The Scathing Atheist - 366: Californicating Edition

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

On this week's episode, Cecil will turn down Eli's best friend invite once again, Tom will be here to perform slam poetry eulogies and call them roasts, and Noah will cobble together a headline segment from the sewn together corpses of old headlines segments. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: http://www.amazon.com/Diatribes-Godless-Misanthrope-Scathing-Presents-ebook/dp/B00J53FZFI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396141562&sr=8-1 To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out out half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Hear more from Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Dissonance. Learn more about Fair Fight 2020 here: https://fairfight.com/fair-fight-2020/

Warning, this episode would make Elmo faint. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new Christian playing cards for the gambler on the go. Christical playing cards. All the fun of cards. None of those whorish queens. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, this is Jacob calling from Forest Lake, Minnesota.

As somebody once represented by Michelle Bachman, I can assure you that we did evolve from batshit insane, filthy monkey men and women with crazy eyes. It's Thursday. It's February 20th. And it's National Handcuff Day. My safe word is, I just swallowed the key. That's a safe phrase. I am no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I am no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick.

I really swallowed it. I'm Ethan Wright. And from Chris Christie's New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance will take one step closer to our best friendship. Tom from Cognitive Dissonance will perform some more slam poetry eulogies as roast. And I'll stitch together a Frankensteinian headline segment from the corpses of old episodes. But first, the diatribe.

It's probably an indicator of something deeply miswired in my psyche that i've thought to myself multiple times man i sure wish i used to be an alcoholic so that i could prove that step one aaa's program is a load of shit step one aaa's seven step recovery program is but god though right it's a blanket statement that says it's literally impossible to quit drinking if you aren't religious it's one of those statements that lends itself to empirical testing and like all religious statements that do that it fails the test consistently there is no correlation between religiosity and addiction recovery we'd have a lot more data to work with of of course, if AA would release their own recidivism rates.

But in this instance, I feel like the fact that they won't is the only data point we really need. Anyway, but up to this point in my life, I've always seen two ways that you could explain this rule's existence in light of the fact that it's demonstrably untrue. The more cynical interpretation, of course, is to say that people at rock bottom are more susceptible to religious indoctrination and won't be able to fight you off as well. Now, if you're inclined to be more charitable, though, you can also look at it like the bloody volleyball that Tom Hanks talks to in Castaway,

right? A person who's tried and failed to quit drinking, especially a person who's failed repeatedly at that, might need an imaginary hand to hold. You know, the only way that they're likely to believe the person saying you can do this is if that person is lying about who you is in this scenario. So, you know, they tack on some God shit and they say, no matter how insurmountable the goal might seem, our guy is omnipotent so he can handle it. Of course, even that more charitable interpretation, even if it's all the fucking way correct, would be insufficient to explain the first step because you can get all that shit without insisting on God belief, right? You can just have that as one of the available menu items and still gain all the same benefits from it. Now, in the past, that's where I've left it intellectually, because let's face it, the fact that the charitable explanation just doesn't add up as well as the cynical one isn't usually in need of further review when we're talking about religious questions. But

I've been thinking more and more about this since I quit smoking. And another possible factor occurred to me the other day. So first of all, quick update. By the time you hear this, it will have been 10 weeks since my last cigarette. Thank you. Thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Because if I hadn't done it in such a public way and if you guys hadn't been holding me

to account and if so many of you hadn't reached out to help, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. So thank you. And to be honest, at this point, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. So thank you. And to be honest, like at this point, I'm so damn confident that like, I'm saying it's been 10 weeks, even though I'm recording this motherfucker a week in advance.

And throughout it, I've been trying to keep my eye open for what purpose God might have served in all of this. I can't help but replay this whole nine week ordeal. And imagine what if I had been Christian throughout, because, you know, to be perfectly honest with you, quitting to this point hasn't been as hard as I

feared it would be you know the first couple days were pretty miserable and I'm hardly all the way out of the woods but ultimately I found it to be much less difficult than my fears had led me to believe it would be so imagine I'm a Christian right and even better imagine I just became a Christian or like you know I was already a Christian but I just rededicated my life to Christ or whatever. Exactly the kind of thing that Christians might do when they're turning over the kind of leaf that you would turn over right before you quit smoking after 30 years. So Christian me prays to mighty Jesus to hold my hand and carry me through this. And, you know, because by golly, only a higher power is strong enough to do it. And then lo and behold, I observe all the same shit that atheist me just observed. Quitting turns out not to be as hard as I thought it would be. But, you know,

it's no longer, though, because I was mistaken about the level of difficulty. It's because God was on my side. You know, maybe the godless me could have done it, but he certainly wouldn't have done it so painlessly. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Of course, in this instance, God didn't actually help me quit smoking. I quit myself and then I gave him all the Lord. Hallelujah. Of course, in this instance, God didn't actually help me quit smoking. I quit myself and then I gave him all the credit. So what purpose did he serve? Did we just land back on that cynical interpretation we started with? Well, consider this.

There are a lot of things that I should do with my life. And most of them are easier than giving up a 30-year nicotine habit. Just demonstrably easier than that, right? Like I should give more money to charity. I should volunteer my time. I should eat better. I should exercise more. I should be a better husband.

I should get angry at fewer inanimate objects. And if I just prove to myself that I can quit smoking, right, traditionally considered to be one of the hardest damn things a person can be called upon to do, how the fuck can I justify continuing to fuck up all that other stuff? How can I rectify my ability to quit smoking, but my inability to be as attentive as I should be to Lucinda? Well, God sure makes a great excuse, doesn't he? After all, if I quit smoking, not because of my own willpower, but rather because I beseeched God and he heard me,

well, I don't have to do all this other hard stuff. I can't go pestering God every time there's a problem in my life now, can I? Sometimes I got to handle this shit on my own, and I don't have the kind of willpower it takes to quit smoking or quit drinking. I failed at that shit repeatedly. Only God could do that. Look, I'll admit it can be kind of intimidating to realize that something you've thought yourself incapable of for a really long time was easier than you thought it would be.

