The Scathing Atheist - 562: Dos and Don'ts Edition

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

In this week’s episode, we try to stuff a show with prerecorded stuff and come up a bit short, making us one of the few instances where there were too few Thanksgiving leftovers. --- To donate to Vulgarity for Charity, click here: https://www.modestneeds.org/ --- 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/

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Hey folks, if you looked at the runtime this week, you're going to see that the show's coming in a little short of our normal episodes. Normally we try to get ahead for holiday episodes so that we can spend time with our families while still providing a new show for you. We know that many of you still have to work. We know a lot of you aren't really invited to family gatherings anymore or wouldn't go to a family gathering if we for you. We know that many of you still have to work. We know a lot of you aren't really invited to family gatherings anymore or wouldn't go to a family gathering if we paid you. And we

also know a lot of you live outside of the U.S. and didn't realize until halfway through this spiel that today is American Thanksgiving. Anyway, as always, we did pre-record some stuff, but given the terribly inconvenient timing of my heart attack, we weren't quite able to reach our goal of 60 pre-recorded minutes. But here's most of the show regardless. So enjoy and happy Turkey Day. Warning, this episode contains words that Spellcheck often corrects to duck. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Aura Frames and by The Itis. The Itis.

You guys hurry the fuck up and get over it, because no matter how bad it gets, you're still going to have pie in like 20 minutes. And now, The Scathing Atheathing atheist hi this is delilah the fabulous transgender atheist from minnesota i'm here to tell people in transphobic red states that we did in fact come from fabulous filthy transgender and fabulous filthy cisgender, monkey people. It's Thursday. It's November 23rd. And we're thankful for fast-acting arterial stents. Hell yeah, we are. I'm no illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Henright. And from Dr. Oz's Cleveland. And over Michigan and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll put the slightly older headlines out, you know, before they go bad. Heath is already scouting out components for his leftover sandwiches, and he's very excited. And I will cheat the fuck out of my new heart-healthy diet. First, the diatribe.

The doctor gave me a long list when I got out of the hospital about the various lifestyle changes that I was going to need to make. And what I've discovered since then is that I'm really good at the don'ts, right? So no more soda, no more red meat, no more adding butter and salt to stuff, no more full fat dairy, no more processed meats. And yes, I miss the Hot Pockets already, but I've done really well with all of that stuff. Where I'm really falling short is with the do's. Right? Like do eat fresh fruits, eat fresh vegetables, exercise regularly, that kind of stuff. I'm having trouble with that.

Anyway, that got me to thinking about how full of shit the Bible is. Because most things get me thinking about that. But think about it, though. They claim that the Bible is this great source of morality, but it's all a bunch of easy ass don'ts. I mean, how much effort does one have to expend in not killing and not stealing? How much time do you have to set aside in your life for the effort of not carving graven images? This is moral obligation on easy mode. Nine out of 11 of the Ten Commandments is a don't. And the only do's are keep the Sabbath day holy and honor thy mother and father, which are, A, terrible moral advice, but B, largely passive instructions in a hierarchical society that takes the Sabbath off already. And this holds even if you zoom out, because obviously the 10 commandments are just 11

or 12, depending on how you count them, of the 613 commandments in the Bible. And about two thirds of those are don'ts. And the majority of the do's are things that only apply to priests and have nothing at all to do with morality if you legit got your morality from the bible's commandments well then you probably kill amalekites and massacre a lot of livestock i guess but setting aside all the laughable specifics even if you just got your concept of morality from the bible you would think that morality was by and large a passive thing that good is the mere absence of bad talk about the bare fucking minimum these motherfuckers want to i didn't murder anyone again today cookie and and honestly it shows in their morality across the board it shows in that sort of

bootstraps libertarianism born of the delusion of self-sufficiency so common among American evangelicals. Your problems are your problems. I already didn't covet my neighbor's wife twice today, so I've met my own moral obligations for this week. It shows in their resistance to a strong social safety net and a reasonable minimum wage. It shows in the ease with which they dismiss the inherent biases of society and the hardships that those impose on minorities. Their morality is internal, right? So unless they're personally, consciously, actively causing you harm, they have no moral obligations to address your problems at all. Now, of course, a Christian listening to this would be screaming the golden rule into their headphones by this point as though that overhyped motivational poster of an ethic lit could save them. I mean, sure, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. That technically is

a do, but it's an entirely internal one. A person unburdened by, say, centuries of institutional prejudice in the construction of the society they live in might say, I just want to be left alone. Now that person has no moral obligations to do any active good in society. And beyond that, it's infinitely malleable. I mean, just ask a homophobe that uses their Christianity to justify their bigotry, how that comports with the golden rule, right? Instead of imagining what it would be like if their love was dismissed and their marriage was illegal, they'd tell you how they'd want others to lead them away from their sinful ways. Because when what you want is the metric, you can put the goalposts any fucking where you want them. Morality is more than that. It's not enough to just treat LGBTQ people as your equals.

