Quoi de neuf, Docteur?

Ah, the things I learn at work. For the past week or so I've been timing in French cartoons from scripts. If you've ever wondered how Bugs Bunny would say "Ehh, what's up, Doc?" were he a francophone rabbit, you now have your answer.

Interestingly, the producers of Les Looney Tunes make no attempt to emulate Mel Blanc's famed voices, so the distinctive speech patterns of Elmer Fudd and Foghorn Leghorn, for instance, are lost. If you close your eyes it sounds like a bunch of people—a tad excited, perhaps—holding an everyday conversation in French.

C'est dommage, mes amis.

Ehh ... What's Up, God?

I saw a guy today wearing one of those "Atheist Bus" T-shirts—you know, the ones that tell us we can stop worrying and enjoy our lives because "there's probably no God."

What's curious about this is the assumption that fretting and misery are inevitable responses to the existence of God. Of course, such a notion stems from the atheistic conception of the God they imagine we gullible spiritual types believe in: a vindictive, capricious son of a bitch ready to flog at the slightest misdeed.

Fortunately, the God of atheist critique is a caricature, bearing as much resemblance to the real thing as Bugs Bunny does to a rabbit.