What other comfortable limitations are illusory? What else is possible? Don't get me wrong. I'm all for believing in yourself. But if you do it correctly, it can be downright exhausting. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is nobody. Hell, I'm not even joining me this week because we scheduled a live gam show on my 23rd anniversary. And the only way that I was going to

make that fly and still have a 24th was if I agreed to stick around L.A. for a couple extra days and romance it up a bit. But we did know this was coming. So over the last last few weeks we've been recording a few extra headlines here and there so without further ado here are a bunch of news stories about old news already in progress and in i believe in miracles news tonight when you follow atheist news as closely as we do ministers using basic magic tricks to prove their connection to god is just part of the job however However, Bishop Angel Daniel Obenim of the International God's Way Church in Ghana proved once again that there is no bar religion can't crawl under by performing his famous passport to shoe trick this week again. Oh, my God. He found his blessing behind his ear? It's amazing.

I mean, you shouldn't be charging people money for parlor tricks. That's unethical. Sorry, no, in Eli's defense, I'm sure that he would say, the real problem is when you do that while misrepresenting who you actually are. And then he would pretend that he'd read Proust. So yeah, never mind.

Exactly. Double, triple. Did read it. No background here. Guy ate a Madeline and realized he was gay. Hmm. That's what you say each time. Zing, zang. Hey, fun fact, it's also the

only fucking thing that happens in that three-volume book. Alright, so Obinim hey fun fact it's also the only fucking thing that happens in that three volume book all right so obinim is among the legion of con men who claim to be able to heal blindness madness and epilepsy with a touch and regular listeners may remember him from a few years ago when he offered to enlarge the size of people's butts breasts and, and penises by touching them. Hey, I'm a third of a wizard. What? I can do the penis one myself.

Yeah, so in the video, which, by the way, there is a link in the show notes. Not the penis touching one, though, that he's talking about, or iTunes would put it on a list, and it's hard to get on that list. I mean, you can find it, but either way, in the video, Obenim props his leg up on a parishion it's hard to get I mean you can find it but either way in the video Obinam props his leg up on a parishioner

and asks him what he's been praying for to which the man replies a passport so he can travel out of the country Obinam then screams nonsense at him and instructs him to remove his shoe only to reveal

a passport inside. So a couple of things here. As Hemet Mehta over at the Friendly Atheist points out, the guy never checks the passport after it comes out of Obeynem's shoe. So we have no way of knowing it's real. Also, the church could have applied for the passport for him, as religious institutions often do, and just have had a really, really weird delivery method.

As religious institutions so often do, yeah. Yeah. But the weirdest part of all of this is that this is not the first time Obenim has performed this trick. There is another video of this guy doing the exact same thing where he makes someone's passport appear in his shoe with a woman a few years ago, which means either this dude can only do God magic in his shoe, in which case I really want to watch him cure cancer or something. Or he has found out the perfect way to live out his foot fetish. We call it perfect perfect is the

word we use perfect by me and in traffic scam news tonight intelligent people can disagree on whether or not there's a good way to give government money to faith-based charities that are doing secular work but at least we can get a consensus on the fact that there's a bad way to do that best exemplified by of of course, the Trump administration. OK, I still think you guys were way too quick to judge my money cannon idea. I don't think we were. I don't think we were. So for a bunch of years, the DOJ has been given money to a Catholic diocese in Florida to help with their work fighting human trafficking.

And again, that's iffy by itself. The government says they're just giving money to the secular parts of the charity. But since money's fungible, you know, some would say that's a distinction without a difference. OK, so like do we send Bitcoin to human pirates? What does that mean? Others would say, though, that as long as you can weigh the money down with a bunch of stipulations, it prevents the wasteful duplication of efforts and allows you to fund some you know like the most effective charities regardless of their affiliation but then along comes trump's doj realizes that catholics are a demographic other than undereducated white born

again evangelicals and therefore a demographic that mostly votes against trump so they took that money away from the catholics and gave it to some real Christians who only help Christians that are being human trafficked in blatant violation of the law. Jesus Christ. A bunch of these guys break into a dungeon full of Catholic kids to save them. And then just like, ooh, Catholic. This is awkward. We're going to take off. Call your senator, I guess. Yeah, guess yeah yeah funding for your thing too we're just doing the protestants

now the charity in question was clearly named by somebody who didn't realize that we'd basically retired the 32nd spit hookers for jesus is an explicitly christian group that operates a safe house for female victims of human trafficking. But unlike the Catholic charity, they defunded only if they participate in group religious activities. They also have a bunch of weird ass rules about how you can't read secular magazines while you're there. And if they catch you doing it, you have to wash windows and just a bunch of fucking weird

shit. And despite the gross illegality of all of it the federal government has awarded them with over half a million dollars in taxpayer money over the last three years right so instead of the vital work of helping some of the most abused people in society it's now run by if the salvation army made you call your years of torture and abuse being a hooker. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Damn it.

And look, I'm not going to say that this kind of shit is the inevitable consequence of opening the government coffers to faith based initiatives. Again, I'm not going to say that again because you already know that I told you so. So there's no point in me underlining it now. I told you so, so there's no point in me underlining it now. But I do want to make it clear that even though two intelligent people can disagree on the merits of this practice, half of them are still wrong. They are. Just to be clear. Intelligent people are wrong about stuff all the fucking time.

