Remembering Reggie

It's not polite to speak ill of the dead.

I mean, hell, most people didn't even speak ill of Richard Nixon after he died, which extends beyond politeness to the kind of delusional, overwrought, complex system of manners and etiquette you read about in books that get turned into Merchant-Ivory movies. You know, the stuff with the calling cards and such. The kind of thing that makes you wonder if Emily Post had OCD and managed to inflict it on an entire nation.

In the spirit of that tradition, I offer the following quotes without comment, in the interests of remembering NFL star Reggie White. YAD and Reggie only co-existed for a short time, which I think is a damn shame.

THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON HOMOSEXUALITY:

"As America has permitted homosexuality to establish itself as an alternate lifestyle, it is also reeling from the frightening spread of sexually transmitted disease. Sin begets its own consequence, both on individuals and nations."

"I've often had people ask me, would you allow a homosexual to be your friend. Yes, I will. And the reason I will is because I know that that person has problems, and if I can minister to those problems, I will."

"I'm offended that homosexuals will say that homosexuals deserve rights. Any man in America deserves rights, but homosexuals are trying to compare their plight with the plight of black men or black people. In the process of history, homosexuals have never been castrated, millions of them never died. Homosexuality is a decision. It's not a race. And when you look at it, people from all different ethnic backgrounds are living this lifestyle, but people from all different ethnic backgrounds are also liars and cheaters and malicious and backstabbers."

THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON WHY GOD MADE THE RACES DIFFERENT:

"Hispanics are gifted in family structure. You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home. They were gifted in the family structure."

"When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality."

THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON WHY ROME KICKED ASS:

"Rome had strong families when they first started out. It was founded on high moral standards. Each father was respected as the head of the family. In the early republic, the father had legal authority to discipline rebellious members of his family.

THE LATE REGGIE WHITE ON WHY ROME STOPPED KICKING ASS:

"Number five, there was an infiltration of a lie. As Roman families prospered, it became fashionable to hire educated Greeks to care for the children. Greek philosophies, with its humanistic and garish base, was soon passed on to the Roman families.

Reggie White. Packer* Sacker**. Minister. Amateur historian. He will be missed, both by football fans and the millions of homosexuals he never got the chance to save from themselves.

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Here's a fun little game we can play. The media helped spread two interesting ideas in the week or two before Christmas. This would be the liberal media, of course, chock full of leftists and Communists seeking to impose their ideology on Mainstream America. As a result, one of these fact should be common knowledge by know, and the other will have been almost completely ignored by the general population. Can you tell which one is which?

1 - The American Civil Liberties Union is part of an orchestrated campaign to destroy Christmas and oppress Christians by completely removing Christianity from the public sphere.

2 - The American Civil LIberties Union has, through exhaustive Freedom of Information Act requests, uncovered FBI e-mails that refer to an executive order, from the President, authorizing the use of harsh interrogation tactics (a.k.a. abuse and torture) for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

I have to say, it's funny the way the right-wing keeps lucking out like that. I mean, a bunch of them just happened to start making the ACLU look bad over the Christmas thing, which they coincidentally happened to mostly invent in the same exact way, right before the ACLU gets ahold of documents implicating Bush in prisoner abuse. You almost can't MAKE a break that good.

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*Strictly in a football sense.
*Also strictly in a football sense.

Why We're Hosed, Part 857

Memo to Bob Jones: YOU ARE DUMB.

This was originally going to be a short bit, but once I got into it, I realized it was deserving of a whole column. If any of your friends are Bush-voting moderates, show them this to remind them that they voted for the kind of mentality that Bob Jones represents. You remember Bob Jones. He has that university, you know, the completely fucking racist one that's terrified of interracial dating? The one where all the prominent Republicans go to speak at to remind the guys with Confederate flags on everything they own that Republicans still want their vote? That Bob Jones. Bob sent a congratulatory letter to President Bush on white, white paper, and these were his heartfelt, stirring words. Yes, it's ACTUAL QUOTE DAY!

"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America-though she doesn't deserve it-a reprieve from the agenda of paganism."

See, this just goes to show you how insular the world of the Jesus-Freak is. If Bob Jones actually got outside his Ku Klux EnKlave and met some pagans, he'd understand that the Pagan Agenda, such as it is, consists solely of buying lots of stupid bumper stickers and calling God "she" around non-pagans in the hopes of impressing them with Paganic Weirdness and Specialositude. Pagans are also a convenient resource if you cannot remember the difference between solstice and equinox, but so is Google, and Google won't waste a half hour of your life telling you what it'll be doing in the solstice.

"You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly."

Apparently, They Who Know The Lord think that trumpets can't get through two sentences without fucking up a word. Bush's voice is really more like a bassoon. It's tricky, fussy, and with an idiot controlling it, makes the most awful noises known to man.

"Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you."

Oh, please. I'm about the most extreme, atheistic, lefty motherfucker I know, and I don't hate Bush because I hate Christ. But then, people like Bob Jones have always had a tough time with the whole "correlation is not causation" thing. For me, Christ is kind of like John Carpenter. I really like a couple of the things he's put out, but a lot of it is crap, and his die-hard fans are seriously fucked-up.

"Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term."

Apparently, Thessalonicans 5:18 reads "LIKE HELL YE WOULD HAVE, YOU SANCTIMONIOUS FUCK!". And if Christ was determining the outcome of the election, you'd think, since he apparently lives within each of us, he'd have arranged for more than a three percent margin, and would have allowed His Flock to get to bed at a decent hour on Election Day. Jesus is such a drama queen.

"Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years-a brief time only-to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God."

Welcome to your theocracy, you so-called moderate, security-mom fuckwads. Bob Jones is urging Bush to pass laws on RELIGIOUS FREEDOM that are defined by BIBLICAL NORM. You know what the biblical norm is for religious freedom? "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Hope you like your next tax cut, because all you'll be allowed to spend it on are those little figurines of Jesus playing soccer with white children. This is the reason I had to get the whole letter, and do the column on the whole letter, because this paragraph is the single most appalling thing I've read from the right since the election, and I haven't seen a single story about the letter quote it. The. Fucking. Un. Mitigated. Gall.

"The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you-that you would do right and honor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

I can already hear the counterargument. He's an extremist. Bush probably didn't even read his letter. Bush probably COULDN'T even read his letter. But these are the people that came out in droves last week. These are the people whose stigmata make the red states red. Bob Jones did not send this letter thinking it would fall on deaf ears. Just dumb ones.

My Guardian Angel Will Kick You In The Nuts

Memo to positive thinkers: YOU ARE DUMB.

Allow me to clarify. I don't have anything against positive thoughts as such, even if they really aren't my stock in trade. But people can't have ordinary positive thoughts anymore. The middle ground between enlightened, bitter cynicism and that which would make a My Little Pony vomit pink, chunky foam has been obliterated, demolished by a flood of guardian angels, sparkles, and general ugliness.

Case in point and primary example, www.positivethoughts.com, a website I stumbled across in my travels. It carries within its virtual walls a degree of horrifying kitsch that would make a Cracker Barrel decorator go goth. It takes taste, subtlety, and design, cuts their throats, mutilates their corpses, and has sex with their pets, before filling the air with rainbows and sparkles made from the bones of its victims.

It's pretty fuckin' awful. Take my word for it. Don't go see for yourselves. You don't want to know. Allow me to explain, instead.

The site allows you to download a free "Angel Bar", an IE toolbar that lets you send sites to your friends! And I'm sure, like all free toolbars available on the Internet, it's attractive, functional, easily uninstalled if you don't like it, and contains no malicious code of any kind. Plus, you know. Angels.

Angels are big in the modern, fluffy, Positive Thoughts crowd. Angels are always saving children from horrible car crashies that leave them orphans, or helping people find their keys, or other acts of dubious theological provenance. On the website in question, they also animate and play little violins and waggle their little wings. If I were an angel, which I know is a huge fucking stretch, but bear with me. If I were an angel, and had, over the course of two centuries, gone from being portrayed in great works of sculpture and paint by the world's artistic masters all the way down to showing up super-deformed in animated GIF files, I would check the stockroom to see just how lax the security on the flaming swords was. Some fuckers would need to burn, is all I'm saying.

The site features cards, stories, and something called "FunPages", around the themes of friendship, Christianity, and Inspirational. We will not, in deference to our religious brethren, openly mock the dogmatically iffy "Christian" section today, except to mention that the item marked "Repetition of Sin" is CLEARLY mislabeled, as it involves neither repetition, nor sin. It should more accurately be titled "Iterations of Crappy Metaphor", but that would require a level of honest evaluation that is completely at odds with THINKING POSITIVELY.

In the other sections, we have such poorly-formatted gems as "Recipe from Heaven", which allows you to call your friend a joy-glazed hug-cookie that's received generous loving. On a background composed of thousands of red, purple, and pink hearts. You may think I am joking or exaggerating, but I implore you to take these words at their face value.

Then there's the disappointingly-titled "Know Yourself" Flash animation, in which a picture of a river moves up the screen, leaving faded afterimages of itself in the background. Overlaid on these faded afterimages are two Lao Tzu quotes in white text that vanishes on the background. I don't know why it's a Flash animation at all, because all that moves is the picture, and all it does is move up a bit, but there you go. Know yourself.

If you truly hate yourself, and have done something heartless and cruel, and wish to atone, you may visit the site yourself and select the "Tater People" page. It's too long to sum up effectively here, but be warned. I'm not talking about atoning for forgetting to take out the trash here. I'm talking "If you feel bad about annexing Poland that one time" kind of guilt. Tater People will flagellate you appropriately.

And then there's "Guardian Angels", which, like many items, appears to violate the strict separation between the "Christian", "Friendship", and "Inspirational" sections. On this page, we are informed that the guardian angels of life sometimes fly so high* as to be beyond our sight**, but they are always looking down upon us. What do they mean, "sometimes"? "Sometimes" implies occasionally. Less than half the time. Semantically, it's the opposite of "most of the time". Are most of the guardian angels flying around at street level in plain view? Am I the guy that's always looking the wrong way when one swoops past to save a fundie from dropping her ice cream on the sidewalk? And will my guardian angel really help me win a PS2 as indicated by the flashing box below the aphorism?

It's obvious that when they say "Positive Thoughts", there's a distinct emphasis on the positive at the expense of the thought.

* At which point we are interrupted with a picture of either a floating halo or a cock ring. I'm not sure which would be worse. I mean, a cock ring is just a cock ring, but a disembodied halo implies that your guardian angel got sucked through the engine of a 747.

** At which point we are interrupted with a horrific, 3D-shaded picture of what I assume is an angel bobbing up and down, but it's difficult to tell. It could also be a man in a bowler hat and a dress giving a blowjob to a swan. I cannot stress strongly enough to the purveyors of religious clip art the importance of clarity in your design.

