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Every bold pioneer and every true innovator is quickly followed by a screaming horde of cheap knockoffs. For every Xerox PARC, there’s a Microsoft. For every Charles Darwin, there’s a Michael Egnor. For every Osiris or Dionysus, there’s a Jesus. And for every Alvin and the Chipmunks, there’s Charlie the Hamster.

Newer readers to this blog may not be familiar with Charlie, the beloved hamster for Christ. If you are not yet acquainted with this rapturous rodent, I strongly urge you to read my original article where I first encountered him. You really should check out that article! It has always been one of my favorites. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Back by Popular Demand, Charlie the Hamster!

Now that you’ve had a chance to “enjoy” Charlie’s work, let’s find out a bit more about him.

In the year since I wrote the original article, I’ve come across Charlie several more times on the web. The absolute best site about this forgotten Christian Soldier is the site Charlie The Hamster Evangelistic Ministry. It masquerades as a real ministry, but it’s clearly just a loving tribute to this hokey Alvin wannabe. From the site:

Charlie is a Christ-loving, bible-believing hamster whom God has blessed abundantly with the gift of music and song.

It’s a gift and a curse. OK, it’s just a curse.

Charlie the Hamster records are, to the ears, what Jack T. Chick tracts are to the eyes: funny, innocuous witnessing tools with an unexpectedly powerful soul-saving impact.

This is why I think this is a tribute site, having a little fun with its subject. I doubt that even Christians think Chick tracts are funny and innocuous.

While Charlie the Hamster’s songs are easily mocked and often ridiculed by smug “sophisticates” and self-impressed “hepcats,”…

Guilty as charged!

…anyone who approaches the material with child-like innocence will reap eternal rewards.

Kids are pretty sophisticated these days. I don’t think anybody finds Charlie the Hamster “rewarding”.

The Missiles of Roctober

Charlie the Hamster is the brain-fart of Floyd Robinson, a D-list country musician. One of the sites I found that tells a tiny bit about Robinson and Charlie is Roctober, a giant page that catalogs all human knowledge about Alvin and the Chipmunks and every predecessor, successor, clone, rip-off, and knockoff. Here’s what they have to say:

It seems that Floyd Robinson combined his love of country music, The Chipmunks, and Jesus Christ to make Charlie The Hamster. Charlie is less mischievous than Alvin but still jokes around. Floyd is less angry than David, he patiently chides Charlie. Charlie and Floyd seem fairly likable. They often sing together, occasionally letting Charlie’s lil’ cousins Huey and Stanley join in. Here’s some banter from the intro to “Think Jesus”: “Charlie, what do you like to think of most?” “Candy! Ice cream! Popcorn!” “Let me put it this way, Charlie: WHO do you like to think of most?” “That’s easy! Jesus!” Full band (guitar, bass, drums, organ) backs them up on these songs and the two instrumentals feature some good picking and strumming, Jew’s harp, and hiccuping. The front cover of the “Sunday School” LP shows Charlie and his lil’ cousins in their Sunday best in front of church. One cousin has a slingshot in his back pocket! The back cover has a photo of a grinning pompadoured Floyd posing with his guitar.

Charlie the Hamster Teaches Bible Stories

Now let’s get to the part that you’ve all been waiting for: More Charlie! I’ve been scouring the internet for the last few days. I’ve managed to bag a dozen or so songs, so you have lots more of this to look forward to over the next few months!

This month, we’ll listen to the first two songs from Charlie the Hamster Teaches Bible Stories. I believe this is his second album. It was inflicted upon the public published in 1974. Here’s “It’s Fun To Live For Jesus”:

It’s Fun To Live For Jesus

Oh, I’m glad I live in a Christian nation
Where I can live my salvation
‘Cause I know, yes I know
that Jesus love me so

So I live my life for Him alone
‘Cause His love for me every day is shown
And I know, yes I know
That Jesus loves me so

Oh, it’s fun to live for Jesus
Hooray, hooray
Every time I can, I’ll take my stand, I’ll live my life for Jesus
Every day, I’ll say, I live my life for Jesus
‘Cause I know, that it’s so, I live my life for Jesus

(repeat all)

It’s funny. I don’t mean the song. I mean it’s funny that I had just assumed that Charlie lived in the United States. The first line tells us that he doesn’t. As we all know, the U.S. is not a Christian nation. It wasn’t founded on the Ten Commandments, and there is no mention of God in the Constitution.

