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Marty’s photo of the day #4731: I shot this photo of Bill Clinton back in 2008, and it reminds me of how hypocritical Republicans and a little over half of the Christians in the United States are. In 1998, those people were salivating to impeach Clinton for an affair he had with a consenting adult. […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4730: I don’t know if I’ll be successful for the entire week, but I have been going through the photo files on my computer, trying to find pictures to post that fit the theme of the first of many criminal trials of the Great-Christian-White-Nationalist-Ordained-By-God-Persecuted-Like-Jesus Donald Fucking Trump. I shot this […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4609: Once Christians can set aside Jesus’s disdain for money as depicted in the Bible, the rest is easy to accept: The enormously wealthy Catholic Church declaring individual bankruptcies to avoid paying court-ordered penalties for child sexual abuse, mega churches and televangelists shoveling in the money while virtually ignoring the […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4608: A few years ago I publicly asserted that over 1 million children have been sexually molested in Christian churches. While I doubt I’m the first to make that claim, two things have surprised me: The first is that I haven’t seen the media ever make such a claim. The […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4607: At this time of year, I often think about my born-again Christian father and the arguments we used to have. He was the kind of Christian that believed the Bible was the literal word of his god. That, of course, meant that the Bible had to be either written […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4606: ’Tis the week before Christmas, and as has become my tradition, I’m going to dig out some of my photos from all over the world, showing the wealth and power of Christian churches, along with the hypocrisy they bring. But please, don’t blame me. I’m only stating inconvenient facts. […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4595: My dad, Paul W. Essen, died twelve years ago this week. As anyone who has read my book Hits, Heathens, and Hippos: Stories from an Agent, Activist, and Adventurer knows, my father was a born again Christian to the extreme. In fact, he even believed his god wanted him […]
Marty’s photos of the day #4576: This is the Bear Glacier in British Columbia. I use a different picture of this glacier in my college show, Around the World in 90 Minutes, to talk about climate change (that lake wasn’t there 75 years ago). Deb and I had planned on visiting the Bear Glacier again […]
Marty’s photos of the day #4563: Nellie’s recovery from TPLO (Doggy Tommy John) surgery on her left-rear leg—Day #2. Nellie is such a trooper! Last night Deb and I slept with Nellie on a mattress on the floor of our great room (something will be doing for the next eight-to-twelve weeks). The mattress is much […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4501: I shot this photograph many years ago in New Orleans. I know nothing about this person, but statistically a child would be safer with someone who looks like this than with Christian clergy—a lot safer. So if Republicans really care about children, why are they so bent out of […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4473: Today I have some photojournalism. I shot this picture last week, looking down from a mountain in a remote area of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. If you look closely, you will see the gravel road and then a bunch of 4-wheeler tracks going off-road in the foreground. I fucking […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4471: Each summer, Deb and I rent at least one U.S. Forest Service Cabin, and last week we rented the Canyon Creek Cabin in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest (west of Melrose, Montana). One Montana cabin tradition that sickens me is that quite literally every cabin has skulls and bones hanging […]
Whenever I write a rant about abhorrent Christian behavior, I have to add “not all Christians” somewhere in the text or I will get nailed. I was thinking about that this morning as I was reflecting on all the new Christian-based laws that are popping up across America. These laws cherry pick the most hate-filled […]
As someone who has written four novels that some consider blasphemous, or at the very least irreverent, I have to laugh at the entire concept of blasphemy. If the god that is being satirized is real and powerful, why would that god need the help of people to defend itself? As I’ve witnessed with my […]
Goodbye Pat Robertson! I didn’t know you personally, but you certainly affected my life. Because of you—and snake oil salesmen like you—my father was so brainwashed that he once wasted multiple years of his life calling every number in the Crestview, Florida phonebook to tell whoever answered, “Jesus loves you.” Because of the likes of […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4382: Alligators have remained virtually untouched by evolution for more than 8 million years, which is something that is, obviously, unimpressive to Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican Party, and more than half of the state’s voting population. For they have perfected the art of regressing an entire society to where not […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4367: So this past Sunday Deb and I attempted to watch the popular Montana-based drama series “1923.” We didn’t quite make it to the end of the first episode before we both said, “Fuck it. This is too depressing. Let’s watch ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel!’” What got to me in […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4357: This is one of my favorite photos from my first trip to Peru. I was in Iquitos and went for a walk after a rainstorm. I spotted these children playing with a soccer ball in a flooded street―just having a blast. When I aimed my camera, the children spotted […]
Marty’s photo of the day #4327: Alligators—becoming the most advanced species in Florida by default.
Marty’s photo of the day #4321: Don’t look Florida! This is “Hercules and the Centaur Nessus,” a marble statue by the Flemish-Italian artist Giambologna. He created it between 1595 and 1599 out of a single block of marble. Can you imagine how long it took to carve Hercules’s penis? Tap just a little too hard […]