Oh, yeah, yeah, especially when two of them are disagreeing about shit. And I'd like to buy an Iowa news. and in i'd like to buy an iowa news in a surprise turn of events the winner of the iowa caucuses for the democratic party last week was donald trump yeah something went wrong with the app being used to keep track of all the votes and we ended up having no official winner declared until a few days later and that gave us three days of idiots from every political camp making up absurd conspiracy theories and showing Russia that we could definitely handle sabotaging ourselves this year. We got this. And regardless of who wins the nomination, we're going to move on to a general election in a country where rick wiles has a national audience and wiles managed to stand out above a very competitive field of iowa conspiracy

theories with an old classic it was the jews but with a new twist it was also somehow gay people too it was gay jewish big gay jew something like yeah but not gay not gay jewish people jewish people and gay people as one unit right yeah right it's confusing yeah but to be clear about the the point of the story here we're talking about rick's conspiracy theory because it's the most bigoted and bat shit crazy. They're all equally true, right? This one is also as true as the other ones. All right.

So here's a quick background on Rick Wiles in case anyone's not familiar. He runs a Christian hate crime called true news that isn't legally allowed to spell true with an E, I'm pretty sure. So that's why they spell it T-R-U. Oh, that makes so much more sense now. You might remember him from recently describing the impeachment of Donald Trump as a Jew coup. And then following that remark that was highly publicized, he got White House press credentials for the Davos trip. Yep.

Yeah. Well, I mean, two of Donald's favorite things are bigotry and very simple rhyming. So I guess that's it. Nailed it, Rick Wiles. And just last week, Rick Wiles described coronavirus as, quote, God's death angel that was sent from heaven as a punishment for the existence of trans people. That really happened. Right. Which, again, wouldn't be as big a deal if there hadn't been multiple days in the last few years where Rick Wiles had more access to the president than jim acosta right or or congressional oversight yes yeah that too yeah so here's what wiles had to say about the iowa debacle starting with a question for his panel on his show quote the pro-Israel owner of the Times of Israel newspaper, he's backing homosexual mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Like he's the fucking mayor of homosexuality. Mayor of McGaytown. Continuing the quote, and he, the owner of the Times of Israel, is the money behind this app. End quote. And then there's a long pause while everyone's like, this is not a question. Were you done? Or we can ask a question. And Wiles is like, right?

Question mark. and his co-host says literally, co-host is like yup, Israel spreading its gay agenda as usual, you know Israel more like gay Israel, am I right? that's not what it means

when we say they're fucking the Palestinians and the ass guys, you would like what they're doing there to close it out, Rick Wiles also added a i guess bigotry disclaimer so if all that sounded anti-semitic no it didn't and from there he transitioned into accidentally disproving his entire point about the conspiracy. Quote, they might accuse me of being anti-Semitic for saying it, but the truth is, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, they will. Yes, they absolutely will.

There's no might in that shit. It doesn't matter if you preempt us saying it. Yep, you're anti-Semitic. Yes. But he continued, the truth is, there's an Israeli connection in Iowa. But you're not allowed to say these things. Everybody's being censored now by who? The same people who are doing this stuff.

End of quote from the neo-Nazi with White House press credentials. Yeah, right. On his show where he says these things literally without consequence. Whilst gaining listeners. Yeah. Just listen to the words I'm not saying right now. What? Fuck.

This is being censored. Wait. You heard? Fuck. Okay. Yeah. So bottom line. Yes.

The Democratic Party managed to fuck up literally moment number one of the election year. Yeah. They shit the bed before they even touched the bed yes and yes the blast radius is much worse that way it's all that's all true that's all true that being said the gay jewish plan worked you gotta admit first place in iowa and now new hampshire was a gay guy and right behind him in second place was a Jewish guy. That's how it happened in Iowa reversed in New Hampshire.

So in your face, hetero Christians, we did it. Yeah, right. Crushing it. Hell yeah. And in all dogs go to heaven news tonight, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation or MRFF is an interfaith group that aims to keep church and state separate within the U.S. military by doing things like writing polite letters when their First Amendment rights are being violated and writing polite responses to crazy people who think their aim is to point all the drones at Jesus. But this week, they saw perhaps the most bonkers accusation that's been leveled at them yet.

Trying to prevent military dogs from going to heaven. Right. Yes. Because in their universe, apparently, there's a dog hell. Right? Because I guess human hell wasn't bad enough. They honestly want us to worship a guy who made a hell for dogs. But the MMRF, the MRFF can determine where the dog goes in.

Yeah. God, you got to admit, though, this guy's job became fun all of a sudden on this day. Because he's writing that letter back just like, okay okay dear sir uh my job is normally a giant pain in the ass but your inquiry was very insightful please send back another letter and elaborate so we can take this very seriously i'm having an amazing day thank you sir yeah so here's the story eugene delgadio is the head of the SBLC-labeled hate group called Public Advocate of the United States. And this past week, he sent out a letter about the MRFF, which, by the way, you should totally read because it is filled with bonkers theocratic paranoia, but includes, quote, paranoia but includes quote these heartless anti-god zombies would remove god's inspiration from defending us all as our patriots are facing death with their weapon in their hands

and the dogs who are heroes in battle and many of whom die and are honored in ceremonies would be denied access to god and quote okay dear mr delgadio thank you so much for that eloquent Access to God. End quote. Okay. Dear Mr. DelGaudio, thank you so much for that eloquent clarification. We have rectified the situation. You don't have to worry. And you are so helpful. Oh, we'd like your input on a related issue. On the one hand, Black Labs matter. On the other hand, no atheists in a foxhound.

We don't know what to do so delgadio doesn't include a link or any references but he's probably talking about the mrff writing a polite letter to a christian dog tag company last month that asked them not to use yeah that asked them not to use that asked them not to use official military logos on their products. And as a result, at least according to Delgadio, all the military dogs will go to hell now.