The melody provides the essential clue. The constitution of the Confederate States of America was god-based. Charlie’s a reb!

The second song on the album is “Sunday School”:

Sunday School

Sunday school, Sunday school, how I love Sunday school
Yes, I do
I study and learn, I play and have fun
Yes, I do

I learn about things that are good and true
And learn about things that I should not do

Sunday school, Sunday school, how I love Sunday school
Yes, I do
It brings such joy to girls and to boys
Yes, it’s true

All the week long, I just sing this song
How I love Sunday School

(repeat all)

I must not have attended Charlie’s Sunday school. The only joy I remember from Sunday school was the time they gave us cardboard cube banks. We were supposed to do chores to earn money to put into the bank, then bring them back the next week and donate the money to the church. That didn’t seem like such a good deal to me, so immediately after class, my brother and I used the banks as soccer balls. That was fun. The matronly Sunday school teacher had a look of pure horror and failure on her face, but she didn’t say anything. I guess she knew at that point what it would take me several more years to figure out: I didn’t belong there.

But apparently Charlie does. Or at least he thinks he does. Sorry, Charlie! God doesn’t want souls with good taste. God wants souls that taste good! And to him, only human souls taste good!

Yes, in addition to the regular lie that Charlie is being told (i.e., “God exists”), they’ve also neglected to tell him that animals don’t have souls! Charlie’s not going anywhere when he dies, except into a shoebox that Floyd will bury in the backyard.

Back by Unpopular Demand, Squirrely!

I know this violates the Geneva Convention, but George Bush pulled us out of that. I am reposting here that horrible cut from All Ears, the Radio Shack CB radio album. Yes, I give to you: Squirrely!

(Warning! Those of you who are still pissed off about my little “It’s a Small World” prank a few posts back should definitely not play this song! You have been warned!)

The reason I’ve reposted this is because I stumbled across some information about it. Who would have thought that anybody knew anything about this vile turd? But on that same Roctober page that tells us about Charlie, I found a description of three albums starring “Shirley, Squirrely, and Melvin” in 1981 and 1982. Roctober tells us:

And so without missing a beat this trio debuted featuring a couple of Blues Brothers type boy-squirrels (Melvin played sax and guitar, Squirrely picked up percussion and laid some guitar licks in as well) and a hot diva frontwoman with a huge tail.

OK, but those albums were five and six years after the Radio Shack album. Well, just read a little farther up the page, and you’ll see the story of “Hey Shirley (This Is Squirrely)”:

Apparently two-thirds of Shirley, Squirrely & Melvin had a prehistory. Before Excelsior Records resurrected them as the successors to the departed Chipmunks, they made an icky-cute country & western novelty single cashing in on the CB radio craze. For a group of rodents (in this case, squirrels), they have a lot of vocal range. While Squirrely gets his mack on with Shirley, there’s probably about umpteen different voices breaking in on the line (including a proper British accent and a stuttering Porky Pig knockoff). And you can tell each and every one apart. Can’t do that with the Chipmunks (especially after the Chipettes moved in). The other side is the instrumental backing track. Radio Shack carried a comp LP featuring this track to help advertise the various CB radios they sold at the time.

So you see, every torture device has its story!

I keep this blog focussed primarily on U.S.-based fundies. Despite this, I have a disproportionately large percentage of Australian readers. Maybe it’s from their collective guilt for sending us Ken Ham and Mel Gibson.

Speaking of Australia…

I’m sure you’ve had a song stuck in your head from time to time. It’s usually a tolerable condition. My most recent case of this affliction was the song “Waltzing Matilda”. I’m not sure how that happened; I don’t remember hearing it anywhere lately. It got me thinking that I’ve never understood what the song was about. It has too many Australian words in it. The easiest thing to do in cases like this is to turn to Wikipedia.

It says the song is about a hobo who steals a feral sheep. Then a guy claiming to be the owner shows up with three police officers. The hobo cries “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!” and drowns himself. That’s probably not completely accurate, but you try to describe it in 37 words or fewer.

