How I Make Sure I’ll NEVER Believe the Resurrection Happened!

There are two chief reasons I do not believe that the resurrection happened in history. First of all, God never got me a girlfriend. Second, because I set the bar so high that supernatural/miraculous claims require what I call supernatural/miraculous forms of evidence to support them. (Actually, that may just be one reason if you think about it; if you knew what a jerk I was, you’d know why I never had a girlfriend!) If you think this is too demanding criteria, well, let me just put it this way, I don’t care what you think, quite honestly!

First, I have to explain what I mean by natural and the "supernatural" as well as the logical axiom that I made up out of thin air, that "supernatural" claims require "supernatural" forms of evidence. (Actually, Carl Sagan made it up, but who cares?)

The Natural and the Supernatural

I believe that the only honest way of conducting investigations for any historian is deny miracles can ever happen and to make up as many rules for accepting something as historical as we can – especially if we don’t like what happened. I’d kill myself if anyone ever proved that Jesus rose from the dead, so I have a bunch of rules I’ve made up to ensure that no one can ever prove to me it happened.

The critical-historical method (the one I like most) must be based on what I call the "Principle of Uniformity". This principle states that only things we have personally seen and experienced ourselves, or only things like those sorts of things, can be historical. This makes it easy to dismiss the resurrection, since I have never seen one. In fact, even if I do see one, I can dismiss Jesus’ resurrection because I might see a resurrection happen, say, in a Corvette; but Jesus’ resurrection happened in a tomb, so seeing a resurrection in a Corvette doesn’t help prove Jesus rose. As you can see, using your own personal experience as a gauge for what is historical makes it convenient and easy to not believe what you don’t want to believe!

Anyway, if I go to read the Histories of Herodotus or any of the works of Livy, I assume that my experience governs what they say happened, and that if they report something I’ve never experienced (like a resurrection, or a healing, or a date where the girl didn’t walk out within 5 minutes after the guy burped in her face) then I assume that they’re either lying or stupid. This axiom, that my limited sphere of experience is the ultimate test of historicity, is what I use when I study history, science, or philosophy. This principle of uniformity is to me a necessary axiom that underlies all my scientific, historical, and philosophical study. It underlies all rationality and anyone who doesn’t use these same rules is an idiot. This axiom, the principle of uniformity, is one that I assume a priori in my approach to studying history, and if you don’t like it, you can go &^%$# yourself.

Anyway, the founding of the United States of America, to me is an event that I attribute solely to the actions of mere men acting collectively as I do the founding of the Roman Republic, Egyptian dynasties, the victories of certain battles fought in war. None of this do I attribute to the actions of any divine, angelic, or spiritual beings. I should point out that I do not rule out the possibility of the “supernatural” or the “miraculous,” I just make up so many rules before I’ll believe in it that it’s the same thing as ruling it out. That’s the essence of being a freethinker: You come up with the best ways you can to obscure your a priori assumptions from ignorant Christians. (That means all of them, of course.) I don't see the logical necessity of the principle of uniformity of ruling out the existence of anything regarded as “supernatural.” I just don’t like it, and have never seen any personally, and since the world revolves around me, I automatically dismiss it.

However, I do operate on a further axiom: that the standard rules of evidence used in places like courtrooms ought to be discarded when it comes to supernatural stuff, and we should instead use the rule made up by Carl Sagan that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” What this means is, if I decide an event is extraordinary – using my limited experiential horizon as a gauge – then I can demand more evidence that any standard rules would require to believe it is true. If I was told by a friend of mine that my friend saw a being coming out of the sky and claiming that it was “Ahura-Mazda” (the Zoroastrian god of Japanese vehicles) and that it had a warning that a nuclear war was going to happen in the year 2015 between the United States and Iran and that it could be averted if all Americans in the state of California prayed to Ahura-Mazda asking that it be averted, I would be skeptical of my friend telling me this. The reason I would be skeptical is that I am a social misfit who doesn’t have any friends, and anyone claiming to be my friend is obviously a loony toon.