He thinks that's what the dog tags are for? That is what he thinks. For the military dogs. Okay. Dear, lovely Mr. Delgadio, that is what he thinks for the military dogs okay dear lovely Mr. Delgadio my favorite person one more question

we're serving kosher hot dogs in the mess who's affected by this you know hell wise the word dog

is in it it's tricky what do we do alright well on that note we're gonna close the headlines out for the night heath eli thanks as always jumanji and when we come back tom and cecil will be here or at least as here as any of us are this week for most of my adult life lucinda has been the only muse I needed.

When I needed inspiration, her beauty, her compassion, and the uninhibited joy she takes in the world were a boundless source. But one day, after a bizarre turn of events that I'll probably eventually have to explain to the NSA, I found myself in need of inspiration, less of the how-shall-I-describe-this-gentral-spring-breeze variety, and more of the what-cartoon- to fuck which breakfast food to make a person look like this variety.

And for work like that, I found that I needed insult muses, but luckily we found a pair of those over the Cognitive Dissonance podcast. So Tom, Cecil, welcome back. Yeah, you know, weirdly, this is the only place where I feel like I can truly be myself. You know, weirdly, this is the only place I feel like I can fuck a bowl of crispics and not get judged.

Well, but it's a good judgment. I think your technique is really good. You gotta give him 30 seconds of milk. Don't be crazy, though. Yeah, right, right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Also, by the way, Eli, welcome back to the other side of the music break, man. Thank you,

Noah. Very important to me to be reintroduced on the show that we share. I'll just go fuck myself. I'm also here. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were also self-conscious about being welcomed back to a show you'd already been welcomed to, but I'll make sure I welcome't realize you were also self-conscious about being welcomed back to a show you don't

already have been welcomed to, but I'll make sure I welcome you three times to each show as well. All right. That beacon of confidence, Heathen, right? Yeah. Well, no, that's okay. All right. All right.

We're drawn. All right. We've got plenty of vulgarity for charity insults to knock out. We're going to try to make a dent tonight. Cecil, you're up first. Damien would like a roast of Sethh andrews milk chocolatey voice oh gosh hearing seth andrews voice as a fellow podcaster is like running into your ex at the coffee shop mid-bite until like a really heavily frosted cinnamon roll and you thought you know

you're thinking i grabbed a napkin but you fucking didn't grab a napkin. So the whole time you're talking to them, you've got this giant jizz swirl that encompasses like 60 fucking percent of your face. And then they ask how you like the seven cinnamon rolls on your plate because they own the fucking franchise. And as they walk away from you, mouth full, and you mumble your goodbye, you flick frosting on the table like a saint bernardine a fucking bechamel you realize they were always out of your league so i just want to say this and i want to say this as clear as i possibly can fuck seth andrews and his ridiculous voice privilege fuck you fuck you right. Fuck that voice. And he's nice. Cheery one to start to roast off for you here.

Rick would like a roast of his deceased hippie friend with beard braids. Alex. Great. All right. Well, Alex, first of all, fuck you for dying. Just leaving the world like this. Typical boomer thing to do. And you look like,

well, you looked like a pot dealer for Vikings. I am uncomfortable. I am not. Whatever, don't die. Do better. Fuck you. You sound like my doctor.

It's the lowest bar. It's the lowest fucking bar. All right, Noah, this one's for you. You sound like my doctor. It's the lowest bar. It's the lowest fucking bar. Oh, Jesus. All right, Noah, this one's for you. Nicholas would like a roast for his co-worker, David. Yeah, my guy just looks like a pot dealer from a Vikings fans. You know what he looks like is paternal disappointment. Dude, okay, so he's that rare breed of jackass that was a flat earther

and realized how stupid that was, but then didn't update the means he used to assess information that led him to flat earther. Right? So he realized that was stupid, but he's still pretty sure the juice boxes are making the frogs gay. Good luck, bro. Okay, Eli, I got one for you. Michael would like a roast for his friend Sawyer. Good luck, bro. Okay, Eli, I got one for you.

Michael would like a roast for his friend Sawyer. Okay, so Michael sent us a picture of Sawyer and his dog holding a butterfly knife. And for clarity, the dog is holding the butterfly knife in this photo. That is the best roast of Sawyer. But he also looks like the only cross-country hobo never to get kicked off a train. He looks like the only miner during the gold rush who settled on panning for crystal meth all right tom judith would like a roast for her co-worker cheryl all right so cheryl it turns out is the kind of person who despite looking like an adult twice her natural age still throws actual honest to god temper

tantrums cheryl you can't throw temper tantrums you can't do that you're a grown-up you're not even a cute grown-up this is not okay it's not sure from time to time everyone might lose their cool but here's the deal every time you this, everyone around you thinks less of you and less about you. Kids get away with this shit only because the people in their lives are obligated to love them. Nobody has to love you, Cheryl. And no matter how loudly you squall and cry and pout, you will lose everyone. First, their respect and then their interest until ultimately your mewling protests fall not on deaf ears but on none at all i feel like that should be followed by an echoey silence

after i actually sorry for the laugh all right so uh next up we've got a round of special requests eli this first one's for you christian would like a roast for Head of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk. Okay. Ingrid Newkirk looks like Voldemort's first attempt at a drag persona. Seriously, I know the optics on PETA are bad, but she looks like the naked mole rat's clumsy attempt to end animal testing from the inside of the human problem. All right.

I got a three for here. Heath, Tom, and Cecil, Peter would like you to roast your least favorite beer. Oh, that's an excellent one. All right. Well, I'm going to start with a dishonorable mention for Natty Light. Natural Light is revolting.