Jesus, Zell, and Footnotery

It's Labor Day, so all you slackers who only read the column when you're bored at work won't be around to read this anyway. Which means I get to half-ass it* for the holiday.

Memo to America's Retail Establishments: ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE STOCKING ENOUGH "PASSION" DVD'S? I saw enough copies of this over the weekend to build a giant cross out of, although what you'd do with a ten foot cross of "Passion" DVD's is beyond me. This DVD, and the incredible overstocking thereof, raises some fascinating new theological questions that only I am truly qualified to address. Well, me, and the Pope, but today is Jello Day at the Vatican, so El Popemeister is going to be occupied for hours. This leaves it up to me.

Which is more blasphemous? Taking the chance that your store might be OUT of "Passion" when one of the faithful comes to purchase it, or ordering so many copies that Jesus ends up clearanced in a few months? On the one hand, the Bible may very well say at some point ** "Seek, and ye shall find", and if someone seeks out the DVD at Target and they don't find one, God will kill a kitten or something.

On the other hand, once Christmas is over with, and "Passion" is on the $9.99 rack between "Big Daddy" and "Torque", how does that make Jesus look? Not good. And he's supposed to be exalted or something**, not thrown into a wire bin by the bucketload.

And in the "caveat emptor" department, I can't help but notice that "Passion" is available in both widescreen and full-screen. Obviously, from a marketing standpoint, that's an excellent idea, as a good 30% of the target "Passion" audience thinks that the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen were put there by Satan. Another 10% will wonder why the hole in the middle won't fit over their record-player spindle, but that's beside the point.

If someone buys the full-screen version of "Passion", then thanks to the miracle of pan-n-scan, they are eliminating and avoiding approximately 30% of JESUS' SUFFERING AND AGONY. And since Jesus suffered and died for your sins, by picking the Video Format of the Retarded, you are actually re-instating 30% of your lifetime sinning. That may be enough to tip your balance and send you to hell, where all the movies are widescreen, but they're also all by Paul Verhoeven*** and Joel Schumacher.

And nobody wants that. So remember, folks, when it comes time to experience the religious fervor, blood, and non-stop torture of Jesus in your own home, make the right choice. Choose widescreen. After all, WWJALRBAASPFLMGW****?

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You know, it's strange. I'm not sure how it happened, but after the Republican National Convention last week, there were a whole lot of people looking around on the Internet for why Zell Miller was such a psychotic fucking asshole. Thanks to the magic of search engine technology, they stumbled across this site, which could damn well be a wikipedia***** on the subject of Zell Miller's perfidy.

But I haven't really touched on Zell's RNC performance, or his Hardball and CNN encores, because frankly, thanks to that, the rest of the country has caught up with what we've known for a long time. Zell Miller is a raving, antiquated lunatic whose only real ties to the Democratic Party stem from the days of segregation. And because there's more money and notoriety being a "renegade Democrat" than there is being yet another cranky old Southern conservative racist rightie. And while his performance at the RNC was not surprising in the least, he can still go fuck himself. Plus, The Daily Show was all over that "challenge Chris Matthews to a duel" stuff like bald on Rob Corddry.

* I mean more than usual, of course.

** I think so. While you might think my lack of familiarity with the text of the Bible would limit my qualifications to speak on Christian theological matters, I actually find it quite freeing.

*** And not Robocop, either, so don't get your hopes up, sinners. It's all Showgirls and 8mm. If you only sinned a little, you get Phone Booth.

**** What Would Jesus, As Lovingly Rendered By An Anti-Semitic Psycho Fundie Like Mel Gibson, Watch?

*****A wikipedia is an encyclopedia made up entirely of entries by people on the Internet who think they know shit. They have, as you may guess, plenty of volunteers.******

******Boy, that's a lot of footnotes!

Tip Your Bishop, And Try The Crackers!

Administrative Filler: Make every effort to catch a rerun, find a tape, or otherwise see the August 2 edition of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart's interview with Texas congressman Henry Bonilla is an absolute fucking primer on what's wrong with mainstream journalism today. After watching Stewart nail Bonilla to the wall with his own GOP talking points, you'll be left asking yourself, as I did, why it takes a FAKE ANCHORMAN to accomplish what the rest of the press corps seems to be dropping the ball on.

Some days, it all becomes worthwhile. All the toil, all the research, all the reading about evolutionary backwaters like Dayton, Tennessee... all of that work and effort and promotion comes to fruition when I get to type a single sentence of pure, unmitigated joy that will be read by dozens, nay DOZENS of faithful readers.

You know who's kind of a dumbass? The Pope.

Oh, I know. Technically, it's the legions of Cardinals who are running things right now between stints on Papal Drool Napkin duty, but still, ultimately, the Pope is the authority from whom the opinions of the Catholic Church are expressed, and, by logical inference, the Pope is kind of a dumbass.

It seems that in these troubled times, the Catholic Church has decided to tackle the issue that's been troubling the minds of the world of late - feminism. Yes, those feminists, with their demands for equality, are eroding the fundamental differences between women and men, and as a result, opening the doors to widespread acceptance of homosexuality, sexual polymorphism, and cooties.

Feminism apparently has "lethal effects", and, worse, tries to "avoid the dominance of one sex over the other". Although most news stories about the pamphlet in question contain limited quotations and sentence fragments, through my incredible Googletalents, I was able to find a more detailed excerpt from the pamphlet, written by Cardinal John Ratzinger, famous for playing Cliff Clavin on "Cheers".