You have to use your position of privilege to fight for their equality. It's not enough to not see race. You have to work to dismantle the institutional barriers to equality. It's not enough to help the poor. You also have to actively work to keep people out of poverty. Thou shalt not is the bare minimum, not the aspiration. And that's a humanist ethic, right? That's a morality that's born of our obligation to each other as opposed to our obligation to some fictitious deity. And it's what naturally arises from our innate sense of right and wrong so long as that isn't hijacked by some fucking religion along the way. Incidentally, this seems like a perfect time to remind you that Thanksgiving Day is the last day of our Vulgarity for Charity fundraiser. We blew through our $100,000 match, but that was extended by another 50 grand. That means with the match, we've raised well over a quarter of a million dollars for families in need again this year. But donations count all the way up to midnight Eastern time.

And as of the time of this record, we still haven't maxed out that match. Don't make us leave money on the table here, people. Just go to modestneeds.org, make a donation of $50 or more. Better yet, sign up for a monthly pledge while you're there. Then send proof of donation to vulgarityforcharity at gmail.com along with your roast request, including pictures and details if that person isn't famous. We're still going to be taking roast requests for a couple of days as long as the proof of the donation came before midnight Eastern on November 23rd.

And thanks to everybody who's donated for once again, making Bulgarity for charity, such a huge success. Joining me for headlines tonight are the nothing and not out of my zilch, because again, we pre-recorded this stuff. But before we get to that, we need to take a quick break for a word from this week's sponsor,

Aura frames. Hello, podcast listener. It is I, Heath Enright. Already making it weird. I'm not making it weird. This is fine. No, you are. You are, though.

You guys are ruining my thing. Anyway, as you may know, I have love in my life now. A family, if you were. A family man, am I. This was a mistake. This was a mistake. We could have outvoted him. We could have outvoted him. We should have outvoted him.

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Terms and conditions apply. Aura Frames, see the people you love who are real and do exist. Okay, people are going to think they don't exist now. Well, they do. And now, with a warning that folks are going to appear and disappear at random a little bit, we join headlines from the past already in progress. And in what's the deal with Leviticus news. These days, the biggest source of projection for the religious right is child indoctrination.

And no amount of child grooming by any purportedly evil faction could come close to that of evangelical Christians and their incessant cries of groomer. To quote the schoolyards that they're targeting, takes one to know one. Also, we're not, it's just you. It's just you that's doing that and saying that. And so hot on the heels of my last story,

another school district is being infiltrated by religious lunatics hoping to forever alter the curriculum to their liking. In this case, it's the school board for the Central Bucks School District, the third largest school district in Pennsylvania. And this board is, of course, chock full of Moms for Liberty-backed candidates. Yeah, yeah. And they say they're moms for liberty but it's very much in a freedom from education sense yes right they're for liberty in the same

sense that monica cole is a million people and a big thanks to bt for the link scathing news gmail.com so the school board has formed an alliance with the equally fundamentalist superintendent, Dr. Abram Lukaboff, which sounds like an alias for Dracula that you discover when you rearrange the letters or something like that. Sure. Yeah. His surname is Lukaball. It's quite handy for him to just bake that warning right in there for us. So, in addition to raising Luca Barba's salary, this alliance has targeted the LGBTQ

community by banning pride flags, banning gay and trans inclusive books, and of course prohibiting any discussion of the very existence of the LGBTQ community in the classroom. Yeah, next up they're going to go through classrooms and put black bars over prisms.

And surely this rejection of what they deem to be explicit is universal and deeply based in principle, right? Any book that contains graphic sex and wanton violence and assorted amoral acts would be banned right away alongside

the others, right? Oh, sure, yeah. So you can probably tell where this one's going. And here's where comedian Walter Masterson brings it home. At a recent school board meeting, Masterson took the floor to condemn the filth and depravity found in one such book that's available in the school library. Still not banned. He posted the video of his speech on Twitter

titled, Trolling Moms for Liberty. And Masterson said, quote, I brought with me today a book that is available He posted the video of a speech on Twitter titled Trolling Moms for Liberty. And Masterson said, quote, I brought with me today a book that is available to children of all ages in the school's library. The book is filled with overt sexual acts of violence. It celebrates mass killings and it's being used to indoctrinate our children. Oh, God, I love it when people do the whole jujitsu using your entire thing against you to religious experience. Yes. It's always fantastic. Yes.

Very good. And the best part of this move in particular is that they usually have no fucking clue what's in their book and you tend to know right away. Right? So you can start off with real shit, but once you get a sense of them,

you can scatter a few thighs and thousand and quote from pounded in the butt by my own butt. They won't know. Apostle tingle? Yeah, that sounds right. So first up from Exodus, he read, the Lord tried to kill Moses, but Sephora used a sharpened stone to cut off their son's foreskin and rub the bloody ring on Moses's feet saying, you're now my bridegroom. This made the Lord leave Moses alone. Okay, but like, God does have a point here,

because if I'm coming to see you and then you smear yourself with the recently amputated tip of your own child's penis, that would absolutely make me think twice about visiting you. It's a good strategy. You would win a wrestling match with me.

