1. Georgia is in severe drought
2. Governor Perdue decides to pray for rain on Tuesday
3. Forecast called for rain Tuesday
4. Prayer service goes ahead as planned
5. Skies completely clear up immediately following prayer service
6. No rain
Maybe God was celebrating Opposite Day!
blackfrancis
speaking of stupidity
caution: myspace can be fatal.
PaulW
God doesn’t love Georgia because of Jimmy Carter.
Which you’d think would have been compensated by Ray Charles, but sadly no. :(
blackfrancis
then why did they get the peaches?
gypsy howell
Funniest news story of the day (Well OK, I guess the Judith Regan story shows real potential to top it)
Maybe God just isn’t that into you, you ignorant rubes.
El Cid
In a tiny degree of balance to the day’s insanity, yesterday’s most prominent guest column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution was an essay by a reverend noting that the entire idea of prayers for rain suggested that a God who was savage, brutal, and cruel, as if God were just sitting around letting people suffer droughts until they figured out how to beg properly for rain. (No comment from me on how that may be exactly the view contained within most of the Bible.)
Notorious P.A.T.
So, what is the deal with prayer? I never got that. Does God not know that Georgia needs rain so someone needs to tell him, or will he only provide rain if someone asks nicely, or does he give people whatever they want if they phrase it correctly, or what?
Michael D.
I’ve lived in Georgia for over 8 years. I’ve never seen a peach tree here.
Jess
Much like many parents–which makes sense if God is the Big Daddy in the sky. I try to be respectful of people’s religious beliefs, but as an atheist I’m constantly having to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out with “Oh grow up!”
Speaking of bursting out, has anyone here checked out the absurd range of boobie novelties being debated over at Shakespeare’s Sister? I’ve been enjoying the spectacular demostration of the symbiotic relationship between xy and xx silliness. And I’ve also been thinking about how much I appreciate the humor and good sense of y’all here at Balloon Juice in contrast to a lot of what’s out the on both the left and the right. :-)
Jess
demostration = demonstration
the = there
must get coffee…
Cyrus
This seems familiar.
cleek
in the words of the late, bearded, Jim Morrison:
You Cannot Petition The Lord With Prayer!
Tom Shipley
Boy, this is serious. They’re going to have to start giving up their first-born sons.
Bob In Pacifica
I always figured that if God existed he’d behave better than a five year-old in the backyard, using a magnifying glass on a colony of ants.
Punchy
Fuckin christ is that depressing. I cant believe I have to start my day thinking of that. Damn.
Johnny Pez
Taggert: I know! We’ll kill the firstborn male child in every family!
LaMarr: No, too Jewish.
Zifnab
I eagerly await for someone to perform an Indian Rain Dance and proceed to get results. Then get tarred, feathered, and burned at the stake.
Although, this all does beg the question: How incompetent do you have to be as a Governor of your state when praying for rain on a rain day gets you dry weather?
I think someone needs to check on Gov. Perdue’s Mandate From Heaven, as it may have expired.
cleek
i think it’s supposed to rain overnight tonight in Atlanta.
i suppose that’s solid proof of god’s existence – or at least it will be in upcoming wingnut chain emails.
Buck
Man, you gotta get out of the city from time to time.
They are here but even though Georgia is the Peach State South Carolina produces more peaches.
Ever seen that huge peach on I-85 that looks like an ass?
Now that Sonny has prayed for rain reckon the Lord can do anything about traffic relief?
Xenos
Desmond Morris got it right in The Naked Ape exactly 40 years ago: the supplication, the bowing, the scraping and the group vocalizations come directly from basic primate systems of declaring submission to an alpha male. It is similar to a scared dog rolling onto its back. At times of stress this sort of exercise is a tremendous relief and a personal and community level. It bypasses all cultural issues and operates in a fundamental way on our psyches.
It is a lousy technique for controlling the weather, though.
Bombadil
They cut them all down to build all the roads — which they then named Peachtree Street, Peachtree Road, Peachtree Boulevard, Peachtree Lane….
jnfr
Nature bats last.
Jen
Why do they always believe when natural disasters happen it’s because they haven’t been mean enough to gay people or something? Is there some way to make them believe it’s because they voted for Bush?
demimondian
Jess —
Praying for rain is a much more complicated thing than you make it out to be. First of all, a prayer is always answered and granted — but not necessarily in the way you intended. If, for instance, you pray for rain, and the rain doesn’t come immediately, and, as a result, you attack the underlying global climate change issues which were causing the drought…then the rain will come, and, as a bonus, other problems will get fixed, too.
But, but, but — why didn’t He help? People are suffering!
Well, yes, they are. But people suffer all the time, and surely the pains of the dying outweigh the discomfort of the people of Atlanta, and nothing keeps people from dying. Sometimes, prayers for the dying are answered by their deaths, and the end of their suffering, after all.
In this case, had He brought rain, then people would have had a perfect excuse to ignore the real problem causing the drought. Under those circumstances, I’m not entirely willing to claim that the clearing of the sky wasn’t a miraculous response to the prayer for rain, in the same sense that I might say to one of my kids “You know what you need to do to fix it, and your short-term embarrassment isn’t going to do you any permanent harm. Go fix the basic problem, and the other symptoms will take care of themselves.”