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It is the considered opinion of the Catholic Church that, as so ably noted by the sage Sinbad, star of Hollywood's "First Kid", which provided family-friendly entertainment to thousands across the globe, that women be different from men. Trying to undermine this fundamental difference is leading to the downfall of society.

For example, women, please explain this unto me. I, as must we all, do on occasion need to perform various ablutions before the Lord, occasionally in public facilities. Yet I do so alone, whilst you and your companions must rise up in unison and partake of your ablutions in pairs, as if you were boarding the famed Ark of Noah. What, pray tell, is up with that?

And indeed, though they may claim equality in all ways and all forms, we of the Church know that is not the case, and as a result, recommend to the dioceses... dioces... diocesen... you'd think I'd know the plural to that, being a Cardinal and all... anyway... no, ma'am, YOU suck. I don't come down to where you work and slap the altar boy out of YOUR mouth, do I? Anyway, we heartily recommend that under no circumstances do you give women the remote control device. My male brethren in the Catholic faith, are you with me on this one?

Acceptance of feminist beliefs lead inexorably to acceptance of the deviant homosexual lifestyle. I mean, have you SEEN unto these "feminists"? Not a one of them are pleasing to the eye. It is obvious to me that many of them are deviant homosexuals living a life of sin and degradation. For example, the one I met at the club last weekend that wouldst not dance unto me? Total lezbo.

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Unfortunately, the audience went with His Excellency, Cardinal Carrot Top, who absolutely KILLED with 20 minutes of pure improv just using the Pope's hat as a prop. Cardinal Ratzinger was forced to leave the Vatican, and will not be the Last Cardinal Standing.

Rockin' In Dayton

Jerry Garcia is dead. Phish has broken up. The nation feels a palpable lack. Society, subliminally aware of an empty ecological niche, seeks to fill it almost without noticing it's doing so.

All the elements are lined up - a traveling show, featuring either an ancient artifact of the past or a simulacrum of that artifact, being followed and viewed by a bunch of out-of-touch, technology-shunning superstitious wanks.

Unable to find a long-haired pot addict willing to noodle on an electric guitar for 94 minutes at a stretch, the mysterious forces that settle these things settled on putting the Ten Commandments on tour.

Well, OK. Not THE Ten Commandments. If they found those, they'd be justified in putting that on tour, assuming they could stop the whole face-melting side effect conundrum or, barring that, get everyone to sign a waiver. No, these are Roy Moore's Ten Commandments, the giant stone memorial that resided in an Alabama courthouse until an unreasonably long and inexplicably controversial court fight got it, and the judge who championed it, kicked out of the courthouse for good.

Now, if you were kicking off a tour to promote an excessively religious, church-state merging, hick-loving, liberal-hating monument, where would you want your debut to be? Yes, Dayton Motherfucking Tennessee, also known as the Redneck Epicenter of the United States. Home of the Scopes Monkey Trial, home of the annual festival celebrating the conviction of an evolution teacher, home of the recent misguided attempt to ban homosexuals from the county, place where it took until 2002 to get them to stop teaching BIBLE CLASSES in the public high school. That's where Roy Moore's behemoth is starting its trip around the country.

It's almost as if, despite their backwards, science-despising, mud-wallowing yeehaw existence, the people of Dayton have developed a complex electronic monitoring system that tracks both the number and percentage of fibers of my being that I fucking hate them with. I can only assume an alarm went off a couple of weeks ago when the level dropped below, say, 41%, and so they made some arrangements, got some press, and proceeded to say and do stupid shit in front of reporters. They believe in a gentler time. They believe in a simpler time. But I know what time it really is.

"I think it was awful for them to make them move it from the courthouse. That is what our country is based on, is God and the Bible. Why we want to take God out I don't know. I think we are headed for big trouble when we take God out of schools and everything." - 70-year-old Jewell Sneed, who is secretly desperate for the country to turn back the clock to a time when "Jewell Sneed" was a perfectly respectable, even common, name.

The tour's opening went about as well as could be expected. They found an atheist (Larry Darby, head of the group that got the monument removed) posing for a picture next to the commandments, exposed him to the crowd as such, and the crowd then threatened to kill him. John Rocco, age 73, because Dayton, TN is apparently some kind of Twilight Zone-inspired mystical Brigadoon for ancient hick asswipes, shouted, "Why doesn't someone shoot him? He's not worth a damn".

Rocco also admitted to kneeing Darby in the back using the time-honored middle school "accident... on purpose" ploy, and confessed that he'd have shot Darby if he'd had his gun with him. Silly inbred fuck. The Seventh Commandment clearly states thou shalt carry thy shotgun at all times, lest ye be unable to defend the Kingdom of Heaven against varmints, liberals, and meddling kids.

Bob Lacy, who, at a spry 66, is Dayton's entire eighth-grade class, felt no remorse about potentially starting the world's slowest-moving lynch mob. "If he wants to lead an atheist group, people ought to know that. Let him wear that badge." After a quick check of City Hall, where they keep the atheist badges, they discovered that the dastardly atheists had failed to turn in the ones they'd checked out the LAST time Dayton became a hotbed of rabid church-state controversy.

This week, the City Council is expected to approve $12.60 for new badges, plus $8 in gas to send Jeb into town where there's a Kinko's. Another funding request, for four new AA batteries for the "How Much Does That City Boy Hate Us Ometer", should also pass unanimously.

