Mr Deity and Death : Pharyngula

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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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Mr Deity and Death

Category: Godlessness • Humor
Posted on: November 10, 2009 6:39 PM, by PZ Myers

It can't be that bad a job, can it?

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Comments

Posted by: Zeno | November 10, 2009 6:48 PM

Oops! There goes Seattle. (Why do people keep destroying Seattle? Heinlein had it as a blasted nuclear attack site in Friday.)

Posted by: Glen Davidson | November 10, 2009 6:53 PM

I see how god manages to avoid taking responsibility for endless destruction and death, he just delegates it to some whiny dude.

Must be why he invented malaria, a la Behe.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: Yossarian | November 10, 2009 7:07 PM

It's nice to see that Death shares the same taste in shirts as I do.

Posted by: CJO | November 10, 2009 7:11 PM

Why do people keep destroying Seattle?

A. Starbucks
B. The Discovery Institute
C. Microsoft
D. All of the above

Posted by: Sili | November 10, 2009 7:17 PM

Poor Death.

Someone should send him a little something as a show of appreciation.

Posted by: Alverant | November 10, 2009 7:31 PM

I found it amusing. Not Edward Currant, laugh out loud funny, just amusing. I liked the idea of Death hating his job and how Mr.Deity just not caring. It was like a cosmic version of Dilbert.

Did anyone else get a creationism pop-up when the video started? Why do they always do that? We should get in on that action.

Posted by: Twisted_Colour | November 10, 2009 7:38 PM

Hey PZ,

Why didn't you get an invite to this - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091110/ap_on_sc/eu_vatican_aliens - ???

Posted by: Craig | November 10, 2009 7:42 PM

Seriously, if we want to see Mr Deity, I think we've signed up for his channel.

Posted by: The Science Pundit | November 10, 2009 7:43 PM

I would think that earthquakes in Seattle should portend a Mount Rainier eruption. Death would be really busy in that case.

#10

Posted by: pixelfish | November 10, 2009 7:47 PM

Not Seattle! We're at the epicenter!

CJO: Destroying Seattle won't do anything about Microsoft which is in REDMOND! You have to cross a bridge to get there unless you go the long way around. But you could, feasibly, take out the Discovery folks with an appropriately shifty temblor. I'd be against that though, since I live in an apartment building downtown.

#11

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | November 10, 2009 7:50 PM

"I thought your proctologist took care of that" hee

#12

Posted by: Katrina | November 10, 2009 8:20 PM

The best part for me, sitting across the sound from Seattle, was that it was raining REALLY HARD when Mr. Deity said it was raining cats and dogs.

BTW, it seems Donohue is highly offended at the movie 2012 because only Catholic buildings were destroyed. Fatwa envy strikes again. Unfortunately, the only link I can find about it leads to Huffpo. Anyone else?

#13

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | November 10, 2009 8:32 PM

Why do people keep destroying Seattle?

It must have something in common with Tokyo.

#14

Posted by: Ray Mills | November 10, 2009 8:48 PM

James Herbert keeps destroying London, He's had it overrun with flesheating hive mind rats with no fear of humans, wiped out by nuclear war started over war in afghanistan involving oil then what survivors there were were again attacked by the above rats, again, and in'48 his alternative history novel it and most of the rest of the world were lost to a nazi created virus which killed everyone who wasn't a particulat blood type.

#15

Posted by: m-ms09 | November 10, 2009 9:17 PM

Oh Mr. Deity!
Who the heck put him in charge, anyways?

#16

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | November 10, 2009 9:18 PM

Why do people keep destroying Seattle?

Yeah, nobody ever zaps 800 Grand in Des Moines with their space death laser. I'm totally offended.

#17

Posted by: Tex | November 10, 2009 9:26 PM

The best part for me, sitting across the sound from Seattle, was that it was raining REALLY HARD when Mr. Deity said it was raining cats and dogs.

Yeah, Mr. Deity must be real, 'cause what are the chances of that particular coincident in Pacific Northwest?

Probably the same as a 300 amino acid protein evolving.

#18

Posted by: Lorence | November 10, 2009 9:41 PM

OMFSM!!! "Could be worse, could raining." My favorite line from my favorite movie! I was 15 when I heard/saw Marty Feldman utter those lines while watching Young Frankenstein at a drive-in, and so much made sense - it's been a life philosophy for me since!

Thank you Mr Deity!

#19

Posted by: Katrina | November 10, 2009 9:43 PM

@Tex:

Actually, my point was that it was *unusual* rain for the PNW. It doesn't usually rain as hard as it was at that time. Coincidence? Of course, but a neat addition to the plot, I felt.

#20

Posted by: mk | November 10, 2009 10:01 PM

Sorry this is off topic PZ, and maybe someone has already brought it to your attention... but just in case thought you should know:

From "Devil's Tower" over at Daily Kos...

Just reading the first two paragraphs [of PZ's review]
Makes me believe he didn't read the book.

Armstrong never makes the arguments that he claims about "accepting Jesus into your heart" or points to the fundamentalists as "evidence that God is alive."

This is such a basic and complete misread of the book -- in fact, so antithetical to the whole point of the book -- that it's hard to believe he even skimmed the jacket.

by Devilstower on Sun Nov 08, 2009 at 07:47:15 AM PST

#21

Posted by: recovering catholic | November 10, 2009 10:03 PM

Brian Dalton is really cute. Yeah, shallow and sexist of me.

