Jessica Ahlquist: A Class Act

Right now, the biggest buzz in atheist communities is the huge amount of threats that have been made against Jessica Ahlquist, a 16-year-old girl that spoke out against her high school's endorsement of a particular religion in Cranston, Rhode Island. Cranston High School sported a banner depicting a Christian prayer that began with "Our Heavenly Father" and ended with "Amen," removing any ambiguity over its intent.Originally, Ahlquist had asked the school board to take it down, because its endorsement of religion was illegal under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Tax payer dollars cannot go towards the endorsement of any religion. They refused. Jessica attempted again, and the board was obstinate in their refusal. She told the school they don't have the money to fight a court case about it, and that she didn't want to cost the school money this way, but what they were doing was illegal. Again, refusal to budge.

Ahlquist then filed a suit to have it taken down, and the obvious decision by the judge was that the banner must be removed. Despite the school insisting that the prayer was a secular holdover from the school's founding, pretty much everyone that spoke in favor of keeping the banner up made their case in an overtly Christian manner. It's almost facepalm worthy. Examples and a continuation of the story below the break:

Weekly D&D Encounters Recap #1: The Jolly Green Giant and his fucking spears...

I'm going to do a weekly thing here on this blog where I'll talk about my weekly Dungeons & Dragons Encounters game. A sort of humorous, fun thing to do to contrast with the majority of posts that will be made here, which will be more serious in tone.
So, some background on my group: Yes, Encounters is in Fourth Edition. For anyone who doesn't know, Encounters is a weekly game that follows a set module of story for each group to follow, where they reacha  certain point in the plot each week. Every week features at least one piece of combat, and points called Renown are tracked based on how players perform in the game. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of 4E, but it's what I can fit into my schedule, so I play it. I play at a card and board game shop in the next town over called Yottaquest. Awesome place. In this season, our party is kind of small. This is because we had so many people wanting to play (About 10) that we had to split our group into to separate games that occur simultaneously.
My character is a Leader character introduced this season called a Skald, a bardic-type character. I decided that I would roleplay even more this session by bringing in my acoustic guitar, for mood music to accompany the Dungeon Master giving exposition. To catch you guys up on the story, our group was tasked to find a Fey girl named Juliana, and a human named Orlando. Romeo & Juliet imagery, parents at odds, etc. We go looking for them in this Crystal Cave thing, end up crossing some dimensional rift into the Fey Wilds. We find Juliana, and it turns out Juliana and Orlando have some sort of Oversoul reincarnation nonsense involving the sovereigns of the Fey Wilds. Some old witch was previously banished from the Wilds and came back to absorb their Oversoul things and... Take over the Wilds. (Insert M. Bison "Of Course!" Here) So we gotta stop the old hag, but she absorbed Juliana's soul-thing already, so we have to save protect Orlando. We sided with a powerful Fey named Uma, and went off to find the guy. He was seduced by some dryad, who then gave him over to a treant (walking-talking tree) named Oakstaff. Our group continued to call him Treebeard, and for some reason our DM voiced him as a hilariously bad Sean Connery. He took Orlando to some water palace, we fought a pixie on a lake, and then this week's encounter took place.
/wall of exposition.
So, our encounter began with my setting the mood with an amatuerish attempt at the song "Peaceful Waters" from Elder Scrolls 3 by me. Not as artful as I would have liked, but it set the tone. We entered the Water Palace and found Orlando under a trap door in the banquet hall. Bastard came out swinging a rapier likea madman! Anyway, we calmed him down, only to find out the idiot can't tell the difference between himself and his Oversoul Incarnate guy. I think he was named Profero or something. We try to pump him for information, anything to help us beat the hag, but the guy is clueless.
Then, out of nowhere, a tall, green, slender giant wielding a spear and a shield entered the banquet hall. I stopped the music to exclaim, "It's the Jolly Green Giant!" to the amusement of the party. We found out through rolling some knowledge checks (I think Arcana) that his particular race of giants was tricksome and enjoyed games. Turns out he was hired to kill Orlando by some other Fey lord, so we challenged him to a fight with some conditions, with Orlando as the prize.
1. All movement must be performed by jumping (DC 10 Athletics check for one square with an additional 10 added to the DC for each additional square.)
2. First unconscious or to yield loses, no killing blows.
3. Orlando was a non-combatant.
4. An ally could break the jumping rule to help a downed ally, but that person could not attack the giant during that turn.
The fight ensued, with my party getting pretty soundly trounced, but we were able to damage the giant enough to make him yield. By the way, the giant FUCKING CHEATED. He had an ability that let him jump up to his movement speed or something, meaning the rule only affected us in reality. A human bard, a dwarf ranger, a half-orc barbarian, and a pixie paladin (Yes, our tank is a pint-sized pixie in full-plate. Hilarious when you think about it.) just were not prepared for this fight. We got really lucky though. The thing is, the giant had this thing with his spear where he could attack THREE. FUCKING. TARGETS. In one attack. Or stab one target multiple times. With a max of 17 damage on each attack, of course my DM had to hit a string of crits and roll max damage a lot. I was not kidding about geting soundly trounced. Fucker hit us bad.
Well, that was this week. I know the actual recap wasn't long, but I had to type the whole backstory stuff, so I didn't want to type more. The adventure continues next week!