But the point is, Christians are obviously all stupid people who believed stuff like the Resurrection based on no evidence. I’m a smart freethinker who checks these things. I’d ask questions like, Is my friend under the influence of some intoxicating substance? Is my friend going insane, perhaps the sad victim of a hallucinatory mental disease? Is my friend's mind being affected somehow by an external cause such as radiation, poison, or some substance that is causing my friend to hallucinate and seriously believe that a Persian deity visited him with this apocalyptic message? Perhaps my friend saw a vision of what appeared to be “Ahura-Mazda” but was fooled by some kind of very advanced holographic projection system. Perhaps my friend's drink was drugged or my friend was hypnotized by someone or multiple people acting in concert. Maybe someone is trying to convince my friend that s/he is going crazy and these people are working to have my friend committed- what better way than to have my friend convinced that s/he was the recipient of a divine message? But if I was to rule out the possibility of delusion whether by natural or human means, I'd then have to consider the possibility that my friend is suffering a delusion that is paranormal in origin. If the cause is not natural or human, then perhaps it is superhuman in some sense. Perhaps my friend is being subjected to testing by alien visitors who are doing experiments on human brains for their scientific curiosity, or perhaps it is a mean or amusing prank being carried out by alien visitors who are infatuated with the idea of making human beings think that they're crazy.

Ruling out natural causes of these sorts would buy me so much time that I’d never have to come to the conclusion that a miracle actually happened, if I play my cards right. The bottom line is, I would have to have this same deity reveal himself/herself/itself to me and persuade me that s/he/it revealed him/her/itself to my friend. I would, of course, demand that I be supplied evidence of some sort that I wasn't, myself, hallucinating in some way or that I wasn't the victim of a prank or scientific experiment. But if I was to receive such a “revelation”, I would look for more ways to put off a decision. I would write up the event as I believe I experienced it and I would submit it to scientists, historians, philosophers, to Skeptics and skeptical organizations and scientific organizations. I would submit such a report to the Scientific Community for the Investigation of the Paranormal and I would ask that any such supernatural being reveal him/her/itself to these scientific and skeptical organizations and be willing to provide any such proofs that they request of him/her/it that I would. I would demand that the Scientific Community for the Investigation of the Paranormal prove that they are not aliens, a hallucination, or didn’t drug my drink, or covert Christians. I would ask that any such being be willing to provide adequate proofs of some sort that I and others are, indeed, the subjects of any supernatural revelation. I’d go through every name in the New York City phone book, asking for their opinion. This is what I mean by raising the bar as high as I can to avoid believing something.

This is one of the chief reasons I disbelieve that miracles have occurred in history. If I read in the New Testament that Jesus rose from the dead, that he was transfigured on a mountain in front of his disciples, that he walked on water, that he raised Jairus' daughter or that he healed folks who were blind, I see no reason to believe that such events occurred because they are supernatural events and to claim such events occurred requires all the evidence I demand in order to validate them. If Yahweh really did appear to Moses, then for me to believe that this happened, I would require that Yahweh appear to me as well and provide me with supernatural evidence that he really does exist and really did appear to Moses. If he doesn’t appear, he can go %^$# himself.

I don't see any miracles happening today. I asked God for a girlfriend and He never gave me one. I prayed for a new sports car once and nothing happened. God is obviously a selfish jerk if He even exists. So ^%$ Him. I want more. That bastard owes me big time. I have never seen a miracle happen all of my life and so I will conclude with a uniform degree of probability that such, in all likelihood has never happened, and probably will never happen, because the universe revolves around me. So there.

I’ll be back later to explain why else you Christians are so stupid for believing in the Resurrection.

Kissing Hank's WHOOP!

This is a great piece by James Booger, and citing it is much easier than answering arguments!

This morning as I was picking the wings off of flies to see if I could get evolution moving a little faster, there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

Fred: "Hi! I'm Fred, and this is Wilma."

Wilma: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come express loyalty to Hank with us."

Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to express my loyalty to him?"

Fred: "If you are loyal to Hank, He'll give you the natural reward for loyalty; just like if you work for a company for long time and do well, they rightly reward you. And if you aren't, He won’t give you any rewards, but He will just leave you on your own to your own shame.”

Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"

Fred: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever He wants, and what He wants is to give you a reward for loyalty, but He can't until you are loyal to him."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Wilma: "What do you mean, ‘that doesn’t make any sense’? Do you think these houses built themselves? Don’t you think you should be thankful to the person who built it and let you live here?”

Me: "Well no, I think these houses just sort of flew together in a storm one day."

Fred: "I can see why this doesn’t make sense to you then."

Me: "Do you show loyalty to this ‘Hank’ often?"

Wilma: "Oh yes, all the time..."

Me: "And has He given you a million dollars?"

Fred: "Well no. We don’t serve Hank for the reward. We serve Hank because He has earned our trust and loyalty.”

Me: "Huh? But I wanted money."

Wilma: "I suppose if you think these houses came out of nowhere, that’s to be expected."

Me: "Well gosh. It sounds like there’s really nothing in it for me. Do you know anyone who was loyal to Hank, left town, and got the rewards?"

Fred: "Does it really matter? The rewards are not the issue; it is that Hank is a real person who did real things like build your house.”

Me: "Yeah, but I want money, man. Have you seen the price of beer lately?”

Fred: "I’m sorry, but your priorities seem a bit skewed. Remember, if you don't follow Hank he’ll leave you alone…but you won’t be able to achieve your fullest potential that Hank intends. He’ll leave to spend the rest of your existence in boredom and disgrace.”

Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight from Him..."

Wilma: “What makes you think you’d hear any different? Aren’t you just fudging to create a problem?"

Me: "Then how do you show loyalty to Hank if you don’t see him?"

Fred: "We serve Him and His interests. Don’t tell me you need to see and talk to a person to work for them. Have you ever seen the President of this country?”

Me: "Well, no, but --"

Wilma: "We learned about Hank by the record of what He did in history. The records taught us all about Hank and why we should be loyal to Him – because of all that He did, and because He is who He is."

Me: "Huh. And you just took these records at their word when they said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to be loyal to him, and that Hank did all this stuff?"

Fred: "No, we checked out the validity of the record and what it said, and compared it to other records. One of Hank’s officers, Karl, wrote down some of it; there were others, too, but here's a copy of what Karl wrote; see for yourself."

From the Desk of Karl
Be loyal to Hank for He has earned your loyalty by providing you with life and all you have.
Use alcohol in moderation.
Pursue righteousness. Don’t misuse this as an excuse to define “righteousness” in your own image.
Eat right.
Hank dictated this list Himself.
The moon is white and shining.
Everything Hank says is right.
Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
Don't use alcohol if it becomes too strong.
Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
Be loyal to Hank or He'll leave you to your own devices.

Me: "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."

Wilma: "What’s your point?"

Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."

Fred: "So what? When Karl wrote this 95% of people in this town couldn’t read anyway. Most communication was by dictation. Do you have a problem with that? Why not just address the epistemic validity of what is written?"

Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"

Wilma: "Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."

Me: "I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist hurts of people just because they're different?"

Wilma: "So you think that Hank ought to give rewards to ungrateful people?"

Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."

Fred: "So prove it. We did our research and we found that all that Karl wrote is sound.”

Me: "But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is white and shining,' which is just plain wrong."

Fred: "See, you haven’t done your homework at all. 2 and 9 were both written before alcohol was strong enough to knock your socks off. As far as 6 goes, I suppose you don’t use the word ‘sunset’ in your vocabulary.”

Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon reflects light, not that it shines..."

Wilma: "They’ve also established that the sun doesn’t ‘set’. So what is the problem, exactly? Do you have a problem with phenomenological language?"

Me: "I'm not really an expert. I don’t even know what that word means."

Fred: "Obviously not.”

Me: "Item 7 is a real trip, though.”

Wilma: "Why?”

Me: "You can use it to say Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"

Fred: "Well, sorry to disappoint you, but we did check out the claims and as far as we have found, item 7 is valid. If you think it isn’t you need to explain why.”