Latter-Day Hate

I got Mormoned the other day. In the lobby of my apartment. Don't worry, I'm OK. They're still alive. But the encounter left me with a profound revelation about the nature of Joseph Smith's brethren. Mormons are the anti-ninjas.

The essence of ninja is to strike unseen from the darkness, then to fade back into that selfsame darkness. Ninjas are effective. Ninjas are sneaky. Mormons TRY to be sneaky, but are amazingly ineffective at it. They are the Chris Farley of ninja.

Mormons, like ninja, have a uniform that's designed to help them blend in. Unlike ninja, Mormon uniforms don't actually work. Anyone who's seen Orgazmo knows the Mormon deal. White dress shirt. black slacks. Black backpack. White missionary. Again, the parallels to a retarded ninja are striking. Incredibly high contrast. Bad for fading into darkness. A Mormon lurking in shadow is a floating torso and teeth. And there aren't even different variants. There's no Mormon equivalent to Storm Shadow or Sub-Zero. The Mormon uniform is both distinctive and highly nonfunctional.

To help illustrate this, I have prepared the following Public Service Announcement:

I hope that clears things up.

Mormons never identify themselves as Mormons. The two in the hallway of my apartment building informed me that they were "missionaries". The ninja equivalent would be if someone walked up to you with a katana in one hand, a shuriken in the other, and said, "Hi, I'm an Asian Studies major." It is technically sort of true, but fundamentally misses the point and fools nobody.

And to go along with the "never saying they're Mormons", they try to trick you into thinking they're just regular religious folk. The guys in my lobby "just wanted to talk to me about Jesus Christ". Yeah. What they wanted to tell me about him was that he SHOWED UP IN UTAH.

In their TV ads, they just want to send you a free Bible. So that they can get your address, and send you THEIR SPECIAL SEQUEL TO THE BIBLE. Where Christ walks around in Utah.

They even have an alias. A code name. Their messages are brought to you by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now, TV commercial time is expensive stuff. If you're going to spend a whole bunch of extra time using a name with nine extra syllables, you must really want people to not know you're Mormons.

We all know, of course. That's the best part about Mormon Stealth Techniques. Like small children hiding behind the drapes, we all pretend not to notice, and try to act a little surprised when they jump out at us and scream "DO YOU HAVE A FEW MOMENTS TO TALK TO US ABOUT YOUR FAITH?". You got us, Mormons. You really got us. We had no idea.

I think it's sad that they feel like they have to slip Mormonism to us like it's a roofie. I suppose, after the hundredth time some yahoo asks "So how many wives yer got, haw haw haw" they're understandably wary, but they should just embrace their innate Mormon goofiness and use it as a marketing tool. Stop showing us happy families enduring through troubled times with the help of a free bible (or two). I, for one, think that "Chrisitanity... with ALIENS" could really catch on in today's postmodern climate.

If there's one philosophy I hold dear, it's "Let Ninjas Be Ninjas, Let Mormons Be Mormons". The ninjas figured this out hundreds of years ago. With luck, the Mormons will catch on eventually too.

Insert Beatles Song Joke Here

Memo to religious obsessives: YOU ARE DUMB.

I know, I know. How many times can I nail a dead horse to a cross? I do try to wait at least three days between instances, to allow the horse to resurrect itself, but still. On the other hand, punks keep getting up to get knocked down, as they say. Specifically, Southern religious punks. From the lovely small town of Alexandria, VA. Where God works in mysterious ways.

They say that when God closes a door, he opens a window. An enlightening analogy, yes, but somewhat inappropriate-sounding when you're talking about someone's bathroom. You see, in Alexandria, LA, there is a family. A family named Cross. And the Cross family has a bathroom, and the bathroom has a window, and outside that bathroom there is a store, and outside that store there is a light. And when the light shines through the window, which is yellow and frosted, some people say they can see... wait for it... a CROSS.

This has kicked off a bit of a fervor in Alexandria, LA, where schools apparently lump "refraction" in with "evolution" and "human sacrifice" as inappropriate subject matter, and where there is apparently nothing better to do than get yourself worked up into a Baptist frenzy over your neighbor's shitter.

Not everyone sees a cross, of course. Wouldn't want the bathroom miracle to remain consistent. Some people see many crosses. Some people see an angel, and some people see a crown of thorns. That last one kills me, because other than artistic representations, there aren't a lot of crowns made of thorns lying around for comparison. They're not next to the wicker baskets at Wal-Mart.

So you can imagine why I'd be a bit skeptical when, say, Zelma Seals McCoy is quoted as exclaiming "I see the thorns. I see the thorns. God is real."

I know that this column tends to be written from what might be considered a somewhat... secular perspective, but let's assume, for the moment, that the Judeo-Christian god is the one true god, as real as a Hostess fruit pie and twice as nice. What kind of fucking backhanded, half-ass respect do these people think they're giving Him? God is great! God is all-powerful! God has chosen to reveal His Divine Self through a stain on a rock, an oddly-shaped potato, and if that weren't low-rent enough, a LOUISIANA BATHROOM WINDOW. Behold the majesty of The Lord Our God, and don't forget to flush!