Seriously, Reddit, WTF?

So I'm a pretty avid Redditor, as in I frequent the website reddit.com pretty much every day. From the subreddits r/politics to r/atheism, r/ f7u12 and even r/skyrim, it's where I spend a significant portion of my time. I read a lot of the articles posted, I mostly lurk. I'll rarely comment, and I've never posted anything. However, it has come to my attention that a serious scandal has gone down in r/atheism recently.
I just do not know how I missed this one. I did not even know about it until I had read some posts over at freethoughtblogs.com, where bloggers there expressed the same feelings I have right now. I'm livid at the atheist and skeptic community of reddit, or at the very least those that said these horribly disgusting, degrading things.
The gist of the story is that a young girl of about fifteen posted a picture of herself with a copy of Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World." Perfectly reasonable, it was a Christmas present, and she wanted to show the atheist community of reddit that she was very happy with the present, that she considered herself a part of the community. The men of r/atheism proceeded to make comments about abducting and raping the girl, making disgusting comments telling the girl to "relax her anus," that "blood is nature's lubricant," and "15 is the legal age in my country so I only have to worry about the abduction charges."
This shit is fucking heinous. Despicable. A blight on the atheist community everywhere. Seriously, do we really have sick assholes like this? I'm ashamed to even be a redditor right now. This is a fifteen year old girl. She's only three years younger than me, and this shit is still appalling to me. How the hell do you make such sick comments to a young girl like that? I would think that guys would have the common fucking decency to refrain from such garbage, at least in a community I count myself a part of. Even if you have thoughts like that, why give voice to them?
R/atheism is going to have to rebuild its image because of a few sick fucks. They've been doing great, raising money for Doctors Without Borders and such. Now everyone is pissed with them, and I do not blame them in the slightest. This is not Elevatorgate, where a famous blogger was quasi-propositioned by a creepy guy in an elevator at, like, 2 AM. This is a group of men telling an underaged girl they would kidnap and rape her! I do not care if it's over the Internet, it's fucking deplorable.
Just had to vent on this. It is indefensible.

Introductions and Privilege: What is the Deadbeat?

Hello, those who would wish to read the writings of the Deadbeat. I come to you after a long time of thinking, sitting in a small room with an old laptop. I have tried the blogging thing once or twice, even done audio logs on a YouTube channel. However, I feel that I need something like this now more than ever. I need an outlet, a platform from which to shout my thoughts, feelings, and conclusions to the world. I believe this blog will be my best shot. Perhaps I will be able to garner a following, or just a few people who pop by here and there. It matters little to me, now I want to speak.
I'm sure some are curious as to my moniker. Why would I call myself a deadbeat? It's such a negative thing, a do-nothing loser that contributes nothing to society. Well, it springs somewhat from my feelings of inferiority, ones I have grappled with since a young age. It also stems from the feelings of helplessness that come from being a young man with almost no input on how society is run. I've felt like a loser because there has been nothing I could do but be a spectator as other people run the show. However, I've been trying to turn the title into a positive thing for myself now. I include the word in my XBOX Live Gamertag and my YouTube channel name. I incorporate the idea of a deadbeat into my persona, but try to not make it negative. I'm sure that makes no sense what-so-ever, and seems like a cop-out for laziness. I'm not trying to be lazy, I'm just trying to turn my negative emotions into a positive identity.
The other place my identification with a deadbeat comes from is my willingness to admit that I have privileges that others lack. Privileges I have no problems admitting to having, but still feel bad for having them when others do not. I am a white male in the Mid West of the United States. That means that, despite the fact that I come from a high school of little note within the Greater Cincinnati area, I have an advantage over the black students in that same school in terms of opportunities, and more than half of my school's population is African American. I also have advantages in terms of future wages and other issues over women, even if those are saddled with male stereotypes as well. I may come from a lower-middle class family, but I still have a computer like this old laptop and a cell phone, in addition to video games. A lot of kids do not have that. My parent's are divorced, but they're still on friendly terms and don't jump at each others' throats, so I still see them equally and don't deal with the worst parts of divorce like a lot of kids. So on and so forth in that manner.
My life isn't rosy, far from it. I have a share of my own problems. But when I put things in perspective, my life isn't the worse amongst 99% of Americans. I'm not part of the 1% by a long shot, but I have some privileges that I must own up to. From this, the idea that I have not earned some of the privileges I enjoy, I feel like a deadbeat. I have protested and Occupied, stood up for the rights of my fellow Americans in forums and discussions, and even contacted my representative legislators about things like SOPA and NDAA, but I know that I have not done enough as a young man of eighteen. So here is my blog, Deadbeat Living, where I will try to talk about important issues, and come to grips with my feelings. I am the Deadbeat, the loser of American Privilege, a white teenager in suburbia. I'm trying to hold myself accountable.
Gosh, I really hope this doesn't sound stupid and pretentious. It's hard to write off the top of my head like this. -_-'