i went back and read your original post.

you weren't joking - your intentions were perfectly clear

you called the story: "Broadsheet's vote for feel-good story of the holiday season!"

ended with: "Isn't it nice to know that with or without a judge and jury, the universe takes care of karmic justice?"

So why don't you just ... "own it" as they say, rather than throw up that lame-ass apology?

I mean, I'm a man and I wish I had thought of making videos of drunk girls to show their tits. (for the record, i've never watched one of these videos) But I thought the story of his abduction was kind of funny, in a perverse way.

I did not know he was charged with filming minors and possibly giving them drugs.

His kidnapper did not pick him by accident. The asshole lives in that world. They are high-risk players and the stakes can be high. Both Francis and his kidnapper are the kinds of people who inhabit it. Sleaze indeed.

It was karmic justice. Let it be.

Don't apologize.

Puh-leeeze ...

You want their maiden names or their married names?

Oh wait ... I forgot ... enlightened women want a guy who can share his feelings and has a sense of humor and is kind to animals ...

In all honesty, my ex-wife did marry me for love. I've had a couple of serious relationships where my financial status was not an issue. But I have seen many women go for the bank account ... to the extent of marrying deeply or somewhat closeted gay men.

Money and power ... the primary attractors ... check out a site called "Intellectual Whores" - great insight into the reality of female mating urges.

If a guy is pursuing a woman for her paycheck, most likely he is gay.

Straight men don't give a shit.

Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" was a huge influence on early hip-hop. Their music has informed all electronic/pop/hip hop music to follow in the past 30 years.

Not sure what Beach Boys song I would pick. Good Vibrations is the obvious, but their real impact was earlier in the decade. But they are way more important than the White Stripes.

Self-obsessed, personality-disordered, dogmatic ... oh I could go on.

And these are not really vegans, but vegetarians.

The vegans are worse.

Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian.

Time for lamb stew!

There is plenty of evidence on the web that he WAS a vegetarian.

There is only one reason to not eat meat: one doesn't like the taste of it. All the other reasons are plain and simple bullshit. Please keep your religion to yourself.

And since when did meat eater = right winger?

What a load of bollocks.

You pussy-ass vegetarians have ruined liberalism and the Democratic Party with your bullshit.

I think I'll have a big juicy lambchop for dinner.

One last thought: you know that vegetables have feelings and can scream, too, don't you? How can you possibly justify vegetable murder? You savage vegetarian murderers!!!

The existence of God is not a matter of belief, not even one of faith. Interpretations and the dumbed-down diminishment of God (Allah is Great; Jesus is Lord; Jesus is not Lord) through organized religion is a matter of belief and faith; organized religion always exists in the human realm, the material, the political, not in that of the spirit, unfortunately, and is therefore subject to all of our failings.

Add to the list what I call the No-God Belief System, atheism, evangelical atheism. Conceived by man, touted by men of intellect and reason (so they claim), its adherents scream "But it's a fact!" [That there is no God]

No one can prove there is no God.

I mean, we all know you can easily prove the Christians, Moslems, Jews are hypocritical and often use their respective scriptures to justify the most barbaric acts, but that has nothing to do with the existence of God. That shit would happen anyway - it just makes it easier if you have your God on your side.

But you cannot prove there is no God. You can prove your heart is shut off to God, that your mind or your ego cannot allow in the ramifications of the existence of God, but that does not mean God does not exist.

So evangelical atheists suffer from the same close-mindedness, the same contempt for experience beyond their own, the same evangelical impulses they so decry in others, as any of the religions whose hypocrisy/irrationality they hold up as proof of their own belief system.

Sorry, boys. But thanks for trying to set things straight.

The good news: God loves you no matter what.

Another bonehead intellectual with a closed mind whose ego will not allow him to consider that there might be a limit to what his own brain can encompass,

Because anything outside their own experience is "supernatural," members of the church of atheism put such labels on the experiences and knowledge of others.

Why do these evangelists feel compelled to spout off about this universe of reason - every secret of which they will someday master - in which they dwell? I find it really boring and small.

Atheism is the church of the no-god belief system. They proclaim,"It's a FACT!" Just like other religious fanatics proclaim the facts of Jesus or Allah or the golden tablets or what or whomever.

But it isn't a fact. They want it to be a fact. They believe it is a fact. But you cannot prove there is no God, whatever label or word you want to use for God. Perhaps we have such cells in our brains so that we can always tap into the truth of the matter, should we so desire.

I know some fine, upstanding human beings who describe themselves as atheists. Good people. I don't care. It's fine if they want to belong to that church.

But why do we have to hear about it every week here?