Now, if the waters of the toilet bowl were to part, and a bunch of silverfish, led by one silverfish holding a staff, were to then cross the bowl, we might be talking here. But it strikes me as incredibly disrespectful to attribute a vague light effect to your omnipotent uberbeing with such fervor and stupidity. Stupidity as evidenced in the Book of Lambert, verse 24, paragraph 2: "And lo, there shall come a time upon the Earth when the dull-witted shall speak, and their spakings shalt be recorded by a small-town journalism intern, and the recordings shall be posted upon the World Wide Web, and then reposted at a time known as the EPOCH OF THE DIVINE SPAKINGS." Which modern theologians prefer to translate as ACTUAL QUOTE TIME.

"It's shocking to see so many people, people my age, people I went to school with." - Roncey Miles, daughter of the Cross matriarch, and the first to see the cross. Yes, in a small town in Louisiana, many of the people who came to look at a cross in a bathroom window are peole Miles knew and went to school with. It is as if they never left the small Southern town of their birth. IT IS LIKE UNTO A MIRACLE.

"It was so amazing, so breathtaking." - Andrewnette Sampson, leaving me the perfect opportunity to make another "stinky bathroom" joke. But instead, I will take the high road and just make fun of all the names listed in the article, like "Andrewnette Sampson", "Roncey Miles", "Ricky Beauregard", and poor, poor little 7-year-old "Keraneicia Aaron", who is destined to spend her entire adult life sighing with exasperation before spelling out her name a fourth time to outsourced call center employees in third world countries.

If God wanted to work a miracle, he should have shown up in a delivery room seven years ago and saved the poor Aaron girl from her fate. Unfortunately, He was much too busy at the time painstakingly forming the image of the Virgin Mary into a single Cool Ranch Dorito bound for Oklahoma. Hey, he can't be everywhere at once.

More Crackers, More Crackers

Memo to David Pence: YOU ARE DEVOUTLY DUMB.

The Cracker Police are at it again. And I'm not talknig about Mississippi cops. No, it's Whack-A-Catholic time again, as the debate over who gets to munch the Godbiscuit heats up yet again. And this time, in my own backyard.

David Pence is rounding up a Pastry Posse, you see. He's not actually calling it a Pastry Posse, of course. Catholics are less fond of wacky alliteration than I am, which is probably for the best. Pence's Pastry Posse, like some rogue group of Atkins vigilantes, will be doing everything it can this Sunday to make sure no stinking sash-wearers get any of that sweet, sweet Mock Jesus in St. Paul, MN.

The sash, specifically a rainbow sash, is a new thing. In the past couple of years, on Pentecost Sunday *, gay Catholics wear a rainbow sash to Mass. It's intended to send an important message, a message of tolerance, a message of changing the church from the inside. The rainbow sash proudly states, "Even though most of you hate gay people and oppose everything we stand for, we still want to come by on Sundays and bring a hot dish to the potluck because our parents taught us to believe in this one specific iteration of Mr. Invisible Sky Buddy."

To which David Pence proudly responds, in essence, "If any of those freaky homos tries, to paraphrase one Macho Man Randy Savage, to 'Snap Into A Savior', I'll be up there with my big burly manbuddies to run interference, and possibly a pick of some kind, because even though pretty much every other Sunday they've been showing up without incident, this week I can figure out which ones are the fruits."

That was not an actual quote. That was merely a comedy device. In the event of an actual quote, there will be a short siren, a flashing light, and a representative from You Are Dumb Dot Net will appear on-screen to inform you that it is ACTUAL QUOTE TIME.

"At Catholic Charities, anybody who is hungry gets fed. But the Eucharist isn't like that. The Eucharist is a restricted meal. The Church has always said you don't come to Communion unless you believe in Christianity the way the Catholic Church has transmitted the tradition.'' - David Pence, who, upon uttering the phrase "restricted meal", makes me almost regret having made the one alotted Atkins joke up in paragraph three.

The actual methods by which Pence's Posse's Pastry Prevention will take place are unclear. Pence himself has ruled out tackling, presumbably because of the risk of gay cooties. He's also claimed to be committed to nonviolence. But there will be some form of "disruption". Perhaps there will be some sort of loud noise and visual distraction, or a kind of "Hands Across Three Pews" human chain. Or possibly we can glean some tactical information from the name of the group.

See, I've been calling them Pence's Pastry Posse because the actual name of the group is so astonishingly, hilariously bad that it needs to be presented in the proper context. The official name of Pence's Pastry Posse is.... The Ushers Of The Eucharist.

Done laughing yet? No? OK. I'll wait.

Feels good to get that out, doesn't it? Ushers of the Eucharist. I hope they have the little hats. And the flashlights. "Can I show you to your wafer, ma'am?" "I'm sorry, this section has been booked by an entire group of intolerant heterosexuals. We've got a few seats here in the back, if you promise to be quiet and not make a nuisance of yourselves." "Bride's party or groom's party? I'm sorry, but only one of each is allowed. This isn't Massachussets."

Unless, of course, they meant it as a reference to top-selling recording artist Usher, whose single "Burn" currently sits atop the... nah. That'd be DUMB.

* I have no idea what Pentecost Sunday is, as my first guess, involving the celebration of the price of tiny stones, is apparently not correct.

Catholics

Memo to the Catholic Church: YOU ARE DUMB.

The Catholics are getting uppity again. I don't know what it is. Maybe John Paul's gotten his 90th wind. Maybe he just feels like he has to keep his pope hand strong. Or maybe, since it's been six months or so since any priests have gotten caught having sex with children, covering up having sex with children, or paying large sums of money for having sex with children, they think they get to throw some moral weight around again.

