Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
Plastic.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Your neighborhood grocer, Brett, is to be given permission over the phone to deliver you vegetables, cash on delivery. Something will go wrong with this, but the space aliens didn’t have time to tell you what because they got eaten by a monster first. After all, you don’t write “aaargh,” you just say it.
It sounds like when you give the leather daddy running the register at the dungeon a large note, and he sighs and says, “It’ll have to be in fives if you want change.” Poor Brett. No one understands how hard his job is.
It’s not a clear yes, so you need to respect it and disengage.
Last night I received a text from my BFF stating that the seal had become waterlogged and so the shooting was cancelled. Still have no idea what her voice recognition software was trying to tell me.
It means you have suitable material to start a new religion.
It’ll what? Tell us! We need to know! Damn it, WHAT DID YOU SEE?
Well, if God were sending it, it probably means “worship me or suffer terribly.”
Space aliens? I think there was a cosmic ray that interrupted the feed. You see, the full message should have been, “Call Brett bringing authority to bring green but it’ll capitulation unhorsed,” which I think clears it up nicely.
“Call Brett to get permission to bring a salad, but make sure its preparation complies with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).”
Too literal?
It would mean the voice recognition dingus on God’s phone got turned on without Him knowing it. Thus disproving omniscience.
Early last year, there was a Blogspot project which had people call up and leave a voicemail consisting of a reading of Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”. The system was set up to convert voice to text; the results were hilariously inconsistent.
Call Brett (of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to bring Authority to dispense green cards it’ll speed up the alien landings.
Give Brett the ok to go ahead with the marijuana deal, but it’ll… wait, is that phone recording us?
The English language can be so brittle
You think it won’t ever let you down, but it’ll
“Chomsky is on the other line, please hold.”