OK. That settles that problem, but I found a couple of other interesting things in that article.

For starters, Australia didn’t have a national anthem (“Advance Australia Fair”) until 1984. The Waltzing Matilda article says:

The song was one of four included in a national plebiscite to choose Australia’s national song held on 21 May 1977 by the Fraser Government to determine which song was preferred as Australia’s national anthem. “Waltzing Matilda” received 28% of the vote compared with 43% for “Advance Australia Fair”, 19% for “God Save the Queen” and 10% for “Song of Australia”.

So “Waltzing Matilda” seems to be their second choice for national anthem. But 1977 wasn’t the first time someone tried to give the song official status. Back in 1961…

…Australian songwriter Jack O’Hagan provided lyrics to the traditional tune of the song to be called God Bless Australia that he hoped would become the Australian national anthem.

So in order to gain support for turning it into the national anthem, O’Hagen loads it up with God! Here are two of the stanzas:

Here in this God given land of ours, Australia
This proud possession, our own piece of earth
That was built by our fathers, who pioneered our heritage,
Here is Australia, the land of our birth.

God bless Australia, Our land Australia,
Home of the Anzac, the strong and the free
It’s our homeland, our own land,
To cherish for eternity,
God bless Australia, The land of the free.

This crass pandering apparently didn’t work, but it still points out a shameful tendency of the patriotic.

The American Obsession

Most people are only vaguely aware that “The Star-Spangled Banner” has four stanzas. After getting through all of the first three stanzas and most of the fourth, we hit this line:

And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’

D’oh! Ruined a perfectly good song.

So what is it about national anthems that they have to invoke God?

The other song that has to be mentioned in this context is “America the Beautiful”. Every so often, there’s a push by various folks to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “America the Beautiful” as national anthem. Those efforts have not been successful, so somehow “America the Beautiful” became our national hymn. To refresh your memory, here are just a few of its lines:

…God shed His grace on thee…
…God mend thine ev’ry flaw…
…May God thy gold refine…

Foreign Correspondence

A few other countries seem to have the same problem. A Google search on “god in national anthems” turned up god-contaminated anthems in:

• Canada (“O Canada”)
• Fiji (“God Bless Fiji”)
• Iceland (“O, God of Our Land”)
• The Netherlands (“The William”)
• New Zealand (“God Defend New Zealand”)
• Russia, 1833–1917 (“God Save the Tsar”)
• Serbia (“God of Justice”)
• Solomon Islands (“God Save Our Solomon Islands”)
• South Africa (“God Bless Africa” and “The Call of South Africa”)
• Sudan (“We Are the Army of God and of Our Land”)
• Suriname (“God Be With Our Suriname”)
• Swaziland (“O Lord our God of the Swazi”)
• Tanzania (“God Bless Africa”)
• United Kingdom (“God Save the King/Queen”)

I’m sure there are others.

Why this compulsive need to validate the ethnocentric belief of those people that they live in God’s chosen country and are God’s chosen people?

Cleansing Ritual

(For those of you reading this via RSS, you’ll need to visit my web site to see the Flash player.)

I wouldn’t feel right if I left you with “Waltzing Matilda” running through your head for the rest of the day. That is easily remedied with this calming tone:

You’re welcome!

The Sun and the Moon are among the signs of Allah. They are there so that we can contemplate His wondrous and incredible creation. The eclipse is one of the greatest signs of Allah. Do you not see how the moon perfectly covers the sun? The moon is the perfect size to block out the light of the sun. Allah made the universe in perfect proportions. Will you then not believe?

I found this quote from a Muslim creationist on a BBC discussion board about an eclipse back in 1999. It’s a claim I often hear from creationists whenever the topic of the solar eclipse comes up. To a creationist, everything marvelous (or even curious) is proof of design.

It’s an interesting coincidence, though, isn’t it? The moon does perfectly cover the sun! Except when it doesn’t.