#22

Posted by: Hypatia's Daughter | November 10, 2009 10:03 PM

Speaking of ways to die....I expect Pharyngulites should especially love this: Death on a Plate

#23

Posted by: geoff | November 10, 2009 10:49 PM

Off topic but had to share:

"The Pope is putting out a Christmas album. And just like that, Lady Gaga has the second weirdest wardrobe in music."
- Tim Siedell via Twitter

#24

Posted by: Maria | November 10, 2009 11:35 PM

Is it just my computer, or is there a deep bass rumbling in this video?

#25

Posted by: Revyloution | November 11, 2009 12:11 AM

Katrina, I think Bill Donahue is suffering from confirmation bias. In the teaser trailers, they show a Buddhist Monk in some sort of mountain top templet. It gets pwned by a huge ass wave. Last I checked, Buddhists aren't Catholic.

Again, Donohuefail. It boggles the mind how he thinks the world revolves around him, and his infallible pajama wearing Nazi. (I had to throw in Nazi, just to confirm Godwin's law)

#26

Posted by: echidna | November 11, 2009 1:11 AM

Much as I am loathe to come to the defense of Ratzi, I cringe a little each time someone refers to him as a Nazi as if being part of the Hitler Jugend was equivalent. The insult is applicable not just to Ratzi, but to a whole generation of Austrian and German boys. Any appropriately-aged boy who was deemed fit enough to not be sent to a concentration camp was part of the Hitler Youth movement. When you consider that this signified health and fitness (on all sorts of levels), many boys were of course proud and enthusiastic as well, at least at the time.

To disparage Ratzi for something over which he had no control is unfair, (even though being a child in Nazi Germany may well have screwed up his moral compass).

Ratzi has done many things as an adult which deserve condemnation, and are not an automatically insult to an entire swathe of people. The most egregious of these in my eyes would be constructing the policy that provides for the protection of pedophiles in the Catholic Church.

#27

Posted by: Brian | November 11, 2009 1:23 AM

CJO@4: For decades now I've been saying, "Between Microsoft and Starbucks, it's a wonder that the rest of the world doesn't just nuke us off the face of the earth." And in the last couple of years I've been adding in the Discovery Institute.

Maria@24: That sound is in most of the Mr. Deity videos. It's the sound of the emptiness of deep space.

#28

Posted by: Krystalline Apostate | November 11, 2009 1:47 AM

I rather liked it that Death wore an Hawaiian shirt.

#29

Posted by: Jennifer | November 11, 2009 3:23 AM

The line "Could be worse -- could be raining," wasn't original to Mel Brooks. I just read it the other day in the memoirs of William Slim, a general in the Indian Army who said it in the middle of a disastrous retreat through steaming jungles.

Sure enough, within hours, it was raining...

Oh yeah, all hail Mr. Deity! The jerk. I wonder that Death's problem isn't heart failure, since he has to be halfway across the planet every two seconds. Kinda like Santa Claus.

#30

Posted by: windy | November 11, 2009 4:10 AM

Maybe I'm just weird, but I think Mr Deity and SMBC should do a crossover.

#31

Posted by: Carlie | November 11, 2009 5:41 AM

I wonder that Death's problem isn't heart failure, since he has to be halfway across the planet every two seconds. Kinda like Santa Claus.

Well, he did do a pretty good as a stand-in...

#32

Posted by: Richard Eis | November 11, 2009 6:21 AM

Arghhhhh what have they done with the artwork from the front of all the Pratchett books!!!!!

You, you... americans!!!! how could you.

#33

Posted by: Rewarp | November 11, 2009 7:45 AM

What a horrible cover. Proof of the non-existence of an intelligent designer.

#34

Posted by: Richard Eis | November 11, 2009 8:03 AM

-What a horrible cover. Proof of the non-existence of an intelligent designer.-

Or the existence of an unintelligent (and frankly unimaginitive) designer.

#35

Posted by: Norbert Burghart | November 11, 2009 8:18 AM

@KAtharina (#12):
Here is the "original Link" concerning Bill D.:
http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1710

#36

Posted by: Richard Eis | November 11, 2009 8:54 AM

Donohue fails to see that self-censorship of this nature is actually a form of racism. It is NOT a compliment and it is going to badly bite islam in the ass.

#37

Posted by: Wisunka | November 11, 2009 8:55 AM

I appreciate it when you post a good Mr. Deity. He's a hoot. He's also amazingly right - famine, flood, ALS, earthquakes, birth defects and people still believe. Amazing! I thought this was nonsense when I was only about 7 or 8. If a kid can see through the BS, why can't adults?

#38

Posted by: Stephen P | November 11, 2009 9:20 AM

@Jennifer: is that the same general who said that all battles were fought on a steep hillside in the pouring rain at the point where four maps meet?

#39

Posted by: rawnaeris | November 11, 2009 10:46 AM

@ #22 Hypatia's Daughter, According to my father, the fried bacon there is quite good...

But then he's a strange old man...

#40

Posted by: rawnaeris | November 11, 2009 10:46 AM

@ #22 Hypatia's Daughter, According to my father, the fried bacon there is quite good...

But then he's a strange old man...

#41