I'm just, I always wondered what ideas she rejected before she landed on this one right or if that was the first thing she went right yeah you know what that would be impractical she went limp and shat and then did this yeah absolutely and uh so he continued with passages regarding the expected work ethic of beaten slaves for example and the mass genocide of a petulant god throughout the Bible. Obviously, he could have read for hours, but he closes with, quote, do you think a child should be reading this book full of

sexual violence and genocide? Books don't belong here at all. Ban this book. Let's focus on science, math, and raising administrators' pay. Thank you, Walt. Remember, folks, when we infiltrate their spaces to humorously demonstrate their hypocrisy and newsworthy ways we bring punch lines you gotta have a sting don't just trail off big finish big finish hit that button so the backlash from the crowd there at this meeting was pretty mild actually given the makeup of mostly crazy people with only a brief and kind of restrained go back to New York shout at one point. Yeah, just the one anti-Semitic shout. It was well below my over under. And considering how easily religion is able to explain away hypocrisy with, you know, more hypocrisy, the speech probably didn't move the needle that much for those crazy people.

Still, if the goal is to keep the pressure and never let them get too comfortable and trick them into the occasional slur to expose them even more, that's a big win for Masterson. Good work. And in the soberest place on earth news, one of the most common requests we get from our listeners is when we'll make a visit to Ken Ham's Ark Park. And I'll admit we've been tempted, but now that trip may need to become a tour because we are excited to announce that plans are underway to open a theme park in the Utah Valley inspired and themed after the original Book of Mormon. Okay, you know there's got to be a wooden submarine ride.

And that is too stupid to pass up. We got to go. I'll happily go to that theme park and just fuck with people. Be like, how tight is this? Is this like unto a dish, would you say? I just want to see. That's a nonsense phrase. Yeah, I want to see.

What are they, the Ammonites? What are the ones that are punished African The Lamanites? I want to see the guys dressed as Lamanites It's important to me They're going to be walking around the park Absolutely Like cartoon costumes

This is going to already be a hate crime Like the Colonial Williamsburg, but worse So, first off, a tremendous thanks for Mary for sending us this story over at scathingnews.com. Dubbed the Monument of the Americas, the theme park will span 10 acres and feature attractions like a sculpture garden, an amphitheater, and, this is in the pictures,

a grand centerpiece of an 18-foot Jesus Christ standing upon the golden plates of church founder Joseph Smith. It's not even that big. It's like triple size. That's so sad. If you listen closely, you can actually hear children

begging for their parents to take them home right now. Yeah, you can hear it. I'm shitting. I shat. We have to go now, Mom. This is so worth it. Exactly.

You have to let me leave. Park developer Stephen Neal says the site came to him in a vision 30 years ago. Sound familiar? And he's been trying to make the theme park a reality ever since. He also plans on highlighting his take on the country's founding fathers and their

seldom discussed faith that propelled them to wipe out an entire continent of indigenous people. Sure. Right. And that was wrong. What you're supposed to do is do that in Mexico. Right. And then make your own people completely vanish, including all their bones and tools and physical existence, but then reappear in upstate New York in the early 1800s and start over again.

Yeah. That's how you ethically do that. Obviously. So currently, Neil has roughly 10% or $2 million of the needed $20 million to get the park up and running. But is Neil worried about the overwhelming odds against this being a successful venture? Of course not. Quote, Utah has some very patriotic people, end quote. Sure. Yeah.

Maybe see if AG Sean Reyes could help you out. Maybe Tim Ballard has some Sound of Freedom money. Cash to spare. Yeah. Maybe see if AG Sean Reyes could help you. Maybe Tim Ballard has some sound of freedom money. Cash to spare. Yeah. So no word yet whether Neil's team can secure a ribbon cutting from Mitt Romney and boost the crowd numbers of the grand opening. But if they do, I bet we can expect attendance well into the double digits, my friends, well into the double digits. It's going to be partly us. Very excited. And in Lock via Lady Tonight news. Fucking incredible. At this point. Incredible.

At this point, I'd like to believe that even the most hardline evangelical would be sick of relying on absurd drag queen panic to score points with their octogenarian husks of hatred in their pews. It's like a band touring for decades from one single. The whole gimmick, it just feels incredibly tired and lazy and boring. And there actually might be a glimmer of hope on that front. Gospel singer and drag performer Flamie Grant released an album this year called Bible Belt Baby, and it topped the Apple Music Christian music chart.

When even faith-based music fans can not only welcome, but propel gender fluidity into bestseller territory, it would seem that the bigots have started to lose that particular battle, or at least they're starting to get bored. But then again, if you base your entire worldview on a 2,000-year-old book, you're probably not all the way cognizant of when things have gone way past their shelf life. So, Anna? What are the guys talking about?