It needs to get me too'd as an entire product. It's responsible for way too much of that. The whole product needs to go. But even worse, fuck every single person who made a stupid fucking homebrew and now you're trying to make me try it. Get out of here. I don't want your banana snickerdoodle porter or whatever you came up with. Nobody wants that. and this is important somehow in the format of this joke

you're worse than the rapey frat bro beer think about that that is your fault okay uh hey um makers of all those hop smack cast delicious uber bitter ipas it tastes like shit it tastes like something you have to fucking endure that's not good it's not it's unpleasant we're in a fight tom okay over here just just because you turn up no i'm going through this just because you could turn up the ibus to 120 and make a beer taste like fetid lawn clippings formula 409 it doesn't mean you should do that and you know what fuck it while i'm here fuck you barley wine you're not even beer that's true you're fucking awful barley wine tastes like alcoholic candy soup one beer served in hell it would be barley wine. If there was a beer served in hell

if there was a hell and there was a beer served in hell it would be boxed barley wine. Okay, barley wine's bad but let's not have weird examples like alcoholic candy soup

and pretend that that's a negative. All right, I'm gonna go. Summer Shandy? It's half fucking lemonade. Just order a lemonade with a shot of vodka in it. If you need a special name, just ask the bartender for, get this, a vodka lemonade.

It's not fucking hard. Order a beer like someone that can drink legally and isn't fucking having a bonfire. Fuck you. It is bonfire beer. It is bonfire beer. Jesus. Get a Zima, you fucking loser. Make it a Mad Dog with a splash of Budweiser.

What? Why? What are you talking about? All right, Noah. One here for you. Christine would like a roast for district attorney for Sacramento, California, Ann Marie Schubert. Yeah, the fucking raisin to Pam Bondi's grape. So she's

mostly known for believing wildly implausible excuses cops offer up for shooting unarmed black people and then accepting large campaign donations from police organizations. Not necessarily in that order. You know that old saying about how you can indict a ham sandwich?

Yeah, way more likely than her indicting a cop, apparently. Look, you know, I get that cops have tough jobs. Don't fucking email me. I know it's a dangerous job, but it's not like in the top 10 or anything in terms of dangerous jobs. In terms of fatal injuries, it's about half as dangerous as farmer. And if a farmer shot a dude because he looked tired while he was operating the combine, I feel like we'd go ahead and indict the motherfucker.

Well, what does the tired guy look like? He's Hispanic. No, he was. Why'd you ask, Heath? Heath, Perry would like you to roast him. Okay. Is he

still alive? Did I get a fucking live one this time? One can only hope. It's been a while. They sent him in a while back. Alright. Well, hopefully yes, I guess. So, Perry, by the way, donated twice. The first time was for a roast of his dog and the second one was

for a roast of himself, assuming we roasted his dog first. We did not do the dog yet, but you know what? We're doing this one anyway. Deal with it. And we're not going to feel bad for two reasons. First of all, because Perry describes himself as, quote, an Aryan stay-puffed marshmallow man who's certain to die unloved and alone in a puddle of his own vomit and regret. So, you know, get your own thing, asshole.

But, more importantly, the best picture he could find of himself was literally, I'm not exaggerating, it must have been taken while he was starting a forest fire with a blowtorch.

With somebody. Somebody took the picture for him. Somebody was like, oh, cool, this is fun. Yeah, let's do that. I'll take a picture of you. So, what the fuck is the second picture on your Tinder profile that didn't make the cut? Ten seconds later when you punched a baby koala bear in the face?

What do you do? Alright, Cecil. Roman would like a roast of John Cass of the Chicago Tribune. Oh, my God. John Cass, for several years, has been slowly transforming into an old De Niro from Raging Bull. He's well surpassed the target weight at this point. Now he looks like Tetsuo from Akira

after he started that blob transformation going on so uh keep telling everyone from page two mind you and from the most one of the most liberal places in the country that a hillary presidency would have been just as bad if your eyes could see past the top of your cheeks you'd see how fucking wrong you are you idiot god well done sir and tom alex would like some of your signature sting for his ex-wife emily all right well i love it when people want someone roasted then they tell me nothing about the person they want roasted other than how much they hate them and i mean that actually because i get it like hate is a powerful thing it gets a bad rap but hate isn't all that bad.

It's not. Hate means that you know some shit. And Alex, you know some shit now, man. You know exactly what you don't want. And that shit has a name, and her name is Emily. I mean, you get to know this, Alex, right down in your bones. You get to know this on the goddamn cellular level. And that's good.

It's good in exactly the same way you remember the first time you ever got food poisoned. And now you can't even smell a TGI Fridays without gagging on your own bile. Emily, Alex, is the burning bile in your throat. She is the hot sweat, the sudden salivating. She is the pounding headache and the asshole that feels like it's trying to hold back the Hudson. Emily has become one with your body's natural reaction to violently heave and retch and turn itself inside out to protect yourself from her. Let Emily serve for you as a warning, Alex, that while you may make a thousand mistakes a thousand times over, you will never again make a mistake so tragic as Emily. You might, though. If you're giving me anything to work with. Or TGI Fridays.

Either of those. People with X-Ys are like... Alright. So time for another Spightning Round. The category here is categories. These roasts are for stupidity that comes in groups. Groupidity, if you will.

I will allow it. I will allow it. And we're going to do these first ones Jeopardy style. I'd like you to answer in the form of a question. This one's from Audrey. People who have opinions about childless women. Oh, oh, I got it. Whose kid is screaming and throwing themselves on the

ground in the middle of the cereal aisle at the grocery store? That is correct. Well done. All right, Cecil. This one is for Douglas. How about telemarketers? Okay. Form of a question. Did you want to be put on a no-call list? Yeah, none of these

numbers do that. Not one of them does this. Also, okay, next up, Andrew would like roast for Planned Parenthood protesters' heath in the form of a question. Okay, why aren't acid attacks all bad? No, no. Cut. I'll allow

it. Fine. Who is it okay to and then feed it to the baby? Oh my gosh, they gotta cut that. to and then feed it to the baby? Oh my gosh. They got to cut that. How would you feed it to the baby? Fine. Whose parenthood should have been planned so much better? Alright, I'll allow that one.

