're in your 30s that's the problem. It's that we've created a world that is shopified, commodified,

and gamified, making the most important decision of your life as if it were a round of Candy Crush. And while I'd like to tell you to swipe left on the whole app-based

mate selection horror that has become the norm, it has, in fact, become the norm. And you're probably stuck trying to find love using a tool developed by monsters that only actually creates revenue if you don't find love and you keep using it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you're stuck using these dystopian black mirror realities to try to forge deep human connections, that you have to try to swim upstream against the meaninglessness of technocratic late-stage capitalism

having come to define the mating game. But there is hope, because dating in your 30s can also be amazing. In our 30s, we are really only beginning to have enough life experience to know who we are and understand what kind of life we want. The possibilities to date past the bullshit exists now in a way that was impossible when you were younger,

when you had to find a partner before you had found yourself. The apps are not the experience, Kendalyn. They are clumsy tools made by cruel men to sell shares in loneliness and build a portfolio diversified by suffering. But if you can see past this and see yourself and fall in love with you, someone else will likely follow suit sooner than you might imagine. That was actually kind of sweet. That was not okay. I wanted a little uplifting

I don't know. That was very uplifting. No, those are fine too. I want that whole thing on a pillow now. To cry into alone. I have love in my life now. It's canon.

I hate it. I got no bits. On your face. Three, two, one. All right, Eli. How about you give us a roast of Lizzie's friend, stepdad, Jeff? Ah, yes. So I really wish you could all see this picture, podcast listener,

because Jeff is somehow low res. He's like a low res human. He also spells it G-E-O-F-F. So it kind of feels like Cara Santa Maria created him in a lab as a way to win her argument with Heath about how to pronounce gif. So while I appreciate

that Jeff sucks as a human, I do admit I find it hard to blame him since he's very clearly a child's first attempt at a Roblox skin. So you know what I'm saying? It's tough. This is a tough one for me. Okay, Heath, Billy W.

wants you to roast his buddy, Zayn. Oh my God, I'm so happy about this one. Okay. Oh, fuck, Zayn. The pictures of that man are definitely from a literal blackmail dossier. That's where these pictures came from for sure. The first one can only be explained as a quick snapshot

taken by a sex worker right before the party with Zayn started as a safety precaution for sure. Because Zayn is very clearly undressing and talking about

a karate move at this very moment. I'm 100% sure of it. The only other explanation for this first picture is that Zayn set up a timer on his camera

and then ran into the frame so he could like slowly unzip his tracksuit top. No t-shirt underneath, just the top, belly out now. And then like pull a pencil out of his man bun and shake out his mane for a dating app.

That's what he's doing in the picture. It's fucking creepy. Just like incelsonly.com or something. The second picture is an actual hate crime, right? Like real hate, like Geneva Convention violation. Politically eliminating. Yes. Politically eliminating.

War crime. It's a white guy with cornrows sitting on the sidewalk. It's Zayn, apparently. It doesn't look like the other Zayn, but it's Zayn, we're assured. And he's sitting on the sidewalk. I'm pretty sure he just got arrested during the show, cops. That's what it looks like for sure. And I'm assuming the picture was taken by a black police officer because Zane in this picture is definitely saying to the camera, hey, are you about to do like a very justified hate crime and beat the fuck out of me? Because that's totally fair.

I'm wearing the Oakley Thump smart sunglasses from 2004. They were in the episode of failed products that we did on Citation Needed. Oh, my goodness. All right. Let's get to the Mac daddies, the high rollers, the zoot suit riots of donation, if you will. No, we will not. The following folks tossed us big bucks so they get a full team dog pile. Starting with Christopher D., who would like us all to take a shot at his brother, Michael. He looks like something that popped up out of the ground after someone buried their fleshlight under a grow lamp.

Children of the porn, yeah. He's like a fetus became a math teacher he looks stem in cell fantastic nicely does michael got banned by a board game store a board game podcast listener do you have any idea how much of a piece of shit you have to be to be rejected by board game people? We are so lonely, we invented a hobby

with brightly colored boards and click clacky pieces to make people hang out with us. And we saw Michael and we were like, that's okay. Unlike Michael's attempt to get a promotion

in the Air Force, we'll pass. I love the idea of a bouncer in a game board, like a game store just like dragging him out. Not cool for Azul.

He slaps the game board as he's leaving just barely off the table. Yeah. Michael is a guy who brags about being a misanthrope because he thinks

that if he judges everyone around him first, they won't judge him. Misanthropy is a kind of armor worn by spineless cretins who are every day afraid that the judgment they heap on the world will be heaped upon them.

