Atheist Secrets and Lies...

Secret Tweet is fascinating — people can post their inner secret thoughts for all to see, anonymously. Recent examples include “I’m alone in life and I hate it” and “I’m an an atheist, yet in times of desperation I plead with God.” That’s confession. There’s a screen for anonymous reactions. Is that absolution? ’fraid not. Many, but not all Comments are sympathetic. This second tweet drew fury from one ranting atheist:

I don’t wanna be anonymous! I’m @MissJia and I think you’re full of shit. You can’t call yourself an atheist, denouncing God but then reaching out to him in your time of need! That’s some ole selfish bullshit. Either you’re an atheist who doesn’t practice or believe or you don’t. But don't be wishy washy with God b/c that shit aint right.”

Remember Maurice Bendrix (in Graham Greene’s End of the Affair): “Oh God, I hate you so much. It’s as bad as if you existed.” Plainly atheists count among their number rabid fundamentalist bigots every bit as fiery and intolerant as the ones you get among Christians, Druids, Branch Dravidians and Druze. It’s one in the eye for the demonstrably false notion that it’s religion causes crazy fundamentalism, rather than human folly and wickedness.

Secret Tweet is the ultimte Twitter stream for nosy people. It’s definitely going into my talk on prayer next week in Chesham. This morning I noticed “I don't want to lose weight. I just want to find someone who loves me as I am.” Food for thought...

But finding someone ain’t the end of yo’ troubles. Steve and Leigh Buttell from Sydney, got married recently. Eighteen months and several thousand dollars later they experienced a dream wedding, followed by a A$3,850 wedding night in what turned out to be Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom:

By the time the group left three days later, the newlyweds had allegedly found maggots described by the groom as "the size of chocolate bullets'' in their wedding bed and a dead bat, covered in maggots, above their bedhead.

One guest awoke at 1.30am with a reaction to what he believed were insect bites and spent the night on a couch. Other guests fled their room in the middle of the night when a bat emerged from the fireplace and "flapped around the room''.

The newlyweds abandoned their suite on the wedding night after allegedly pulling back the sheets to find maggots in their bed, believed to have come from the dead bat on a shelf above their bed. The couple sought refuge on a blow-up mattress on the floor of a cottage occupied by Mrs Buttell's father and grandparents...

The cottages' owner, Sam Haymes, waived the outstanding $1850 and gave a bottle of sparkling wine as an apology, but Mr Mason was not satisfied with the offer. The family said the complaint was not about money. Mr Mason said: "Mr Haymes was apologetic and polite and removed the dead bat, but in my view it shouldn't have happened.'

Quite. Finally for this morning, Marcus Warren twitters the dumbest Inaugural line ever uttered by a US President, before the 43rd President (43rd dimmest, as well) invented the Bushism, from one Richard Milhous Nixon in 1969:

The American Dream does not come to those who fall asleep.

And, of course, a dead bat above the bedhead is one way to stay awake after hours. That’s how Aussies do it.