Me: "Maybe later. I need a beer. What's the deal with wieners?"

Wilma: She rolls her eyes.

Fred: "Oh, yes., Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It was written at a time when there were serious problems with condiments being poisoned by poor processing methods, so Hank included a ban on condiments. Buns are required because when this was written, there were no napkins, and people got the grease from the wieners on their fingers and it caused a lot of accidents. These days since we have napkins and better sanitation, we don’t worry about that law.”

Me: "What if I didn't have a bun?"

Fred: "What kind of silly question is that? I told you why the bun was needed. Are you so selfish that you’d risk hurting people just so you don’t have to put up with a bun?"

Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"

Wilma: “Didn’t you hear a word he said? Relish and mustard at the time this was written was deadly.”

Me: (I stick my fingers in her ears.)"I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."

Fred: "I can see we’re wasting our time with someone who lives in his own little world.”

With this, Fred escorted Wilma to their waiting car, and sped off. I went back inside for a beer.

I Hope JP Holding DIES! Several times!

That did it! I'm so mad now! That J. P . Holding and his buddies are making fun of my kiss kiss hero John Locust again (see last lovable blog entry by my dear sweet buddy)! And he called my other kiss kiss hero Dr. Hectoring Avalost a name -- "Dr. Stupid"! What an intellectual crook!

Hey, look! I see no problem in apologizing for errors, whether slight or serious, and I am open-minded to accepting legitimate criticisms from people should I make an error as long as people are civil in their criticisms. By that I mean, I won't accept correction until you agree to let me roll down my pants so you can plant some lip gloss! You better be super nice to me when I make a mistake, or I'll kill you!

I don’t claim to be an intellectual nor do I try to pass myself off a serious scholar. I try to make people think I am one in more subtle ways than that. It's how I got away with stuff as a kid. Sometimes.

Aw heck, I'm getting off topic! Let me get to the main point. Holding's slip-up. I mean,

Holding’s Slip-Up

That's better! There was a time on TWeb when I asked Holding to explain what he meant by something, and Holding explained it, and even changed his article to make it clear in case someone else had the same question I did. Well, you see the slip-up? Come on, it's right there! Holding was so stupid he didn't anticipate my problem with comprehension before I explained it to him!

I am so sorry that I pointed this out to him! If I had never pointed this out to him, I could use this as deadly ammunition to destroy his apologetic argument for the resurrection. The atheist community has one less club to beat Holding with no thanks to me!

But here's the real point! I am confident that this will not be the last time that Mr. Holding slips up! There will come a time in the future where Mr. Holding will slip-up and make such a damaging error that it will completely destroy a big argument of his for the Christian faith. It may not be on the topic of the resurrection but it will be sufficient to damage, irreparably, his apologetics for the Christian faith. I am predicting that he will slip-up big time again! I'm going to check his stupid Tekton website 100 times a day waiting for that to happen! I am quite confident that this will happen! When it happens, I will e-mail Hectoring Avalosost and show him it! Perhaps with a confident declaration of scholarly expertise, Dr. Avalos will judge Mr. Holding to be not just an amateur but an “intellectual crook”. When Mr. Holding makes his slip-up, I will be right here waiting to rub his nose in it. I'll take out ads in the New York Times! I'll tattoo a description of the slip-up on my rear end and take photographs and post them all over the world! I'll tell John Locust! I'll tell my mommy! I'll dance in the street and scream about it! Wheeeeeeee!

Huh? Where was I?

Oh. Never mind. See you next time.

The Uncritical Thinking of TWeb!

As some of you may already know, TWeb (an abbreviation for "TheologyWeb") is a pro right-win Christian conservative website that is hostile to almost every type of skeptic or non-Holding supporter you can think of. Every time I go onto those forums, I get ganged up on, asked tough questions that are hard to understand, and my arguments get treated as if they were idiotic.

I'll tell you what's idiotic! Holding and his supporters, THAT'S WHO! Holding likes idiots. He caters to them. He feeds off of them. They think he's something else. Well he is; he lives in the sewer.