And they're right because their armor is liar's armor. The emperor has always been naked and has a micro dick to boot. And people like Michael will live their whole lives miserably boasting about all the places

they've been ejected from as if the shunning he experiences from all corners of society is a badge of honor rather than of shame. So let him crawl into whatever depths of feckless indifference

he needs to shield himself. It won't work. The shield is weak, the armor is soft, and he will, I promise, spend every day of his life burning bridges until his isolation is his only comfort, his meanness his only companion. And when this happens, and it always happens, he will weep and there will be no one there to hear it.

It's so dark. Beautiful. So sad every time. All right, well done. All right, next up, All right, well done. All right, next up. Kyle from In A Day Development would like us all to roast Rona Romney McDaniel. Look, I almost feel bad for Rona. Her job is to hurt a murder of barely grown delinquents and pretend they are a political party rather than a clown car of revelers of inhumanity and naked self-interest. Imagine having to be the PR machine for a political party that didn't even bother with a political platform. How then to promote a party

that has at this point just admitted openly that it has no solutions, ideas, or path forward? She has in front of her an avalanche of Sisyphusian boulders and her job is to somehow pretend to the American people that being crushed by them is patriotism. I almost feel bad for her, but I don't because she chose her side to take up the torch of evil and carry it through hell. And now that she is beset on all sides by the stupidity of agony, it is actually a great joy to see her twist and scream. Remember when she burns that she was the one who lit the fire and take a cool sip of water

while you watch her infant. Alright. Has anyone told Rona that she stopped growing her hair too soon? It's not too short. It's the right length. It's just the right length for a small child's head.

Did she steal a child's wig? Was she the recipient of a stingy locks of love hair transplant? What the fuck happened? I'm baffled by this hair. I'm baffled by it. Lots of people think Rona isn't successful, but look, since she took over as RNC chair, there has been a net loss of seven governorships, three

seats in the U.S. Senate, and 19 seats in the House of Representatives. Oh, and the presidency, by the way. In her short career, she's defeated more Republicans than FDR. Give her a hand, folks. Give her a hand. Also, her uncle is Mitt Romney. Gross. Yeah, gross.

Yeah. I found out she lives like 10 minutes from my house, and I'm trying to decide what I want to do with it. You're going to need to move. Yeah. You're implying that you'll... Yeah. What? Jesus Christ.

Morgan. Anyways, this next one we do every week, but I never need an extra excuse. Kenzie gave us $1,000. That's a 30th of our money raised so far to roast transphobes. And they also allowed us to pick a transphobe which is what I did.

Oh, nice. Excellent. Dave Chappelle punches down more than a factory line stuffer at a pillow plant. Okay. Ben Shapiro's wife told him a wet vagina is a disease

and he believed it. There's a giant transphobe and he fucking sucks. It works both ways. So we've spent quite a bit of time talking to transphobes. Heath checked into a hotel next to one and didn't take his shirt off forcibly. Richard Dawkins sucks too. Fuck that guy.

Yes. I considered doing it. I almost did a crime. I didn't. You should have taken his shirt. You could have gotten. He's small. He's such an asshole.

He was waiting in line, clearly expecting to be recognized. nobody gave a fuck and he kept looking around and not getting recognized. It was fun. Fuck that guy. Stop inviting him to stuff. Yeah. Anyways, what I can tell you about every single fucking transphobe without exception is that they are deeply, passionately, unreservedly green with jealousy. Not about being trans, although some of them super are. No, about being free. Because what every transphobe has in common is that they all sat exactly into the box society put them in. No matter what pieces of themselves they had to slice away, no matter how they had to starve and contort themselves. They did it no matter what pain it caused them because they're cowards. And then trans people came along.

And even though it's dangerous and even though it's unpopular, even though it means signing yourself up to be cannon fodder in a PC war invented by idiots and forgotten by history the second it's over, they did it anyway. Trans people did it anyways because they know who they are and who they want to be in a way that transphobes never will because they don't even have the courage to wear flats to work. As history unfolds before us and we choose our sides, there are always only two options, compassion or cruelty,

because at least some things really are binary. I like that. And last but only least, when it comes to self-esteem, Bill B would like us all to roast him. Okay. So according to Bill, he sent us a bunch of stuff about him. According to him, he failed out of college after four years. So that could be a few different things, but they're all really sad. Just going to take a while. I guess he's not talking about like a seven-year med program. It was four years. So option one, you passed your classes for three and a half semesters,

got within sight of the finish line, and then you shat yourself and passed out like a marathon runner hitting the wall. It can't be. Option two, you failed out pretty much right away and you just didn't leave and you did college into a microphone that wasn't plugged into anything. That's fun. Or option three, you signed up for one of those online diploma mills

and you didn't pay attention, but you just kept getting billed. Like you thought it was Columbia, but it was more like Columbia House is what happened. It was not great, Bill. All my penny back. All right.