The Other Steve
There’s much that is sad about that story.
Hard to believe parents would do something like that, but then it seems to be a part of decadent southern culture.
Bill H.
even though Georgia is the Peach State South Carolina produces more peaches.
So does Utah which claims, in fact, to be #1 in the country.
Zifnab
That’s more due to the Peach polygamy, and so its hardly a fair comparison.
Mr Furious
Opposite Day. Hilarious. If you have a five year old, you know from where I speak.
grumpy realist
I went to Australia for a camel safari once. Called up and asked whether I needed to bring an umbrella. Much chuckling at other end of line; that they had already had 2 years of drought; that the average amount of rain was only 7 inches a year, no, no problem.
So I show up, drought breaks, one year’s worth of rain falls in one week. (Leading to tons of people getting stranded in the Outback, having to have food air-lifted in, and all that, but that’s another story.)
Maybe I can get Georgia to hire me to come visit?
Mr Furious
Ugh, blackfrancis. Thanks for that…
My daughters will NEVER be doing that shit.
Mr Furious
RE: blackfrancis’ link: Seriously. Hell ain’t hot enough for that fucking family down the street.
Cinderella Ferret
Oh yes She is! And she’s got a strap-on. But it’s going to be difficult for Her to kiss anyone while she’s got them bent over. She’s just not into them the way they might prefer.
It’s raining, its pouring, la la la la la la …
chopper
makes me wish there was a hell.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Sadly, this is only a problem that’s going to get worse in the South and Southwest as the population grows. We’re pumping water faster than it can be replenished just to keep our goddamned lawns green.
We need a serious regional water plan 15 years ago. Larger cities like San Antonio are sucking up water from three to four counties away; any serious attempts to build new reservoirs are derailed by anti-tax advocates who are more than happy to destroy their community’s future in exchange for not having to pay an extra 10 cents in property taxes; and most of the climate models I’ve seen indicate that the problem is only going to get worse.
We need to do away with unlimited capture, we need to build reservoirs to supplement the groundwater in the aquifers, and it needs to happen immediately.
crack
This is God punishing Pat Robertson for endorsing Rudy.
jcricket
Moving to the country, gonna eat me a lot of peaches…
I don’t envy Georgia right now, with the water shortages. But it’s clearly a preview of what everyone living downstream of Colorado (the Southwest) is in store for, if not a majority of the south across the nation.
For people with “conserve” at the beginning of their so-called political beliefs, Republicans sure suck at it.
The Republican governor of Colorado basically led the revolt against TABOR once he realized it was crippling government from doing what it needed to. I suspect Republican officials in drought areas will end up doing the same with conservation measures. I’m also sure Republicans will resist conservation measures until they look absolutely stupid (at which point they will claim it was their idea all along).
Yet again, Republicans will go down on the wrong side of history – opposing the right thing to do until the bitter end because it might force them to admit the world is a place we have to care for and about to keep it livable.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Re: the MySpace story.
I read that the other day, and something about it is pinging my ain’t-right meter. I don’t know if it’s the manner in which the story is written or what, but I get the feeling it’s not on the up-and-up.
Dreggas
Maybe someone should remind Perdue about what happened the LAST TIME God sent rain…
capelza
Grumpy Code Monkey…
You could be right, but I’m telling you, there are some sick “adults” that like to fuck with dumb kids on My-Space.
There is a band that has a following, adults and then the young girls especially because the lead singer is super hot. Some of the these adults take it upon themsleves to ferret out these my-space accounts and then post them on the band’s forum and then proceed to pick the person with the my-space account apart, including accounts set to private. Ridiculing them in horrible ways.
They will work hard to become “friends” with the account user so they can get access to the account and then post screen caps and things the person has said. They also do this with live-journal, etc.
The people that do do this say they are justified to root out “fan girls” or “biscuits” as they sometimes call them.
And these are supposed adults…going after teemagers.
Myspace is probably a good thing, but thit is also just nasty at times. I have an account and a very empty page because with it’s impact even people as varied as Oliver Stone and A band that recreates ancinet Greek music are on it.
People are destructive and cruel…
Dreggas
Shit I’ve known adults who do this shit to other adults. They sign up on freaking dating sites as some “hot guy” and then fuck with women they don’t like.
Zifnab
Austin has been very aggressive in preserving its aquifers and groundwater from everything from rampant illegal dumping to Big Box retailers who want to drop giant buildings on top of major absorption points. It’ll be interesting to see the town blossom in the desert when the rest of Texas shrivels up like a raisin in the sun.
Punchy
Sacrifice a damn virgin and get it over with. I realize, being Georgia, those will be impossible to find, so maybe they’ll have to import one from elsewhere.
Bubblegum Tate
This just further supports my theory that god has a fantastic–if a bit dark–sense of humor.
ThymeZone
Corrected for both historical and theological accuracy.
ThymeZone
It’s skillful manipulation. If you tell people to pray, and the thing they pray for happens, nothing will ever convince them that the prayer wasn’t the reason.