Okay, good. Noah, you're up next. Nathan wants a roast of people who say have a blessed day. Alright, well if the of people who say, have a blessed day. Oh. All right. Well, if the answer is people who say, have a blessed day, the question is most likely, who the fuck is this warning even for? All right.

This one is from Mike. Assholes who loiter in busy foot traffic areas. Okay. Who is either clueless or selfish, but nonetheless deserves to be shoulder checked into traffic in front of their children on facebook live deservedly oh i thought i was gonna stump you but no that is correct well done all right so uh we're gonna keep this spightning around going our new category is politicians and for these ones i'd like you to deliver your roast as a donald trump tweet all right no, you're up first. Reziah would like you to do Australian politician

Gladys the Koala Killer Berjiklian. Berjiklian? Berjiklian? It is a pretty fucking weird one. I love that they're koalas. The Trump tweet would read,

the pebble of Austria should thank Gladys Bear Jack-O-Lantern for saving them big dollar signs by defunding their National Fire Service right before all these fires. Obviously, they were doing a bad job or those forests would have been swept. You're welcome, Austrasia. Austrasia. I like forests that don't burn down yeah right yeah all right cecil you're next arizona state representative anthony

kern for matthew tiny tony kern loves the great state of tucson as much as i do he wants to change all the very greatest laws in our country so they don't apply to him. Great job, Tony! Presidential seal emoji, which is actually, by the way, that's official now. That's a presidential seal emoji is official. Oh, yes. All right.

Just suck on that for a minute. How about a tweet for Maxime Bernier for Christopher? Maxime, great job. Great lady. You have all the best ideas. The best. Really doing great work up there in the hat. You're like a miniaturized Canadian version of me.

Let's get some hamburgers next time you're down. All right, and Heath, how about a Trump tweet for Sheriff Joe Arpaio on behalf of Barbara? All right. Begin tweet. Hey, John Bolton, come on in. Call it Fifi. Great. begin tweet hey john bolton come on in uh kov fifi great i was just having my invisible secretary siri write a tweet to joe arpaio about his amazing concentration camps for mexican people great way to contain the coronavirus killing it hey you classic story you remember when i

bribed ukraine to investigate the bidens? So fun. What do you mean voice activated? What? Don't say send. And Eli, why don't you bring us home with a tweet for Doug LaMalfa from Rebecca? All right. Doug, all my dad's friends is doing great things for cowboy hats by feeding them his extra chins fake news afraid to tell you that McGah alright good job all around

back to the themeless categoryless insults here Cecil, Sealy would like a roast for their son, Kian let me just say that no one I have ever seen telegraphs percussionist and marching band as much as you. But seriously, it's nice that he's so involved with politics. The world

needs more 16-year-olds with Bernie shirts not voting in two years because stamps give them anxiety. Okay, Noah, this one's for you. Natalie would like a roast of her co-worker, Anita. Okay, Noah, this one's for you. Natalie would like a roast of her co-worker, Anita. Okay, wait. This is an absolutely true story.

I could have sworn that the picture of her pasted into our roast doc had gotten, like, stretched or something. So, no, it's what I said. There were, like, two solid minutes making it longer and flatter and wider and narrower, just trying to find some combination of dimensionality where she all made physical

sense and I never quite got there. What if I stretch it into eight dimensions? Does this exist? I had to stretch it through time. It was weird. But honestly though, from what Natalie says, that's also what it was like to work with her too, apparently. Alright, Heath, I don't know what the fuck

is going on here but tells you with like roasts of their twitter friends Ansgar Odinson and Growly Bite Bite okay well I'm obviously not gonna go on twitter and look up a rejected Ayn Rand character and

also apparently a guy whose name is what happens when he sees a black person walk past his house on the sidewalk absolutely all right next up eli josh would like you to roast his high school teacher scott okay so scott was josh's gym teacher uh so first of all congrats on making it through high school j second, good news, you are now officially more educated than your gym teacher so hey big ups on that

third, you don't look like Biff from Back to the Future fucked Guy Fieri so in all three ways things are looking up you over Scott, you're really nailing it alright and Tom, Zebulus would like you to use your powers for good in tribute to his dad, Barry. Barry, what the hell, man?

You selfish prick. Who gets diagnosed with terminal cancer on their son's birthday? You couldn't wait a few days for that? You're going to be fucking dead forever. I don't really see what a few extra days means unless you just had to take that spotlight off for yourself and really dying early selfish man the world is full of shitty dads and even they managed to live long miserable lives infecting everyone with cynicism and misery and you you couldn't manage to hang on a little while longer

too much work just to take a few breaths barry at least if you had to grab the big fucking family headline with your untimely demise you could have at least been shitty or even non-consequential but really it seems mean to me to be good and decent and honorable and then to just up and die you You know what, Barry? I hope there is a fucking afterlife. And I hope you're there. And I hope when you look down at your son and you see how heartbroken he is, how desperately he would like just one last day

to spend with you, I hope you know that you left him bereft because you meant so much to him and the love he feels every day for you is your fault. I feel conflicted. I do too. I have no idea how to feel right now. You're so conflicted.

Why would you sign to me? I feel like after this, I'm going to wake up with my underwear on backwards. It's crazy. All right. Okay. For the last round, this group of donors kicked in the big bucks,

which means that we're going to team up a little bit, starting with Teresa, who donated 500 bucks for us to roast her ex-brother-in-law Jason I mean brother-in-law who hits on you is the roast I would write here kind of right exactly hard to make up something worse than just yep the actual description kind of a challenge uh yeah okay I got got one. He looks like the CEO of a sunglasses company that only caters to child molesters. Ray-Ban from the mall?

