Renunciation
Renunciation
Gave up Facebook. I’m now out of touch
With Zuck’s lackeys and stooges and such—
With the hearts and the brains
That Zuck’s outfit contains.
I maintain that I’m not missing much.
–Tom Riley
Making History
Biden indeed is making history.
Nominee (“Rachel”) looks like Flintstone (“Fred”).
Yes, even shemale fetishists agree:
Biden indeed is making history.
His tranny is as ugly as can be.
What remains after that truth to be said?
Biden indeed is making history!
Nominee (“Rachel”) looks like Flintstone (“Fred”).
–Tom Riley
(Note: Minutes after this harmless little poem went up, I learned that it had been banned by Facebook — just like any comment that observes the obvious theft of the last presidential election! A badge of honor….)
Fighting Hitler
Mark Shea is fighting Hitler every day!
(It helps to know that Hitler is deceased.)
On Facebook in his manly Christian way,
Mark Shea is fighting Hitler every day—
And Mr. Hitler ain’t no match for Shea!
(If you are not impressed here, you’re a beast.)
Mark Shea is fighting Hitler every day!
(It helps to know that Hitler is deceased.)
–Tom Riley
Facebook Battles
Facebook battles it’s wise to avoid.
Though you start the fight simply annoyed,
It could soon drive you mad—
And all madness is bad.
Plus, the victory’s never enjoyed.
–Tom Riley
Say Yes?
Formerly, Mark Shea held he was the Lord.
Now he’s pretending he’s the Virgin Mary.
Of such equivalencies I am wary.
I say the motherfucker’s off his gourd.
The exaltation he is striving toward
Is bogus. He’s a big fat whining fairy
Fishing for all the bullshit he can carry—
Or all his Facebook friend list can afford.
Are people mean to you, poor bulbous bunny?
Do they decline to kiss your monstrous ass?
When you complain, their disposition’s sunny?
They make jokes on the subject of your mass?
I find your woe-is-me reaction funny.
Are you demanding sympathy? Hard pass.
–Tom Riley
(Dog-hater and notorious glutton Mark Shea cries about “saying yes to God.”)
Migration of the Land Whale
He’s setting out on journeys – not at sea
But on the road, a bulbous Kerouac.
Judging by his perceptions, he’s on crack,
Though actually he loves sobriety.
All members of his Facebook cult agree:
He’s not a billowy and worthless sack
Of suet. When society’s off track,
He howls and salivates incessantly.
He wanders, on the hunt for righteousness
And donuts, fighting Nazis that appear
Only in fantasies. He makes a mess
Of simple prose – but manifests no fear
Of critics, for his fans are even less
Canny than he. Get down! He’s drawing near!
–Tom Riley
(Planned Parenthood ally and notorious glutton Mark Shea sets out on road trip.)
The Height of Righteousness
Have you achieved the height of righteousness?
You have, sir, by agreeing with Mark Shea!
Another nifty Facebook post today
Proves he’s a modern prophet, more or less.
By “liking” it, you echo yes, yes, yes—
And to his grinning Facebook fan base say
That you are proud to join in this display
Of groupthink, quite as nice as a caress.
Have you attained the peak of charity?
You have — for Mark’s profession of the same
Warm virtue here where all the world can see
Is golden. To the multitudes proclaim
Mark’s glory as he chortles modestly!
You are a winner when you play this game.
—Tom Riley
High Evolutionary
“There was a sequence of increasing complexity and perfection, reaching its apogee, of course, in civilized man.”
–Alice Roberts, The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being.
On my advanced state, I am getting high.
Behold my multitude of adaptations!
Look through the shiny window of my eye
And see my brain, the seat of cogitations!
How glorious my many complications!
How wonderful my placement under skies
That are mere planetary exhalations
And lack my human power to realize!
But, if you smirking, whiskey-bibbing guys
Challenge my evolutionary status
And suggest that my braininess ain’t wise
And offer your subversive queries gratis,
Look it up – and you’ll see that I am right!
The entry’s “Evolutionary Height.”
–Tom Riley
(Note: Some time ago, a Facebook friend started a thread on evolutionary matters, as viewed from a Christian perspective, and on his own thread posted the ludicrous comment that there was nothing in the universe more complicated than the human brain.
I reacted to this arrogant and unscientific formulation with the scorn that it deserved. I confess that I wasn’t thinking solely in evolutionary terms. It seemed clear to me that, however complex the human brain became, and, yea, even if it became the brain of the Hulk supervillain known as the Leader, it could never be the most complex object in the universe. My simple little brain told me that even the imaginary superbrain was only a part of the body, so that, if the brain was complicated, the body of which it was a part had to be even more complicated.
This is Aristotelian – and maybe even Scholastic – logic. But it’s not a bit less valid in its proper context for all that. It has all the overwhelming force of a geometric proof, at least as far as I can see.
And beyond this argument, of course, if you really know your Darwin, you know that all this humans-as-the-apex-of-biological-evolution stuff is ridiculous. Human beings are really rather undeveloped animals. No man can even take on a chimp in an arm-wrestle, let alone engage in hand-to-paw combat with a tiger. The human brain is much smaller than the elephant brain and presumably contains fewer neurons. Plus, if there’s life elsewhere in the universe, there may be biological brains many times as complex as any brain on earth. If humans are exceptional, it may be because of something in their brains – but it’s not because their brains are the most complex objects in the universe. Q.E.D.
I didn’t get to express my scorn in these terms on the Facebook thread. My Facebook friend abruptly cut me off. How was it possible for us to say that the human brain was the most complicated blah, blah, blah? My Facebook friend told me: “You could look it up!” Another participant in the thread – a science writer in the Boston area – appeared to think that I was some sort of naïve Biblical fundamentalist, as he imagined that category. More arrogance from the most complicated brains in the universe! He referred me to “The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being,” by Alice Roberts, as a place to start in revising my mistaken worldview.
And there my involvement in the great controversy concluded.
Now I know why my Facebook friend excluded me from the realm of acceptable discourse. He at least could not have supposed that I was unfamiliar with evolutionary theory. He understands that I know Darwin a lot better than he does. My Facebook friend was worried about something altogether other.
He thought I was going to go off on his science writer friend. He thought I was going to start pouring forth abusive Spenserian sonnets. “Contra me loquebantur qui sedebant in porta et cantabant bibentes vinum.” And, although I didn’t have this course of action on my mind when I was cut off, my Facebook friend was probably right. In the long run, that’s the kind of thing that I always do.
So was I too guilty of arrogance? Not at all. I went and did the assignment. I acquired and read “The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being.”
It wasn’t a bad book. It wasn’t something I really needed to read, since I already knew Darwin and his heirs pretty darn well. But it wasn’t a bad book.
And it was well worth the trouble for a reason that my Facebook professors didn’t even imagine. Dr. Alice Roberts turned out to be the most gorgeous biologist who’d ever directed a dissection. Ouch, that girl was a babe! I would be joyfully present in her lecture hall every day of the week, though I might have trouble concentrating on the class material.
Go look her up and you’ll see what I mean.
Besides, when I read the book, I found that my new evolutionary girlfriend – characterized as an “anatomist,” no less! – explicitly took my side in the brain controversy, not the side of my opponents. All that beauty and rectitude, too! In the passage quoted above, the Goddess of Darwinism is mocking the very arrogance that I sneered at! She’s dismissing it as a corruption of Darwinian theory. She too thinks that it’s positively imbecilic to say such things as, “The human brain is the most complicated object in the universe.”
And, naturally, since she agrees with me, she’s right.
–T.R.)