And when Catholics need to throw their moral weight around, but don't have the time to write an entire catechism, they turn to their favorite afterschool snack, the withholding of which is, for reasons that are inexplicable to me, a weapon of great power. I can think of dozens of places even rural Catholics could get saltines and cheap wine if they wanted to. It all gets transubstantiated in the end, anyway.

So, in their ceaseless effort to crush science, progress, and the pursuit of any knowledge not contained in their 2,000-year-old moral primer slash list of begattings, the Catholics have been seriously discussing telling politicians that support legal abortion or gay marriage that no, they cannot have their cracker, and no, they cannot have their wine, and no, you cannot pretend to eat Jesus because we're right and you're wrong. Nyah nyah.

And that's... problematic, but, you know, these politicians are out in public, with public views, and if they want to let their church influence them, we can all see that, and we can decide at voting time if we want the Pope's hand up the ass of our elected official or not.

But now, one Colorado diocese has decided that anybody who VOTES for a pro-choice candidate shouldn't get their cracker and Jesus juice either. Which should be very interesting in a country with a supposedly secret ballot. In all the coverage of this, nobody has bothered to ask how they're supposed to know who gets the cracker and who gets the shaft. Seems to me they're basically exchanging giving Communion to a whole bunch of unavowed pro-choice advocates for giving Communion to a giant pile of stinking filthy liars. But that's just me.

You may be saying to yourself... "Colorado? Vanguard of religious extremism? But aren't those lovely, mannered South Park boys from there?" Yes. Colorado is not traditionally the first state that comes to mind when you think of rampant religious extremism. But to help you with the cognitive dissonance, I've prepared a visual aid to show you where Colorado stands amidst the various idiocies of the U.S.:

As you can see, Colorado is a virtual epicenter of moronitude. You've got the crazy Mormons to the west, the entire Midwest to the northeast, Jim Inhofe just over the border in Oklahoma, and do I even need to mention Texas? No mitigating influences to the north or south, so you can see where poor Colorado, adrift in a sea of national idiocy, may find itself turning to rabid Catholocism in a kind of Lord of the Flies moment.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not giving specific descriptions of the dumbness inherent in certain coastal areas does not mean the Tan Lands are magical enclaves where reason and intelligence thrive They are just not relevant to the current discussion. They'll get theirs in due course.

Still, the great things about Catholics is that, being students of the Bible, they don't have a problem with blatant self-contradiction, as Colorado bishop Michael Sheridan so aptly demonstrates in his directive. What starts with "A" and ends with "E" and makes the crowds all scream with glee? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"As in the matter of abortion, any Catholic politician who would promote so-called same-sex marriage and any Catholic who would vote for that political candidate place themselves outside the full communion of the church and may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been reconciled by the Sacrament of Penance... the church never directs citizens to vote for any specific candidate." 

Which is technically true. Using your supposed spiritual authority to intimidate and threaten people into not voting for unnamed people who just happen to have been in the news a lot lately for being Catholic and liberal is not the same as coming out and saying "JOHN KERRY IS THE ANTICHRIST!". However, in the great Venn diagram of life, those two sets are enclosed by a much larger superset, the superset we like to call DUMB.

MovieGuide

Memo to MovieGuide.org: YOU ARE DUMB.

If you've been on the Internet for any length of time, you've heard of Capalert. Capalert is a "Christian" site that reviews movies, past and present, entirely on their "moral" content. They're fun to laugh at, because of their quaint ways of referring to profanity ("fuck" is always called "the foulest of words", for example), and their patent overreactions to tame movies and utter horror at things like Kill Bill are always good for a chuckle.

MovieGuide.org makes the Capalert folks look like Roger Ebert.

I found out about them because they've just released a very dubious "study" which basically says that none of the movies they hated made any money, so everyone must agree with them. Movies they hate are ones they consider "homosexual", "anti-capitalist", "feminist", "atheist", "humanist", and the usual list of things fundies get all cranky about.

Movieguide's a whole cottage industry. They've got a magazine and a book and a website and studies and everything. If Capalert looked at movies through a pair of blinders with tiny holes poked in them, MovieGuide seems to watch films with a Bible duct-taped to their faces and an iPod full of hymns blaring through their headphones.

Take the following description of the content for Hellboy: RoRo, OO, CC, Ab, B, ACAC, LL, VV, A, D, M. That means it's DOUBLY Romantic, which doesn't actually mean "full of love" but actually means some kind of horrible worldview in which people are good. It's doubly occult, which is fair. It's doubly Christian, 'cause it's got rosaries and holy water in it, but it's singly anti-Biblical, because the part about cigar-smoking demons fighting Nazis was left out of Luke. 

The fighting of Nazis does earn it a double-Anti-Communism rating, though, because the Nazis were "National Socialists", and as we all know, Socialists are just Communists with tenure. Two out of three L's for language, which is fair. Two out of three V's for violence, which is probably also fair. Alcohol abuse for the presence of a six-pack. Drug/substance abuse for.... I honestly don't know, unless they're counting the cigar, which would be really funny. And finally, an "M" for miscellaneous, which I figure they must have put on every movie except maybe The Passion, which probably deserves it for the freaky demon baby thing I've heard people talk about.

Luckily for Hellboy, it didn't include any anti-capitalism, anti-patriotism, communism, environmentalism, evolution, feminism, false religions, humanism, homosexuality, internationalism, nudity, paganism, political correctness, revisionist history, "adultery, promiscuity, or sexual immorality", or socialism. If it had, it might have been upgraded from EXTREME CAUTION to ABHORRENT, a mere two stages higher, bypassing EXCESSIVE entirely.