It's the newest, the greatest, Christian freak out. That's right. Greg Locke didn't die yet. Locke via Lady Tonight nailed it. And when Greg Locke found out that Flamie Grant would be attending the Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards in Nashville, he had a meltdown because of course he did. Obviously. Yeah. Now look, podcast listener, I know times are tough. The world isn't always the place we want it to be. But any earth where Greg Locke has to say Flamie Grant while wearing his serious face is a world worth saving. I mean that.

I mean it from my heart. And a big thanks to Eric for the link, scathingnewsgmail.com. So just a little extra context, because as we know, any additional true information about, well, anything ever tends to make Greg Locke and evangelicals look even dumber than they already were. For example, Flamie Grant was not nominated for any award, nor was she invited to perform at the event despite her chart-topping success. So just to be clear, Greg Locke's freakout is about Flamie Grant just existing as a person in the audience. That's it. Well, that's a lot more than he can say for the literal witches in his congregation he was looking for last year. So, you know.

So, yeah. Apparently, Greg Locke did some important background research that really amped up the panic level from regular insane bigot to extra insane bigot, plus she's a witch. Well, he found pictures. He found a photo of Flamie Grant with a crystal ball and tarot cards. So Locke panicked. According to Locke, quote, the Gospel Music Association, they're not just celebrating an abomination. Now they're celebrating an abomination that is publicly practicing witchcraft. As far as I'm concerned, God can evacuate the building and burn the whole thing to the ground.

I'm not selling out to the sodomite witchcraft community. End quote in his real sermon. Okay, Greg might not, but we at The Scathing Atheist definitely are selling out to the sodomite witchcraft community. I know they probably pay in crystals or something,

but just in case they pay in sodomy, we are in. Hit us up. Roll those dice. Sodomite witches. And my favorite part of this whole thing is the response from Flamie Grant, in particular regarding Greg Locke's

pastorly button-down shirt full of brightly colored lions. Flamie Grant did a great little review of the sermon video from Greg Locke, and her caption said, fan behavior. This is Pastor Greg Locke, and this is actually one of his milder rants,

believe it or not. And then she added a follow-up that said, you know, Pastor Greg Locke and his lion shirt want to do drag so fucking bad. Yeah. Please, Greg. We'll even help you come up with a pun-based name, Greg. Come on.

Come on. Oh, we got to work on that. Yeah. We got to work on that. Fuck, I don't have anything yet. Okay. So now we have another fun element to add to our prank war, though. That's definitely going to be amusing.

For sure. When we buy that piece of land right next to Greg Locke's church and we build the giant Ouija board with the demonic laser light show to scare him, maybe we can get Flamie Grant to headline a show or something. Oh, yeah. Lead a coven. There you go. And in thoughtless prayers news, well, it's another week in America. And in case the statistics temporarily slipped your mind, that means at least one mass shooting occurred. But unlike your average run-of-the-mill mass shootings that don't even make the news in America, a recent one was actually awful enough to bring out the usual band of Christian assholes for

commentary. Cool. Anyone on that list who maybe owned a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters who's really sad about the shooting. Spoilers, Heath, spoilers. Is there? Yeah. Interesting. So first up, Colorado representative and restaurateur and massive Beetlejuice fan,

Lauren Boebert, who managed to botch the name of the town where the shootings took place in her tweet. Boebert posted on Twitter, quote, sending prayers to Lewistown, Maine tonight. Know that the entire country is praying for you, end quote. Notice she's sure to mention prayer twice rather than double check a popular town name

since prayer doesn't actually require any effort. And speaking of prayer, if we didn't already waste enough ink on Mike Johnson this episode, he chimed in as well. Of course he did. Saying to CNN and the collected press, quote, this is a dark time in America. We have a lot of problems.

Sure do. And we're really, really hopeful and prayerful. Prayer is appropriate in a time like this. That the evil can end and the senseless violence can stop. End quote. Fuck your face. Hey, Mike, while you have God on the line, maybe go ahead and pray for no more mass shootings anywhere, like preemptively. And as long as we don't have any of those, we'll know that you're a good Christian who definitely didn't have sex with an Egyptian sex worker and his colossal donkey penis.

And then you got shot across the room by the stallion powered cum. By the stallion powered cum. Well, no, that didn't happen as long as there's no shootings ever again. The part of that sentence that terrifies me is the really, really hopeful, right? Really, really hopeful is like, I actually know the jockey of that horse and he told me a good like the fact that Mike feels confident enough to add a second really is what terrifies me. But seeing as how Republicans entire brand is guns and not doing things about guns, any nuance or deviation from those two things are antithetical to their bread and butter. So I don't hold out much hope that we'll see any action from

anyone on the issue issue no matter how thoughtful prayerful or really really hopeful they happen to be fingers crossed yeah and anyway we're ready for Boebert

Johnson or and I cannot stress this enough any government official to surprise us with actual policies when this happens all over again in the next week or so and they will be shocked I say when this happens all over again in the next week or so.