This diagram (from The Dome of the Sky) shows how things line up during a total eclipse:

And this photograph (from Astropix) shows what it looks like from Earth:

That’s Godly perfection! I’m going to have to burn my copy of Origin of Species. Oh wait! What’s this? Jerry Lodriguss of Astropix wants to throw cold water onto my bonfire. Here’s what he says about this “perfect” size match:

However, for those who see more than mere coincidences in things, it isn’t always like this. Because the moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular, sometimes it is a bit farther away from the earth and it does not completely cover the sun’s surface even when the orbits exactly coincide. This is called an annular solar eclipse.

Bummer. Maybe that means God only exists during a total eclipse.

Here’s a diagram (from The Dome of the Sky) that shows how things line up during an annular eclipse:

And this photograph (from Mr. Eclipse) shows what it looks like from Earth:

To further rub salt in God’s wound, Jerry Lodriguss adds:

And, it hasn’t always been like this in the past, and it won’t always be like this in the future. Millions of years ago, the moon was much closer to the Earth, and due to the transfer of angular momentum from the Earth to the moon, the Earth slows down in its rotation while the moon moves farther away. Millions of years from now, the moon will be farther away and will never completely cover the sun’s surface.

Oh, no, God! You almost got things perfect.

And the Year Isn’t Perfect Either

Then there’s the problem of the length of the year. If our solar system is so perfectly designed that the moon exactly covers the sun, then you’d expect that other measurements would also be perfect.

Why, then, is the year such an awkward length? Why do we need leap years? Why are the rules for calculating the leap years so convoluted? Phil Plait explains in torturous detail here all about leap years. The bottom line is that the year is 365.242190419 days long. What sort of crappy design is that?

Another question to ask is why the moon’s cycle isn’t perfect. Why is it 29.53 days? Why isn’t it 29 or 30? In fact, shouldn’t the cycle be 28 days or some other multiple of 7? Shouldn’t it reflect the perfect week, which is how long it took Magic Man to create the universe?

That would make our months exactly four weeks. That would give us 13 months of 28 days each. Uh-oh! That doesn’t work out either! The year should have been exactly 364 days long. I guess God screwed up again.

There’s nothing especially Biblical about four weeks. It would be better if the moon took 49 days to go through its cycle. That’s 7 times 7. Then the year could be 7 months long, or 343 days. God’s blowing it right and left.

Instead of a perfectly-designed solar system where everything lines up in perfect harmony, all I see is a random collection of numbers. There is no design apparent in these facts.

Forum is a local public radio program that is also carried by one of the satellite radios. On November 8, they aired a program called “The Christian Right and the ′08 Election”. I’ve been meaning to bring it to your attention since then, but this is the first chance I’ve had to analyze the program.

The guests were:

• David D. Kirkpatrick, Washington correspondent for the New York Times
• Charles Boswell, senior pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, Kansas
• Matthew Continetti, associate editor of The Weekly Standard
• Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and author of The Divided States of America?

You can go to the program description page, where you can download the MP3. Stick it on your iPod and listen when it’s convenient.

I want to discuss a few of my reactions to the program.

Kirkpatrick Interview

Very few of the fundies that I’ve been following like Rudy Giuliani, primarily because of his support for abortion rights. It was surprising to hear Pat Robertson endorse Giuliani.

On this program, David D. Kirkpatrick, Washington correspondent for the New York Times, was asked why. He thinks it’s because some fundies (e.g., James Dobson) have said that they would throw their support behind a third-party candidate if the Republicans nominate Giuliani. Robertson was probably signaling to the fundies that any Republican is preferable to any Democrat. Robertson knows that splitting the conservative vote between Giuliani and a third party is a way to guarantee a Democratic win.

I would love to see the fundies break off and form their own party. Let’s see if they’re stupid enough to do so.

Continetti Interview

Matthew Continetti, of The Weekly Standard, says that the Giuliani campaign knows they won’t get fundies, but they’re expecting to replace those voters with swing voters from states that haven’t voted Republican in recent elections.

I think it would be good for the Republicans to stop sucking up to the fundies. It massively skews the behavior of the party. Is it possible that we might once again see a non-extremist Republican party? That would be something we could live with. I would still be wary of such a party. Even if they don’t rule from the extreme right, they might still be tempted to throw the fundies a bone every time there’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

Land Interview

Richard Land, the Baptist, says that historically Baptists didn’t vote Republican. They’ve been doing so since 1980, when the Republicans added an anti-abortion plank to their platform. If the Republicans nominate pro-choice Giuliani, there’s no reason to expect the Baptists to stick with the party.