So I'm going to take an alternate take here and I'm going to admit at the outset that Bill is fucking hot. Right? He says he gets compared to Jesus a lot, but there's not a Roman soldier that could look into those baby blues and feel anything but turgid. He's a beautiful man. That's true. The only vinegar I want to pour over your forehead, Bill, is my cum after a night of too much spicy Korean hot pot.

But Bill, you married a Christian. Bill, a Christian? What do you hate? Anal sex, Bill? You got a thing for Ugg boots and three-hour funeral services for uncles you never met? Bill, you call me after the divorce

and I'll set you up with an atheist hottie. That is, after I get my turn. Callie, I think. Hey, tall, argumentative, unremarkable white guy who hasn't found himself yet. Okay. You don't know it yet, but you're actually a podcaster. One day, you are going to find a microphone, and then you will spin a cocoon of acoustical foam around yourself,

and in a few weeks you will emerge on iTunes new and noteworthy. And then you will hate trans people. It's on its way. Fuck, why do people do this? Bill,

the world was your roasting oyster stretching out before you. Literally billions of people to choose from to roast. But in a stunning display of, of course, you have once again chosen yourself, a trend that seems not uncommon but defining because Bill is very obviously most concerned with and most impressed by Bill. Which is weird because there is nothing here to be impressed by. You want us to roast you, Bill? Look around at your life and despair. You're an atheist squandering his one go at all of this. What could possibly reek of entitlement and stupidity more than that? You got the right answer to the easiest question imaginable, and somehow you seem smug about this. It's like

putting your own name at the top of your SATs and then dusting your hands now that you've made it past the hard part. You are the personal embodiment of masturbating with a limp dick. Lonely and pointless and not worth my effort.

Excellent. All right. It lives in South Jersey. Nobody even mentioned that. We could be friends. Not even that far to drive, Bill. Call me. Eat some pork roll or whatever the fuck. Do you like pork? Taylor Ham.

On that note, well, it's Taylor Swift. On that note, we'll close things out for so stupid. No, Morgan, keep all this. You can't take anything back. Morgan, everything. And on that note, we'll close things out for the very first Vulgarity for Charity

segment. Again, if you want in on the action, send your proof of donation and your request to Vulgarity for Charity that's the word, not the number at gmail.com. Tom, Cecil, thanks for joining in the mean. Thanks for having us, man. Absolutely. Thanks for having us. And when we come back,

Heath will do the outro while I sit here in livid silence tickle tickle tickle and that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more

if you can't wait that long be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show The Skeptocrat debuting at 7am Eastern on Monday an even newer episode

of our sister show's hot friend Godawful Movies debuting at 7am Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half sister show hot friend Godawful Movies debuting at 7am Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half sister show Citation Needed debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday big thanks to No Illusions big thanks to Eli Bosnick and a big thanks to

Sarah and Allie for one of my favorite Farnsworth quotes of all time and of course to all the Patreon donors new and old the new ones will be conferred with cleverly concocted, cascading compliments of consonants in the coming casts. And if you're feeling financially benevolent like those fine people, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com

slash scathingatheist, and that'll get you early access to an ad-free version of every episode. You can also make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you don't have the money for giving away money, Thank you. used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingatheist.com. Now, here's the one good side to Covenant Eyes, and this is how I think we can get our benefits out of it. Heath, you know how you always want to share good porn you find with friends, but there's no good way to sort of open that line of communication, right? Like you're allowed to be like, hey.

Are you doing like an ad for something that I don't know about right now? No, I just, I thought we could, I thought I could speak from my heart. You know what? I thought I could just talk. I thought I could speak my truth. I could stand in my truth with you, but obviously I can't. So you know what? What were you going to propose? No, it sounded like you had a really good idea there. I was trying to open a, like a spank exchange between friends using this software. But now, now you put a dollar in the idea jar and we go back to the script. But it's going to be

all blurred out. We're going to have to like recode it. That's the thing is like you don't have to commit to the other person's thing right away. There's a lot of guys. You know what? I'll propose this when we get to CSAT. You've done a lot of research on this. Okay. Yeah, I have. Now I'm hurt. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC copyright 2023. All rights reserved.