Exactly. Well done, Cecil. He looks like he found a coupon for a free awesome blossom on the floor somewhere. Got really excited. And he thought to himself, alright, well now

is my fucking chance to start an affair by wooing my in-law at Chili's. I'm gonna do this. But first I just gotta finish my shift as the bodyguard for this statue of Robert E. Lee that I stand next to. Oh my gosh, it is. Volunteer shift. We take turns.

Yeah. Oh god, he looks like he spent so goddamn much money on things made from military grade aluminum i cannot imagine the crazy incest drama fantasy wonderland that is this man's imagination like seriously i can't do that because if i could my mind would also be a ruined hellscape of morally bankrupt decisions. There is no actual degree of head trauma that could render me capable of understanding a man who thought hitting on his sister-in-law in writing after a date at fucking Chili's would be a good idea. But then I'm not a guy who unironically wears wraparound sports sunglasses and a baseball cap while also being old enough to gray hair. So I guess Jason is par for the course, so long as the course is predictable, short-lived,

and utterly bereft of redeemable qualities. And also, Jason, that goatee is not okay. The goatee is not okay. You look like you have that goatee is not okay goatee is not okay you look like you have that goatee jason all right taylor donated the thematically appropriate 666 dollars for us to roast his dad david oh god who the fuck wakes up in the morning and says, I want to look exactly like that toxic melting guy from the original Robocop. Or like the guy from Goonies that they kept chained up

fell into that vat that the guy crashed into. Baby Root! Like a crossover. Yeah. He looks like if fucking Ben Grimm had gotten hit by the non-comic book form of radiation instead. That's exactly it. Okay, what I want to emphasize is that

in this picture, he's next to a bulldog, which is all but crossing its fingers and slurring its speech to get away from him. David looks like he was trained to smile by putting a Glade plug-in up his ass. It's a real stiffness there.

I got to talk about what was written here because tough love parenting is just being mean to kids because you have more power than they do. It is a bullshit way to be a shitty parent and then pretend your cruelty is purposeful rather than simply capricious. Parenting isn't at its core all that fucking hard.

Set some reasonable ground rules. Treat people with respect. Demand some fucking respect in return. Recognize kids are little people and not property. And then teach them the skills they need to go out in the world and make their own fucking mistakes. So fuck David and his bullshit tough love. Because none of that is love. None of it is even tough.

It's easy and it's lazy. But I'll say this. What it will do is make it easy for you when david is old and shitty and alone to walk away from him whistling and that won't be tough to do because you will love yourself enough for the both of you oh wow well said sir well said okay how about this one for scott who donated 750 for us to roast his fiance's mother phyllyllis, who looks like she died years ago, but none of the ferrymen can bear her company long enough to get her over the goddamn river,

so her corpse just has to hang around until somebody gets suckered into it. Yeah, the river Styx rejected her on that one. The ferrymen were like, we're from Hades. That's gross. No. Yeah. Phyllis looks like the one ring slowly made Gollum into a super racist soccer mom somehow.

The one Nuovo ring. I just want to talk about the teeth here because the teeth in this photo are life-changingly yellow. I can only assume her dentist used candy corn instead of a bridge at her last appointment. Her teeth drank way too much and they got some jaundice or something, yeah. Phyllis, black tar heroin, a large cup of cough syrup, and a bag of crystal meth is not a balanced breakfast, okay? You are just one sif away from your final form. Yeah, no,

it's like she exists just so that Sif didn't have to be the worst Phyllis. Exactly, exactly. I love it. I read the whole laundry list of depravity and malfeasance that is Phyllis and I'm fucking stunned. Like, I'm stunned is Phyllis and I'm fucking stunned like I'm stunned Phyllis is like a fucking decathlon of wretches there are so many there are so many

human faults here it's almost showing like four decathlons the bullet point list was way more than 10 yeah yeah yeah like I was impressed and a little odd like I'm staring at the screen in front of me and I was nearly speechless nearly Nearly speechless. Takes a little more than that, Phyllis. For all of Phyllis's myriad nearly impossible to imagine personal failings, what strikes me the most is how much so many of her feelings exist for show, for manipulation. And you know this, you are the one that can see this. So I really wanted to wreck this roast to your fiance. You, you are the one that can see this. So I really wanted to wreck this roast to your fiance.

Hey, Scott's fiance. All that shit is an act. It's a fucking show. Your mom is play acting a character and you don't owe that character a goddamn thing. Not one goddamn thing. Phyllis might be your mom, but she's a fucking awful person. And her blood relation to you

does nothing to ameliorate that, which should be actually quite liberating because that means you'd have no obligation to her. None. She is a boil, a cancer, a festering wound. Excise her from your life. Block her number, mark her email as spam, change her mailing address to a P.O. box. Do it all at once on the same day. Scorch the fucking earth behind you and leave her standing alone in the burnt and barren field of her rotten soul and move on without her. The only thing you'll feel is lighter for having done it.

Doesn't work. I tried it with Eli. Yeah, right. They'll figure it out. Stupid. Field boxes are traceable. Read a book. All right.

So next up, Hunter donated $750 for us to roast humanity. You know, the species. Humanity. Humanity is the gifted and talented kid of species, right? We're the only species with language, the written word, technology, and poetry. And yet, somehow, we ended up at the masked singer. I don't know what happened. We had all that masked singer

at the end. I would do this, but humanity is roasting itself just fine. See Australia. Yeah, right. Or Antarctica, quick. Alright, Roast of Humanity. Great pick, Hunter. We like these picks. This is good. First of all,

humanity looks like us. Like the five people on this call. The brochure for humanity might as well be the five of us saying, well, actually, all at the same time. That's what's happening. The humanity coat of arms is an overweight Ouroboros in a MAGA hat just injecting its own tail with crude oil because it's addicted to it and then yelling about how this tail is too fat and it's fucking choking me. What is happening?

