Roy Zimmerman

“Christmas is Pain” and other fun holiday songs

Posted by admin on December 22nd, 2009 | 0 comments

I’m going to be visiting with my family soon, so there may be fewer updates on the site for a while. I’m hoping to sneak in some time online, but if not wish me luck! This will be this first year that I’m out to my wife at Christmas, but no one else knows I’m an atheist. That should make things interesting. We’ll be seeing mostly my immediate family, which is (at least in the past) less in-your-face about religion. My mom seems to be getting more religious as the years go on, and my brother is religious, but not Christian. So I guess we’ll see.

Here are a few holiday tunes from the hilarious and talented singer Roy Zimmerman for your enjoyment. He often treats themes of peace and irreligion in his songs.

  • “Christmas is Pain” looks at both the darker and funnier sides of Christmas (“the 8 tiny reindeer have left an embarassing stain”);
  • “I Won’t Be Home For Christmas” is a take off of the classic “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” (I think the music is actually better in this one than the original, as are the words;
  • “Hula Yule” is about how Christmas will be like after global warming (I wonder if the folks who met in Copenhagen had heard this one);
  • “Buy War Toys For Christmas” is pretty self-explanatory (“Kids are dropping napalm on their Christmas trees / Singing “Happy Happy Birthday” to the Prince of Peace”);
  • and last but not least, the first song I heard of his, Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa wishing us a “real good time…no matter what your race or religion — or lack thereof”.

Whatever you’re doing or not doing for the holidays, have a good one!

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Genesis 21 — EweTube

Posted by admin on January 24th, 2009 | 0 comments
Saturday, January 24, 2009

 Currently
Peacenick
By Roy Zimmerman
Two brothers
see related

Genesis 21 — EweTube

Some more great family fun here, with some ewes thrown in at the end for fun!

Sarah the 90+ year old has a boy, Isaac. She thinks it’s hilarious that she would have a son at her age, as does everyone else. That rascal God, he really knows how to make people laugh.

But Ishmael laughed at his new brother, and Sarah is outraged. Laughing at what God does, okay. Laughing at your younger brother, not okay. Sarah wants rid of Ishmael and his mom. Abraham doesn’t want to kick out his son, but God sides with Sarah on this. God tells Abraham not to worry though, because Ishmael will also become a great nation after you kick him and his mom out.

After their meager supply of water run out (how nice of Abraham to abandon his son and the woman he slept with in the desert without enough water!), Hagar the mom tries to abandon her son to die, but just can’t go through with it. Turns out though that there was actually a well of water there, Hagar just couldn’t see it until God "opened her eyes" (21:19). From then on, God followed Ishmael wherever he’d go, kind of like the My Buddy doll from the 80s, I guess. Ishmael got to be an archer!

The story of Ishmael, Isaac, and the gang, along with some other related anecdotes from the Bible, is related in Roy Zimmerman’s song Two Brothers , which you can see on YouTube.

Speaking of you/ewe, the last part of this chapter is some more business between Abraham and Abimelech, the leader Sarah and Abraham duped in the last chapter. Abimelech makes Abraham promise God won’t pull any more shenanigans on him or his ancestors. There was this dispute about a well of water, but it was nothing that seven female sheep couldn’t clear up. I would have thought five ewe would have sufficed for such a minor matter!

Genesis seems to be obsessed with saying why places and people were named as they were. Beersheba is apparently named because of the oath between Abraham and Abimelech there. To me, it kind of sounds like they had the names for these places and people and then they just made up the stories, kind of like how parents make up stories for little kids when they don’t know why something is the way it is, or how kids just make things up when they don’t understand something.

Nah, that couldn’t be the case!

Update: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible gives a possible explanation of why Ishmael was kicked out. Maybe it was more than just laughing at his brother…
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Roy Zimmerman

Posted by admin on January 16th, 2009 | 0 comments
Friday, January 16, 2009

 Currently
Faulty Intelligence
By Roy Zimmerman
see related

Roy Zimmerman

I have to take a few days off from my blog, but here’s an artist I recently discovered thanks to an American Freethought interview. If you haven’t heard of Roy Zimmerman, I highly recommend you hear of him! He writes "funny songs about ignorance, war, and greed", as his website says. He also includes a lot of religion in there, too.

You can check him out on YouTube , or here’s his website . I used some of my holiday money (well, the person who gave it to me thought it was Christmas money) to buy a couple of his albums. My favorites so far are Creation Science 101, Christmas is Pain, Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa, and Buy War Toys for Christmas. No, all of his songs aren’t about Christmas. I bought one of his Christmas albums, so there’s a sampling bias. But anyway, hope you like it and I’ll post back in a few days.
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