Recently I decided to entertain their lusts for insults against me, being that I myself, am a skeptic of Christianity and an opposer of JP Holding (the filthy scum that runs Tektonics.org). If anyone wants to know why I don't link to TWeb where Holding squats, check out the thinking skills they exhibit. Here is a thread where Holding asked people to come up with mock slogans about DC. He's fixated on us. I'm Doubting John. You can pick up the debate that ensued on this page, and read though the next few pages by successively clicking on the next numbered one.

As you can plainly see, TWeb is not a place for civil discussion. Most if not all who are skeptical of their beliefs and in disagreement with them will not be tolerated, especially if you disagree with Holding. TWeb is perhaps the only Christian website I can think of where believers will gain up on you and try to intimidate you to conform to their mores and behaviors. TWeb is a catalyst for the cult following of Tektonics.org. Christians like ApologiaPhoenix, Mountain Man, JB, lilpixieofterror (all moderators of TWeb, respectively but not in any respective order), JonLanceBarker, Teluog, and especially one particular user known as "Truth be Told" (a loving and altruistic Christian that created an anti-Acharya S website filled with nothing but vinegar and vitroilic comments) are nothing more than Holdingnite jackels. It's sad to know that so many of them are duped into following someone who worships dead animals (a prohibited act as commanded in the Bible!).

If anyone takes the time read further they will see that the moderators deleted some of my comments because I accused Holding of lying. The sad thing is I don't have any evidence to prove it. But he did. I consider him to be a liar. Then they deleted another coment because I argued against deleting my prior comment. There's no fairness there. They are a pack of hyenas; idiots. Is there something truly wrong with accusing someone of lying and not being capable of providing evidence? Well, apparently on TWeb, it certaintly is. That's a problem. Holding is crafty like a fox, he is able to shake your hand in the darkness, and somehow withdrawing that handshake in the brightness of light.

And if you read further you'll see where Holding supports one of his ignorant followers when he argued that in order for me to criticize God for creating this universe I must be able to create a better one...in one week! Is that not ridiculous? I can criticize a contractor for his work without being able to build a house! But rather than telling this stupid supporter of his that he was wrong, which is the decent educational thing to do, Holding thought his argued was a good one!

Nevertheless, would I get them back for their childishness. This time, I was not going to stand by and play the role of innocence and humility, and I would get them good this time. I entered the fray one page earlier than I linked to where I provided my own slogan for DC:

Give us the guilt ridden, the brow beaten, the outcasts, the wounded soldiers, and we shall heal thee. Give us the religiously wicked, the victimizers, and the defenders of Biblical atrocities, and we shall beat thee down. Give us the brainwashed, the superstitious, the ignorant, and we shall teach thee. Give us the masters of gerrymandering who are exhausted from intellectual feats like spinning several plates up on several sticks, and we shall give thee rest.

The way things are going at this point, I may start considering putting this slogan into effect. This will demonstrate the digusting acts of Holding and his supporters, and will thus further my case in debunking Christianity.

Almost every time I go there I say to myself "never again." And then I somehow find the forgiveness to humble myself before them giving them their crave for attention returning to the boards typically around little more or just around a week when I'll say "I'm outta here" or "I'm leaving you all."

That's all I got to say, but hopefully this post will speak out to anyone with a clear thinking mind and a good moral conciousness. Regardless of whether you are a believer or skeptic.

God and smiting

It finally took pinching myself and a bit of a self-arm-twisting, but I finally visited my local DVD store and picked up a copy of the Steve Corall's latest DVD release, Evan Almighty. This film is obviously a sequel to those who know about the first film, Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carrey (whom also plays a character role in the film Dumb & Dumber, just to give people notice).

Okay, so if you're not familiar with the first film it goes something like this: God (played by Morgan Freeman) finally answers "Bruce" and his prayers for a better life. To make a long story short, God gives Bruce his powers to see what it might be like having unlimited domain in the universe for a temporary amount of time until Bruce comes to the "moral" of the story that human beings can't do God's job as well as God can. Yeah, I know, it's pretty stupid stuff and I know just exactly what you might be thinking at this point: Well, why the hell not? After all, doesn't it say in the Bible that God made man a "perfect" creation? Is God so smug that he puts us to a limitation scale and boasts of his universally sovereign power? If that's the case, God is a real smug cornhole, and that's that.