But we can't hear that because the tail is too fat and it's choking us. It's so big we can't talk through that. It's like a hump. That is not good. It's sad. Humanity has managed to be the only species to evolve just enough self-awareness to know that we could do better,

that we should do better, and then to still gaze up in wonder at our own demise, wondering why we couldn't have been bothered to be better. Yeah. All right. And last but certainly not least. Oh, no, wait. Least, actually. This one's from Thomas Smith.

So last and least, to make up for who he is, wait. Least, actually. This one's from Thomas Smith. So, last and least, to make up for who he is, he donated a lot of money. He gave us a thousand bucks to roast roasts themselves. Oh, clever but hilarious prank. Aaron Robby stealing Thomas's credit

card. I think you're just acting out because no one's taking your class where you show charts of Heidegger quotes. Graphic Dasein. That's a Heidegger joke. Aaron's going to get it. Don't worry. It's for him. He's losing it right now in Brooklyn. He's loving it.

Graphic Dasein. It's hilarious. It's the being of the being. The other Orthodox Jews are like, what's funny? What's funny? And he's like, no. Get off. Alright. Thomas, Aaronaron whoever this is i'd love to roast roasting but roasting is exactly what's needed when somebody tries to fuck up our thing by getting all meta and trying to trick us with a roast roast whatever so i'm gonna roast roast roasting because roast roasting is stupid and if it were a person it'd be a pseudo intellectual who feels smart for getting just over half the questions right

on a multiple choice fake bar exam during a and uh by the way here's here's the exact words from thomas when he requested this eli do you mind if I read his exact words? Yes, you may. Because I noticed you left it out when you set this up. You didn't put them in. I was busy. You forgot? Okay, cool.

These are the exact words. I would like Eli to roast the concept of roasts and the fact that his true self is so dark, he had to create an entire charity drive just so he could be mean to people and no one can complain because it's for charity. Here's a picture of Eli's true self, in case he's not familiar with it. It's a picture of the eye of Sauron.

So, Eli, go ahead. I mean, the idea that I would create an entire charity drive, let alone five modulated voices just so I could insult people is ridiculous just throwing that out there Tom and Cecil are not actors I pay to pretend to not be me just throwing

nobody accused you of that just so you know exactly thank you and as for roasts roasts used to be a way for Dean Martin and his friends to get away with even more racism than they already were in the 1950s. And now they're what society can do about Justin Bieber instead of an intervention. Well, yeah, no, I was going to go easy on Thomas until I saw that he said, Eli created this charity.

I know attribution doesn't matter as much to a guy who built his podcasting career on Andrew's willingness to do all the homework every week, but still. That being said, after that last segment of Vulgarity for Charity that we did with Thomas on Cognitive Dissonance, I can see why he bears a grudge against roasts, so I'm offering up a roast roast

just like he asked. Roasts are honesty without the guts to be honesty. Except Tom's. They're the lovely assistant waving around some flags of go fuck yourself. Except Tom's. Roasts are a feeble LOL at the end of an insult from a person who wants to seem like they're trying to be nice about it, but doesn't want to seem like they're succeeding. Again, except Tom's. All fair.

Roasts are the only time I'm probably not lying to you. they're succeeding. Again, except Tom's. All fair. Roasts are the only time I'm probably not lying to you. Probably. All right. Well, there are still plenty more names to get to. We have to finish this list before next year's fundraiser at the latest, so I'm sure we'll have more Vulgarity for Charity coming soon. Until then, Tom Cecil, thanks

so much for all your help. Thanks for having us, guys. Thanks so much for having us, guys. Before we return our seats to the upright position this week, I want to thank everybody who came out to see us in L.A. over the weekend. Hasn't actually happened yet, but holy shit, are we statistically all but certain to have had an amazing time. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's hot friend Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and an even new episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd cause undue fear that I'd been kidnapped and replaced with a cybernetic lookalike if I neglected to thank Lucinda Lusions for being the heart to my head.

I need to thank Heath Enright for being the head to my tails, and I need to thank Eli Bosnick for being the tails to my sonic. Also want to thank Heath Enright for being the head to my tails, and I need to thank Eli Bosnick for being the tails to my sonic. I also want to thank Tom and Cecil one more time for hanging out. We literally can't help but have fun every time we get together with those guys. Incidentally, if you haven't checked out the show that we all do together, it's called Citation Needed and Apology Accepted. I also want to thank Jacob from Minnesota for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, and in his email, he's like, hey, I don't have a blog or a podcast to promote or anything, so you think maybe you could use that part of the outro to tell people about Stacey Abrams Fair Fight 2020 campaign to combat voter suppression in swing states? And I'm like, fuck the fuck.

Yeah, I can. So if you want to learn more about that, just Google Fair Fight 2020 or check the show notes for a link. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people. But I can't do it by name because of the whole recording and advanced thing. But don't worry. The compliments we use here at the Scathing Atheist tend to improve with age, so it'll probably be worth the wait. And if you'd like to get your name and compliment in alongside theirs,

you can make a per-episode donation to patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode. Or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but I can go fuck myself if I think I'm getting your money, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review everywhere you can, telling a friend about the show, and following at P-I-A-T-Pod on Twitter. The legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres,

Tim Robinson handles our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAdias.com. All right. So, yeah, Morgan, you can cut all of that. Yeah, cut all that. Straight into this. I'm with you, Morgan.

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