Since sooner or later the prayed for thing is going to happen at least part of the time, it’s a guaranteed mechanism for creating believers.
Prayer works … just not in the advertised way.
jcricket
They’re called “Griefers”, and they plague all kinds of online forums, social networking sites, etc. People who just love to “fuck with others” because they’re on sad lives are, well, pathetic.
Much worse than trolls (anyone old enough to actually remember when trolling, a la Kibo, was an art? Not just being an asshole.)
cleek
and when i die
i expect to find him
laaaahhhhffffing
not to start any blasphemous rumours, of course
demimondian
Yeah, but in that song, she fails to kill herself. (Of course, her ultimate fate is fate worse, but, hey…)
Ned Raggett
Just so long as you’re not singing it in the way that the one audience member is in 101. No tone control on that one…
slippytoad
Hah. Schadenfreude is a bitch, but it really is funny to see what an embarrassing jackass Perdue just made of himself.
Geoduck
(Points and laughs.)
Skullhead
6. No rain
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Wrong god, you idiots. Now you die!
Psycheout
Of course you’re celebrating it. The “tolerant” left, folks. They love it when people suffer.
Michael D.
See? Even Psycheout is celebrating Opposite Day!
Z
Maybe God is punishing Georgia for not allowing gay marraige.
jcricket
No, it doesn’t work this way. God always wants conservatives to win, and liberals to lose, because the liberals don’t thank him during their acceptance speeches.
Just like how NFL players always thank God for helping them win, but never blame him when they lose, or argue that God wanted the other team to lose.
Zifnab
And the correct religion was….
The Mormons.
Sorry. Thanks for playing. Try again next creation. I wish you all the best of luck. (Ok, Big Red, they’re all yours.)
dbrown
A true Christian would not pray to alleviate his own suffering but would pray that God would show Osama bin Laden that the true Christians of Georgia wish for his good health and happiness; or to paraphrase Christ – Love your enemy. I, prefer let India nuke them and then let God sort it out but I am not a True Christian.
wayward
More importantly, you can only get Peaches AND Fireworks in South Carolina.
ConservativelyLiberal
This prayer session makes me think of the leaders in medieval times calling on their God (or Gods) to end some famine, drought, flooding or whatever catastrophe that confronted them, and of course it not working.
Today, most intelligent people know the causes of these disasters, and in knowing we shake our heads at the attempts to end the disaster with prayer (or sacrifice). Especially when they caused the disaster themselves (Black Plague, for example).
I look at our world like a giant hamster cage. The inhabitants live in it, root around in it, dump their waste in it and die in it. Even though the hamsters consider themselves intelligent, their leaders refuse to clean up the cage. They just sweep it under this rug or that rug. Out of sight, out of mind. Never considering that they may be their own worst enemy.
One day, this planet is going to dump the hamsters like a bad habit.
jcricket
Can we all commit to memory the great Emo Phillips routine about religion?
PatricioMas
Obviously, South Carolina is behind the times — fireworks are now legal in Georgia.
::sigh:: Gotta love Sonny Purdue. How the man earned his veterinary license, I’ll never know. (nor why so many voted for him)
Dreggas
I think God got the message but the Delivery guy fucked up
Seriously, Bangladesh is fucked.
demimondian
What’s happening to Bangladesh is beyond tragic. Dreggas, within 13 hours of the storm’s landfall, there will be tens of thousands of peasants dead — and possibly hundreds of thousands. If it makes landfall as a Cat 4, as is currently predicted, it’s going to be a catastrophe on a par with the tsunami two years ago.
Dreggas
I know and there hasn’t been a single story in the MSM about it.
ConservativelyLiberal
Of course not! After all, O.J. is all the rage now. Who cares about people that may be suffering and dying soon that are off in some foreign land? What happens to O.J. is critical to my life!
Death and suffering have been the standard in Iraq for years now and nobody seems to care much about that either. I need to go shopping, I have a war to support!
/snark
Dreggas
CL,
People will start caring once it’s a photo-op to be shown caring and while that was snark it’s sad that it’s so true.
Notorious P.A.T.
Hamsters are actually very clean animals. And they store excess resources for the future instead of squandering them, and they only fight as an absolute last resort. Three ways that a hamster is better than the current administration.
It’s skillful manipulation. If you tell people to pray, and the thing they pray for happens, nothing will ever convince them that the prayer wasn’t the reason.
Since sooner or later the prayed for thing is going to happen at least part of the time, it’s a guaranteed mechanism for creating believers.
Sounds like B.F. Skinner’s formula for operant conditioning. If you reward the animal every time it does what you want, it reinforces that behavior. If you reward the animal some of the time, however, it reinforces much more strongly.
ConservativelyLiberal
Tell me how clean they are…lol! Right. That is why I had to clean the kids hamster cage out, because it was so clean already?
ROFL!
Maybe hamsters are clean critters in the wild, but as far as a closed environment goes, I think they are still having problems recycling their own waste. I know our was!
Also, there is the issue of no forest in the cage, nor hamster sized wood chipper…lol!
Psycheout
And the rain comes. My prayers have been answered. You’re welcome, Georgia.