Alright, so the second film focuses more on a character from the first film known as Evan Backster whom becomes the main character of the second film running into contact with God, blah, blah, blah. In the movie, Evan is elected Congressman and hopes that his campaign will "change the world." Then, God comes into the scene to tell Evan to build an ark. Yep, this takes after the mythical story of Noah's Ark as found within Genesis (if you take a look at some of the "Special Features" on the DVD rom you'll hear an interesting bit where the director wanted the ark used in the film to match "historical records" which tells you allot about who is behind the production of this film and how they are planning to continually push Creationist propaganda into the media and elsewhere just for a little profit for their Jesus-camps and pedophile priests). And this is where it gets interesting. Now, maybe the director didn't take a good enough look at the book of Genesis when he sought out writing the script to this movie, but according to the Bible it says that God promised Noah via a rainbow that he would never send such a destructive flood to mankind ever again:

Genesis 9:14-15

14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

Despite what the Bible says however, and being that the film's director is most likely a fundamentalist Christian, the producers of the film wanted to have God create a second global flood. What makes this even worse is that God describes the Noah myth as "a story of love" not of His wrath upon the sinful. That's how it goes throughout the rest of the movie: God is showing "love" by destroying the Earth with a great quantity of water. If you're a Christian and this somehow doesn't register well with you, perhaps you should be reading more of your Bible.

That's right folks. The Bible contains all of the same wishy washy garbage as does the movie itself. Somehow, God demonstrated his "love" to Abraham when he commands him to kill his own son and then to have that backfire as a sort of brutal strip tease (I know how those are, and believe me, they ain't pretty), and most importantly for Christianity, God shows "love" by sending himself in human form only to be nailed to a cross just to please his own deviance. Talk about a ridiculous fairy tale. Sheesh.

As an atheist I willingly choose to reject such doctrines. But, more importatingly aside from my own personal affairs, you have to wonder why there are such things as "Christian apologists". These type of people know what the Bible says inside and out, letter for letter, word for word, page by page. Yet, they continue to defend the notions that love comes about through torture, genocide, and crucifixion. If the Christian God does exist, he is the type of being that psychopathic freaks like Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas and Michael Jackson talk about when they use the word "God."

And besides all of the nasty theological implications in the film, the directing and scripting is just godawful. For one, the director picks a black man to portray the role of God? The director of course did this in the first film, but I mean, for sheesh's sake. A black man? Isn't God supposed to be the god of the Jews? How many Jews do you know that are black? Seriously....

My second issue with the moviescripting is the flood scene: There was no "global flood". In fact, the only flood in that film was one that destroyed the city dam and the city's urban areas. Then the water just literally dried up. What a waste of money! They didn't even have the nerve to create a global flood effect! Those cheapskakes, sheesh!

What I set out to do in this article was to explore pre-Christian theology. Christians are always hung up on the idea of their God being "merciful", "forgiving" and "all loving." It's almost as if they completely ignore the Old Testament. Why? I thought the entire Bible was the inerrant divinely inspired Word of God? And the Christians that do acknowledge the OT's content dismiss it as being of a "different time period." Well, I'll tell you what I think: I'm disturbed by it all, each and every part of it. The fact that we still live in a society where most people do not accept evolutionary biology is frightening in itself. I fear we may at some point regress back to Old Testament times, and I can only hope I will be long dead before then.

Like, the most devastating argument ever, Man!

Like... during an acid trip I got to thinkin'...

-Jesus was a dude and so were the 12 Apostles
-You can't have that many dudes in one area at once without having a fart joke cracked
-Christians believe that Fart Jokes are Immoral
-Therefore, Jesus was an Immoral Hypocrite and Christianity is False

You can't get much more devastating than that, man!

Like, now if you'll excuse me, I have some two-bit drug dealer to pummel for selling me bum drugs, man. He gave me Splenda instead of Coke...