And they will be shocked, I say, when it happens. Shocked. Yeah. Won't be shocked about the Egyptian sex worker, though. No, obviously. Right in their book. And on that note, whatever that note might have been, we're going to close the headlines for the night.

Pre-recorded Heath, pre-recorded Eli. Thanks as always. To Manji. Hey, when we come back, we're going to add pre-recorded Tom and pre-recorded Cecil to the mix and it'll really be a party. Of all the things I've missed over the last few weeks, there's none that frustrated me more than having to sit out on all the charitable vulgarity for the last few sessions. Now, rest assured that I will be participating in this week's roasts and arterial plaque will get what's coming to it. But for the moment, I'll have to set things out once again as we present some pre-recorded

vulgarity for charity, which will join now already in progress. All right, Eli, this next one's for you. Audrey would like a roast of their ex-friend shelby ah yes shelby shelby's the type of abusive piece of shit that good people end up tracked in a toxic friendship with these leeches of society never quite made it to full-on high school bully so they use their tumblerized understanding of queerness and mental illness as a weapon against everyone and anyone around them turning the world into their trained flea circus, only bothering to show their true colors when anyone dares disobey them. But here's the good news, Audrey.

As Shelby drives away all the kind and empathetic people in her life, she'll eventually be left with only her fellow users and abusers. Eventually, the monster pit is filled with nothing but monsters, Audrey. And believe me when I say they are the only company she'll hate more than her own. Oof. And Tom, Cindy gave us $100 for you to roast your lifelong dream, nay, your reason for being retirement. You know, we live in a crazy culture, don't we? On the one hand, we're surrounded by these pedestalized ideals that retirement is the true American dream. The moment when having lived out our usefulness as blood lubricating the machinery of capitalism, we can finally step away from the gristmill.

We will, in many cases, have raised our children to step in amongst those gears, to replace into the crushing machine of despair the bodies and minds of those we love most here, so that we may step away and take our turn basking in our functional irrelevance and finally live. To retire, still sound for a few short years of mind or body, or if you are lottery level lucky, both, we can for the first time since childhood really be alive. And perhaps in these final years, even a little free. These are indeed the scraps, the crumbs that serve as the light at the end of the dark tunnel of a life's toil. And as Americans, we are only too willing to sell our dignity and the sweat of our brows to the overlords of Wall Street

if it means we might someday not be so tired every waking moment that we might in fact teach ourselves to read again without falling immediately asleep. This is the joy of the will-o'-wisps of retirement. And we will chase them through the dark of night until our feet bleed green and our blood nourishes the bank accounts of the wealthy. And this, all of it, we would accept without a peep, with celebration, with joy even, and weave a tale of American exceptionalism

around it if only it were true or possible. But even the modest dreams of a few short years without toil are reserved like all dreams in the land of the free for the unmerciful few. For the rest of us, retirement will come to us as all things do in America, as a tsunami of inevitability we are unprepared to endure. Still, Cindy, I, like you, long each brutal morning for that time when I could put down the spade, look about my life's work with satisfaction, and lie peacefully in my grave, if only for a few years before I too am buried and forgotten.

Good lord. Okay, so maybe not like your goal then. Alright. I just want more in the 401k. Got it. Sure. Yeah. No, makes sense. Sure. Place your bets, please. Place your bets, please. What the hell was that? Well, Heath, that sound sense. Sure. Place your bets, please. Place your bets, please. What the hell was that?

Well, Heath, that sound means it's time for a round of Dealer's Choice. God, I hate that you have a soundboard. We all do, Heath. We all do. In this next round, four terrific donors gave us money, but the choice of whom shall receive our ire is left up to us. Heath, why don't you take the first shot here for beloved patron and person whose relationship with puppets is normal and chill taru turkanen teekanen cool

um hey people who make things uh way too meta all the time listen we get it you're clever and edgy your genius is so fucking deep that you're always doing a bit inside a sketch, inside a swoosh, inside a doodly-doo, inside a harp gliss. Fascinating. You're an old poet nobody cares about. Name a poem by Keats. Too slow. Maybe it's time to just communicate like a sane person once in a while. Maybe you could just have a real conversation with another human being, especially if you're trying to run a business together.

Instead of working your weird, unspoken grievances into a meta-narrative during an unrelated segment of a podcast. Who the fuck does that? Who would ever, ever do that? That would be exhausting. I'm standing right behind you. Wow. Wold Asher Mizzle is going to have a lot to say

Better get ready Will Dasher-Mizzle might have to create a whole new character I feel like I need to leave I wasn't talking about anybody in particular I just mean like people who do that Anybody who does that should take note Alright Cecil, Lori D gave us

240 bucks for you to roast Where your heart leads you. Take it away. All right, overseas airlines. Look, there is not any other room in the plane for another seat. You get four cubic inches per person. That's what you get, okay? I feel like I'm getting fucking vacuum sealed when I get in my seat.