Land said that one way to keep the fundie vote with a Giuliani candidacy would be if the running mate were Mike Huckabee.

I think that would be a bad thing. Mike Huckabee is an extremist’s extremist. During the Bush 1 regime, we all lived in mortal fear that Bush would become incapacitated, and fundie retard Dan Quayle would have become president. During The Bush 2 regime, we live in mortal fear that Dick Cheney will become president. Must we next live in fear that Giuliani might keel over and allow Mike Huckabee to be run the country?

Here’s a brief audio excerpt from last Thursday’s Daily Show. Jon Stewart is talking with John Hodgman about the decline in the value of the dollar. (If you’re reading this via RSS, you’ll need to visit my web site to see the Flash player.)

I thought it would be interesting to set up “atheist” as a keyword on my Tivo to see what it catches. Not long after throwing that line into the water, the Tivo reeled in an episode of All in the Family. I never really understood why that show was so popular. I guess it was a product of its time.

This episode is called “The Little Atheist”. Gloria is eight months pregnant. Interestingly, they show her drinking wine. (Actually, the characters never really drink it. They show the wine. They talk about the wine. They pour the wine. Then they just stare at it for the rest of the episode. The program could have Archie spouting off all sorts of inflammatory racist hogwash, but they can’t drink wine. Strange.) I do find it ironic that this program portrayed itself as so progressive, yet it showed a pregnant being served booze. Odd how the perspective of 30 years can change things.

The premise of this episode is that Gloria and Mike are not going to abuse the baby with a god delusion. This upsets Archie, who thinks that this form of child abuse is necessary. Then there’s the standard All in the Family arguments pro and con, and Archie is shown as being on the wrong side again.

The particular angle they took with this show is that it should be the parents, not anyone else (e.g., grandparents), who should have the final decision in all matters of child rearing. Although it’s hard to argue with that attitude, I was disappointed that the producers copped out of the atheism issue by using this approach.

The episode appears to be about atheism, but it’s really about who decides how to raise a child. So this program, which is famous for tackling controversial issues, doesn’t really tackle it at all. They raise the issue, but settle it by other means.

The episode ends with Archie agreeing to let Mike and Gloria do things their way, but he secretly conspires with Edith to sneak the child off to church every Sunday morning. I’m not sure how this was intended. Are the producers saying that Archie is such a selfish jerk that he will do anything to get his way? Or are they saying that, yes, the parents have all of the rights, except when it comes to God?

Here’s an audio excerpt from the show. (If you’re reading this via RSS, you’ll need to visit my web site to see the Flash player.)

Reader Sarah just left a comment on my article about James Dobson cowering in fear from Harry Potter. The article Sarah points us to is about how James Dobson proudly relates the story of how he beat his dog! (No, that’s not some weird euphemism, like “choking the chicken” or “spanking the monkey”. It’s a real dog, although it is a wiener dog! Hmmm… This Mr. Dobson has some serious issues to work out!)

Dobson writes:

What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt.

What I want to know is how the dog managed to get the belt away from Dobson.

Anyway, Dobson continues his lurid tale, proudly relating how he used his much larger size and strength to prevail. This is pretty much the definition of “bully”, and Dobson wears the label proudly.

What’s worse about this whole incident is that Dobson uses it as an illustration of how it is completely appropriate to flog your children. If he considers this violent episode to be an acceptable level of response to the dog’s “disobedience”, I shudder to think how he treats children.

Here’s how one famous dog reacted when he heard this story:

(If you’re reading this via the RSS feed, the audio player won’t be visible. You’ll have to visit my web site.)

I’ve got two more notes about Tammy Faye that I couldn’t fit into the last post (since it got so depressing at the end!). Fresh Air rebroadcast an interview with Tammy Faye. You can listen to that here.

You may have also seen things like the above image. It’s fireplace crystals that you sprinkle into your fire to change its color. I immediately thought of these crystals, when I heard that Tammy Faye had been cremated. With all of that makeup she wore, what color were the flames?