An Easter Miracle; a Resurrection of Sorts, Even....

Since Jill has gone all warm and fuzzy, I'm gonna take that as a license to go to that place myself in my own way...You could call this my Blog Against Theocracy if I had been together enough to publish it when I wrote it, which was back on day 1 of Passover. Conditions here at teh Rooster Ranch have allowed that this post can stretch from back in the dark days of night one of Passover (actually its a happy night and a dark night all in one,) all the way through relig(ulous) intolerance, to the Pagan Bunny here bringing us the renewal of life and the fertility of spring! Enjoy! My Jewish half is taking us to Chinese Dim Sum and my Catholic half is making a basket for William.

RIP Mrs. Coo, (if you're merely here for the miracle, you can skip to the bottom:)






I just finished watching Religulous, Bill Maher's tour de force on the illogical, scary, and silly world of belief...and now on this first night of remembrance of the passing over of the angel of death, which, as I recall, has some lambs blood and baby killing in the story, Ive got to say that I'm happy to stick to the pagan bunny and the rites of spring that somehow got co opted by some story of Jesus rolling back a rock and rising to heaven.

So, in a Colbert-like over the top, what must have been fraternity hazing, that was passion play and sign of macho all rolled in one, some beefy football hunks from the local Sacred Heart University carried heavy wooden crosses some 25 miles from one church to another, complete with picture of the boys with the crosses outfitted with pillows duct taped onto them in the shoulder area so that they wouldn't actually hurt themselves, though they reported many blisters. All thats missing is the whips!

I'm thinking that Religulous ought to be required viewing for this time of year. With the way things are, as Maher points out, most religious people in this country haven't actually read the bible all the way through anyway, and their belief sets are based on something other than striving for understanding of a spiritual path or where we fit in this world. There is certainly a lack of understanding of other religions and a lack of critical thought about the timing of all of this penance and miracle celebration.

Its at times like this that I wonder how we ever ended up here. Coming down from 8 years of fundamentalist leadership in this country might be, in hindsight, something like picking up the pieces after the inquisition, but we wont know in our lifetimes the full extent of how bad this really is; history will judge this time in a far larger context than we can see from inside this bubble. But its gonna look a little crazy, even if you keep the blinders on hoping that most of this can just move on by and end up under some rug somewhere. Historians are not that forgiving it turns out; we can only hope.

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Me, I'm clutching my Peeps close to my chest and waiting for the bunny to come hopping down the path with my prayer bear, and pretending that Ive got a basket coming from that rabbit, full of all the fantastic confections that Cadbury, Dove, and the Peeps company can come up with...

So here is my Easter Miracle (tm)...a veritable ressurection of sorts...for this year:

Mrs. Coonie was a rare bantam barred Aracuana that came to live with me via eggbid some time ago. I got her because Coo, my Aracuana roo would like her, or so I supposed. She was cute and cheap and, it turned out, from a fancy line of chickens and pretty special. Well, some 20 days ago, the unfortunate Mrs. Coo passed away due to...well, lets just say that she died laying an egg. The life of a chicken is hard, but the egg thing is what they do, and all I can do is to try to make it more comfortable for them. In any case, after that tragedy, I decided to grab her last egg and the couple that I had in the fridge, along with a couple of others and put them in the incubator just to see what came out. I had expected a hatch tomorrow or the next day but, look what was waiting for me this morning:




If this is Coonie's child it is a fancy bird from which I could perhaps sell the eggs for hatching or lease it out at stud....If its the bastard son of Woostie, or worse, the accidental-frizzle-roo-who-must-go-as-soon-as-he-crows, then hes a mutt pet. If it is Coonie's kid and its barred, its apparently a roo. If its Coonie's kid and its a hen then it could be any color but barred would be better. If its a mutt then nothing matters except that it keep its mouth shut so the neighbors are not bothered.

In any case, Happy Easter and RIP Mrs. Coo. You did good in the chicken sense of purpose, in that you replaced yourself and provided alot of tiny breakfast eggs along the way. The rest is up to the forces of chicken sex and all that entails....you tell me:

Coonie Aracuana:



Woostie Woo:


Only time will tell....

c/p RIP Coco

Easterpalooza Eggstravaganza!

This is where it begins:


Yep...once again its time for the day that we color los huevos. This year's report? Not all that much to report because of a sudden hunger that came over a certain growing boy, thus causing him to eat quite a few of our specimens in the making.
The theme this year seems to be separation of church and state, popular television characters, and fight club. Don't ask me why; if I told you I'd have to kill you.