Pretty soon you're going to have to employ those little Japanese subway loaders with the white gloves and the two by fours just to stuff people in the fucking cars. We're like fucking an overzealous ravioli in there. Like, what the fuck? It's like you're trying to put a fucking roll of Pillsbury biscuits back in the

tin after it pops. It's impossible. You cannot do it. I feel like I'm going to have to run through a fucking slip and slide full of KY just to wedge myself in there. And it's not like that doesn't sound fun, but I am just against this, okay?

Speaking of high dollar donations, Ashley liked your impression of someone from the Piot verse so much last year she came back for seconds with a $205 donation. Have at it eli all right well it doesn't get any more extended than dear old dad so here's my impression of the intro of dear old dads all right you ready welcome to dear old dads the podcast that is very different than the comedy show we promised you i'm tom curry this week we'll be doing part three of surgery

recommendations for the child rape victims of India. I, of course, believe that surgery lets your soul leak out of your body while Thomas' stance is that his kids only caught on fire because of his ADD. The sound you hear in between will be Eli trying to hang himself with his microphone.

But first, 11 minutes of auto ads because we'll be fucked if this podcast isn't buying us a boat. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. And Tom, for our final dealer's choice, I'm going to say something you probably only hear on your birthday.

You can be mean to whoever you want. Evo. Great. Now I have to do your work for you, too. I mean, I'm staring at the screen. I'm trying to figure out what to roast, and then I'm trying to figure out what not to roast. And this isn't my fucking job. My job is the roast, not the inspiration. And you outsource this part, too. Like that's a gift. Like finding out what grinds my gears is some kind of a shock to you. Like I don't have a cottage fucking industry built around screaming into the void already and you've given me this more fucking homework another assignment to heap on to an already infinite plate but fine i'll bite i'm so fucking tired of exhaustion culture i do not want to rise and grind i want to fucking sleep

i want to feed my family and take a little vacation and not become medically bankrupt and maybe even gasp retire someday without having to work three podcasts at a full-time job just so I don't feel panicked day and night. When someone asks me what my hobbies are, I want to have an answer that isn't an incredulous stare as if hobbies weren't a luxury unfitting for the proletariat. I'm tired of coffee culture or Adderall culture, of performance review anxiety, of having to borrow candles to burn at all ends just so I'm not living paycheck to desperate paycheck, and having sacrificed sleep and relationships and time and health and sanity, still feeling guilty that after 20 years of always working two or three or four jobs, finally I'm not

completely broke, but it has nearly broken me to get here. I am exhausted from swimming parallel to the shore in a never-ending capitalist riptide, always a moment from drowning and smiling as the water fills the mouth and chokes the lungs. That's such a good sentence. Holy shit. Fuck all of it. Fuck it all, top to bottom and left to right. Fuck it sideways.

I know why, after a long life, people say they are ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. And it is not because having lived long and full lives, they are ready to pass the torch to the next generation. But because we have promised ourselves that we will sleep when we are dead and having exhausted the well,

having drained ourselves dry, we finally want that promise fucking kept. Dude, I'm standing on the desk clapping slowly, man. Yeah. Holy shit. Just want to nap. You can't always desk clapping slowly, man. Yeah. Holy shit. Just want to nap.

You can't always get laid off, Tom. I hope Morgan leaves it in. Heath, by no will of his own, was like, that is a good sentence. It was so good. It was poetic. The rip side one. So good.

Going to have to compile all of Noah's diatribes and all of Tom's roasts. I got a busy existence here. I'm on my rest. All right. Next up, let's do some doubles. These are roasts. I got a busy existence here. I'm on my rest. Alright, next up let's do some doubles. These are roasts chosen not by one, but two of our lucky randoms. So first off,

Bill would like Cecil to roast our very own Heath Enright for roasting his dog last year. And friend of the show, Kelly Burke would like me to roast Heath as Carl the Pug-a-Pag-a-Corn, the delightful meta character.

I'm pretty happy about both of these requests, actually. All right, look. Heath takes really good care of himself. He eats well, he exercises, and all that hard work pays off. Do I? He looks like Jack Skellington's scunt double, okay? All that makeup has to do

is just tone down the white just a little bit. And he is perfect. Absolutely picture perfect. But here's the thing. Once in a while, Heath will forego his diet. He'll just get rid of it

for the weekend. He will enter one of those New York style pizza places and he will grab that owner by the shirt and he will pull them over a steam table pan

where fucking pizza's been languishing for 14 hours and he will look him in the face and he will growl carbs and then the pizza guy is like he doesn't know what to do so he just grabs a pizza with like pizza stuff on it and he's like he's like that guy in that star wars movie that's like more And so he's screaming more at the guy. And so the pizza guy doesn't know what to do. So he's like, okay, how about we just do an entire pot of overcooked penne on top of that pizza? And then Keith is like, more! So the guy's like, a whole pot of bechamel.

