Ever since I moved to Chittaranjan Park -- in a choice location atop a vacant lot used for Durga Puja -- I've been hatching a scheme for a massive blowout AtheistFest that would run all night for weeks at a time, keep everybody awake with loud, depraved music and guys shouting TEST, TEST over a bad public address system, and generally disrupt middle class life as we know it. So far, it hasn't gotten past the "yeah and we could serve free beer" stage in terms of actual planning. But in spirit at least I have lots of international support, according to a recent piece in the New Yorker.
Here's a summary of what my pal Chris could contribute:
Hitchens is nothing if not provocative. Creationists are “yokels,” Pascal’s theology is “not far short of sordid,” the reasoning of the Christian writer C. S. Lewis is “so pathetic as to defy description,” Calvin was a “sadist and torturer and killer,” Buddhist sayings are “almost too easy to parody,” most Eastern spiritual discourse is “not even wrong,” Islam is “a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms,” Hanukkah is a “vapid and annoying holiday,” and the psalmist King David was an “unscrupulous bandit.”
Now, I'd say those are a number of dudes who could make AtheistFest 2008 a truly rocking party. Sordid sadists, torturers, bandits, plagiarists (OK, I got that covered).... Infidels of the world, UNITE! (Donations and scheduling suggestions welcome).
Friday, June 15, 2007
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I would totally bring the booze. I had to suffer a similar situation when I went to my maternal grandmother's house in UP. Every morning around at 4-5 AM I was smack dab in the DMZ of a Hindu temple on my right and a Muslim mosque on my left contending for the prize of who could love god the most by yelling at him through the loudspeaker when mostly everyone is sleeping. Sometimes the Hindu temple would make sure to keep us up in the night as well with late night song sessions on the loudspeaker.
If I had to go through that every morning, I would pay a DJ to play the dirtiest music ever for at least a week until someone from the temple and mosque showed up at my house looking for trouble.
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