This Egg got in a bar room brawl



Humpty Dumpty after a fight in which he got the crap kicked out of him:

Stewie Griffin:


The Egg Scream:

The Easter Rabbi (with a little Abe Lincoln and Marc Maron thrown in):



Homer Simpson courtesy of Ben:

And also courtesy of Ben, Friendly Neighborhood Spideregg:




The obligatory cute chick:



Another posing with Easter stuff on the mantle:


And meeting the dogs, aka torture and what makes for the hatred between some chickens and certain dogs (...names have been changed to protect the innocent):







Meanwhile Back in the nestbox, Parrotlets Todd and Jane Doe are sitting on some eggs:
They don't like to be disturbed....shhhh...


c/p RIP Coco

Best. Easter. Eggs. Ever.

Go take a gander at Will Brown's Easter Eggstravaganza and leave him a comment. That is some seriously twisted and very funny shit.

Behold the Blog: Around the blogroll and elsewhere

For sheer fun, and proving just how clever bloggarians can be, check out the responses (and add your own) to Amanda's question of the day: Bad Sequel Ideas.

The Blog Against Theocracy series by Tristero over at Digby is so good it just doesn't pay for me to celebrate by posting yet another screed about why having fundies force their religion down everyone else's throat is a bad idea. Read all four parts here, here, here, and here. And while you're at it, stay over there and read Digby's post on how the U.S. attorney firings were all about minority vote suppression as a way of manipulating elections in the GOP's favor.

In case you had decided to forgive ABC for The Path to 9/11 just because you couldn't live without Lost, don't miss Cernig's post today about how ABC is whoring for the Bush Administration's lust for attacking Iran.

From the "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" file comes Melina with a post largely dealing with Air America shooting itself in the face again by firing Sam Seder(and don't kid yourself, this so-called Sunday afternoon slot is the Miltonization of Sam Seder. Sam, if you have a red stapler, you know what the deal is.) Now with parrots, dogs, eggs, and for some strange reason, an extremely disturbing photo of a container of 50 lab mice that look strangely dead.

For a shitload of blogger bang for your reading buck, check out Norwegianity's linkitude for Easter Sunday.

If you've missed Tata's hilarious, poignant, heart-wrenching and beautifully written posts during her father's last days, you can still catch them. And if you'd like to become acquainted with the man who served as backdrop for this unintentionally funny family, you can do so here.

If you feel like being subversive today and not making ham, try celebrating Easter by remembering that the Last Supper was really a passover seder -- and make Tami's brisket instead. I've always been a "Lipton onion soup and wrap in foil" girl myself, for all that I like to cook adventurously. It's quick to set up, easy (make sure it's wrapped tightly and put it in a 300 degree oven for three hours), and makes great brisket. But as part of the elimination of Frankenfood from my life and trying to eat only things that don't have ingredients that elicit a reaction of "What the hell is THAT?", I think this recipe is worth a try.

Be sure to swallow that mouthful of coffee before heading over to Skippy's place to watch <10 Things I Hate about Commandments.

Steven Hart at Blue Jersey has a post about Kevin Smith's next movie. I don't care what he says, a movie inspired by "Rev." Fred Phelps simply MUST have Jay and Silent Bob in it in order to have any credibility at all.

Driftglass reminds Steve Young at HuffPo that the right to free speech does not give one the right to a platform accessible to millions from which to spew utter, irredeemable swill.

Watertiger shows us the evolutionary track of Michelle Malkin.

And finally, because it's a dirty job but somebody had to do it:

Every now and then South Park gets it right

If you ever want to see a Christofascist zombie's brain go into blue screen of death mode, try asking what eggs and bunnies have to do with the resurrection.


I often find that South Park is the modern-day equivalent of the Three Stooges -- comedy that requires a Y chromosome to find it funny. Small doses of South Park are usually quite enough, and when Trey Parker and Matt Stone take the easy way out and resort to poop and fart jokes, I know it's time to see what's on the DIY Channel.

However, this week's Easter episode is arguably the most incisive, sidesplittingly funny twenty minutes of television you're likely to see this year. Comedy Central is running it in heavy rotation all weekend. If you don't have a DVR, find a convenient time here. But do NOT miss it.

Here's just a taste:

UPDATE: Alternet has more video.