More! A full cheesecake goes on there. Then a 50-gallon drum of whole wheat flour. And then Keith is still screaming more. The pizza guy goes out and he takes a fucking pizzeria wooden chair and he hand grates it over the top of the pizza. And finally, Heath is satisfied. He takes a bite and he relishes it and he loves it.

And then he bothers you for the rest of the fucking night to try this monstrosity and when you refuse, he bites you. He bites you hard with his molars. He's so mad. The vodka sauce, man. You forgot the vodka sauce. So good. Sorry about the bottle.

Deserved. Hey, everybody, it's me. Call the Bugapagacon. You know, Tom and Cecil often wonder why we have so many likable wacky side characters here on The Scathing Atheist, and I'm pleased to tell you, it's the only way to outweigh the number of unlikable side characters

that host the podcast. Boy, co-starring with Heath over on D&D Minus is fun, because that's the podcast he shows up for. But seriously, if you like Heath over on D&D Minus is fun because that's the podcast he shows up for. But seriously, if you like Heath over on D&D Minus, you will love his comedy partner, the edit button. Hey, hey, hey, everybody shut the fuck up with all the jokes you were making. I need to ask Eli the size of this chair in the corner so I can do fucking nothing with that information.

Oh, whoever came up with this adventure sure did a good job. It was probably that one time Don and Alex came up with half a character sheet for me. I'm so grateful for them. Those craftsmen of the art really carried me through, unlike what's-his-face on the other side of the DM screen.

Now everybody remind me of the last sentence he said, and then remind me of the last sentence you said, because I was me of the last sentence you said, because I was too busy asking why the five I rolled wasn't a motherfucking 50. That's confusing. All right. Keith and Tom, you're up next.

Donnie and Robert both donated for us to roast Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Love it. So, J.D. Vance. Love it. So J.D. Vance has no value in the universe. I'd call him hot garbage, but that's an insult to the concept of molecular motion in general. He's a speck of tepid cosmic garbage that garbage garbages when it takes out the garbage.

He's a boil on the side of a glob of primordial ooze that was left behind when time and space chose the everything to be on the dodgeball team, not him. A sad dimensionless clown

in a long abandoned warehouse of tristesse weeping on the floor of a shower inside that abandoned warehouse that slowly leaks nothing but shattered dreams, tiled by despair and theological failure. He's a shell of an empty husk of a semi-permeable membrane

of an endoplasmic reticulum of a bottom quark. He's the grunt of the sigh by which the brrrr takes its final brrrr. He's an un-man utterly bereft of

any redeeming quality. He anti-matters. Anti-matters! He anti-matters. Anti-matters! He anti-matters is fucking perfect. My face hurts so much. J.D. Vance held himself out as the fat-faced voice of the

American Rust Belt, despite having a law degree from Yale and working as a corporate lawyer before transferring into the tech sector as a corporate lawyer before transferring into the tech sector as a venture capitalist. But I get it. J.D. Vance is the worst kind of cynic, a shrewd one, the type of cynic who takes the temperature of the water rather than save the frogs from the boil. J.D. Vance sells himself as an everyman, but thankfully not every man is J.D. Vance, where the birth weight would drop to zero and the

thunderclap of legs snapping shut would deafen God himself. Vance has distinguished himself for his connection to the Rust Belt, and that is appropriate because he himself is a corruption, a steady decay, worrying away at structures that good men and women built. He is the putrefaction and rot, the gleeful entropy that says, I am one of you, even as he prepares an embrace that will infect rather than comfort. He is a blight, a one-man leper's colony,

the dagger hidden behind the back of a once-loved friend. An elegy is a poem, a lament, the finding of beauty amidst grief and the expression of that grief back through beauty. Let's not allow Vance to be remembered for or

with an elegy, but with a shrug and a sigh and a reminder that we always deserved better. Fantastic. I liked was a burr that takes its final better. That was more Tom. I just want to point out. Alright, let's do one last round of randoms, and then we'll hit some of our It's fine. That was more Tom. I just want to point out. All right.

Let's do one last round of randoms, and then we'll hit some of our big money donors. I'll go first. Amy gave us a hundred bucks for a roast of her dog, Miss Polly Prispants. Polly, take it easy. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Amy is the only reason you have a fuzzy bed to sleep on, right?

Oh, don't get me wrong. I know dad gets all the snuggles and belly rubs, but if Amy leaves him for her Pilates instructor, which I haven't done good information she's planning on doing, he's developing allergies real quick, if you know what I mean, Polly, okay? All Amy wants to do is love you, and you snap at her and bark at her all day. What's next, Polly? A heart attack?

My point is, get loving where the loving matters, because otherwise you're going to end up in the pound, where I promise you, there's way more wiener than schnitzel. Gather ye roast buds while you eat. Cecil, why don't you take this next one? John would like a roast of drywall anchors. Fantastic pick. Here's the thing i only wanted to hang this four ounce poster but i have to get a fucking drywall anchor the size of the thing they tunneled under the english channel to hang it up with and then i i turned it too much

and it left a fist-sized hole in the wall and then it constantly shits out fine dust from now until the end of time like how is that possible how can there be this much fucking dust where is it coming from is there entirely dust in between my walls is it interdimensional how is this possible and then if i decide to move it to another wall, no, I cannot. There's no way to recover your house from a misplaced anchor. You have to burn it down after that. Raised salty earth. Indeed. All right, Heath.

How about a roast of Dracula for Michael? Okay. Yeah, cool. So, hey, Dracula, you know how we look back at characters from old movies and old books and we're like yeah that doesn't hold up very well it's kind of problematic not you though back in the day you were just like a scary guy with evil powers and like your elbow in front of your face or whatever but then your terrifying publicist was like hey maybe you could sexy it up a little bit and now you're like sparkly and emo and

you're fucking teenage girls. You're like a thousand. It's creepy, man. It's fucking creepy. Instead of trying to trick people into letting you into their house, you should be going door to door because of Megan's law. You gotta stop. Gross. Alright, and Tom, we got an anonymous

donation requesting a roast of ex-Jehovah's Witness activist Lloyd Evans. Make whoever they are proud. All right. So I started to read a very long blog about Lloyd Evans to do this roast because, like most of our audience, I had never heard of him. And to make this roast fun for everyone, I'd have to clue you all in on who he is to share in the burn. But three quarters of the way through the blog, I realized we all know Lloyd. We've seen the shape of him for years. All of us have in every ex-religion community, in every position of power or authority or influence among the vulnerable populace venturing away from a lifetime of religious control and influence, away from an entire

culture and social circle defined by and walled off within the stifling parameters of some doctrine or other. And it really doesn't matter if it's former JW or ex-Mormon or name the community of your own full of free spirits and free thinkers who've escaped this cult or that one and are looking now for a place to call home. They are all the same and that they all have a Lloyd, a guy, and it is always a guy, who sees these ex-cult groups and uses his in-group status as a way to run a grift on the grifted, to fleece the vulnerable in their most defenseless moments, and inevitably to get up to dodgy and morally reprehensible fuck stuff. There is always a Lloyd, and there will always be a Lloyd, but here's the other thing. The Lloyds,

they aren't all that smart. They aren't that clever. All they are really is ruthless, and they always get found out, and their worlds crumble around them. Their wives leave, and their bank accounts run dry, and their influence, created by goodwill and genuine human connection, it fades always to nothing. For some of them, it takes more time than others, but in each case, they are shunned, ostracized, their names and reputations hopelessly tarnished, all of them eventually reduced to punchlines before becoming indeed less than that, before becoming a story even that no one bothers to tell, before being reduced and reduced and reduced until their voices, once a a comfort once a lighthouse

once a boom in the still of night is less even than an echo heard briefly and now forgotten well done all right well on that note again whatever it might have been wasn't there and with another quick thanks to tom and cecil we're going to wrap things up with the promise that there's still plenty more vulgarity for charity to come. Before we give in to the itis, I want to remind you one more time that if you're listening to this on the day it releases, you still have time to donate to Vulgarity for Charity. Every little bit helps. So even if you can't meet that $50 minimum for a roast, you can still help out. Just make that donation, send us proof of that donation so that we can make sure it counts, and we'll add that to the total as well.

Anyway, that's all the Blast Movie we've got for you tonight. 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's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I can't fade out without thanking Heath Enright for being such a turkey,

Eli Bosnick for being so corny, and Lucinda Lusions for stuffing so much great content into her segments. I need to thank Tom and Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance once again for all the great insults. Speaking of once agains, I also want to thank Delilah again for providing this week's Farnsworth quote.

Sorry, Delilah recorded the outro, forgot to send Heath that audio clip, and then I guess he was still worried about bothering me because of the hard stuff, so Eli, stop dead, but we got you in this week. Most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, but I can't do it by name because we're recording this in advance of the holiday. What's been that awkward position where I can't give thanks because it's Thanksgiving? Right? Fucking conundrum. But rest assured that I will thank you by name next week, and this week, I simply give thanks that you're patient enough to wait.

The point, though though is that together this indeterminate number of people helped give us something to be thankful for this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give some to us but if you want to get a head start on our Merry Christmas you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad free version of every

episode or you can make a one time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com and if you'd like to help but you can't afford to do it in a money-type way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media. And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us. Additional writing for this episode was provided by Mike Schuster and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the content and more on the content page at scathingadeus.com. I'm about to record the shit out of this diatribe, Morgan.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzz of this diatribe, Morgan.