To be ABHORRENT, "Hellboy" would have had to be as immoral as "The Girl Next Door", whose review blames Bill Clinton for the increase in oral sex, Madonna and Britney Spears for the increase in lesbian kissing, and warns good Christians, "Don't be surprised, therefore, if you find your sons and daughters making secret porn movies at their schools in the wake of this new movie."

It's always fun when people who can't enjoy anything ever look at entertainment. I can't even imagine what it must be like to review a movie for them. Taking up three seats in a theater, with penlights, four notepads, a half-dozen reference charts. Although constant note-taking would explain why they thought the Resurrection Hound in Hellboy was "spider-like". But so would them being DUMB.

Wascally Wabbit

Memo to the Easter Bunny: YOU HAD IT COMING.

I mean, I understand why some people may choose to follow the deviant lifestyle of a pagan fertility symbol. I don't APPROVE of it, but I don't appreciate you calling me lupophobic. I love all the animals equally, even the sick freaks who "hide their eggs", "hop down the bunny trail", and engage in other perverted activities behind closed doors.

But if you keep flaunting it in the faces of good, kind, normal people who just want to celebrate the torture and murder of a 2,000 year old guy with a beard, well, don't think there aren't going to be repercussions. I mean, I'm not saying I condone the horrific act of violence that occurred in Pennsylvania. I'm just saying I understand how it could have happened.

Sure, it may have seemed, on the surface, to be a friendly little Easter play in the friendly little Glassport, PA's friendly little memorial stadium. But then it turned ugly, as the Easter Bunny was flogged, eggs were broken, and children were traumatized by a church who simply wanted to get across the vitally important theological message that a man suffered horribly for days just so you could get jellybeans and plastic grass.

They whipped the Easter Bunny. In front of four-year-old kids. That kills me. So do the various headlines: "Easter Bunny's torture scenes upset children." Gee, can't imagine why. "Easter play makes point, but upsets kids." That's a surprisingly kind headline for a play that also featured a drunken man and self-mutilating woman. Still, it's entirely possible that this play wasn't meant to be offensive.

And in fact, Patty Bickerton, the youth minister in the bunny suit who does not in any way shape or form get sexually excited by dressing up in a bunny suit, being whipped, and having eggs broken over her head, told the AP that in fact, the play wasn't meant to be offensive.

Glad that's cleared up.

Once again, by the way, I'm confronted with the kind of thing we atheists simply would not pull. This is partly because we don't have an excuse to meet every week and plan stuff out, but even if we did get together to watch Nova or something, I can guarantee we wouldn't hatch diabolical plans. You won't find atheists sitting on a street corner around Hanukkah, under a giant FREE DREIDLES sign, setting tiny yarmulkes on fire and explaining the combustion properties of oil. For one thing, that's mean. And for another, it's frickin' cold in December.

I'm also a bit confused about how you can have an Assembly of God in the first place, since supposedly there's only one of him, and he's everywhere, and he knows everything, and he doesn't need to be instructed on proper hallway behavior between classes, which is what I always thought assemblies were for.

All I know is, there's no way in hell I'm going anywhere near the Bunny Pride Parade next year.

Duluth

Memo to Duluth, MN: YOU ARE DUMB.

Well, at least some of y'all are. You see, I am under a bit of obligation. First, we've covered some separation of church and state stuff in the past. There is precedent. And second, I may have offhandedly mentioned that geographical regions have a certain responsibility to openly reject the bullshit that goes on within their borders.

So, as a transplanted Minnesotan for the past decade or so, I'm compelled to mention that a bunch of people in Duluth are being dickheads about the whole Ten Commandments monument thing.

We're not as flashy as Judge Roy Moore here in the Midwest. In fact, it was only after that Boss Hogg wannabe made his big stink about keeping a Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse that a bunch of people around here noticed they had 10C items in their own government buildings.

Specifically, Duluth, whose 2,500 pound granite commandments were noticed by the ACLU. After being told they'd lose, the city voted 5-4 not to fight. And that's when the godly became the grumpy.

"We already know where they're headed, anyway. To Hell." The county offered to take up the fight the city didn't want to bother with. Petitions were circulated. Society was declared depraved and doomed.

All because of a big lump of rock that was, essentially, a MOVIE PROMOTIONAL TOOL. These things are all over the state, courtesy of one of those fraternal wankery organizations that were rife in the fifties who teamed with Hollywood to promote God and, simultaneously, that hot new Ten Commandments movie.

Once again, it boils down to insecurity. Why is it that the Christians (and I mean the whole lot of 'em. Think the broad sense of Judeo-Christian, but with the Judeo- left off because the Jewish community never seems to pull this shit) have to gloat?

Seriously. You've got giant cathedrals and ancient stone churches. Most of the people in power check off your box on the census. You're considered fairly normal, even with the whole ritual cannibalism thing and the speaking in tongues thing. Your last movie made over $300 million dollars. You'd think that would be plenty to assuage your self-esteem issues and persecution complex.

But no. You gotta stick your halos EVERYWHERE so that we can all see them. You have the utter nerve to complain about homosexuals flaunting their "lifestyle choice" and then whine like bitches every time someone tries to detach your pervasive iconography from the halls of power. The draggiest drag queen in the flamingest pride parade in the nation can't begin to compete with Christianity for shoving things in people's faces.

Just once. Just once, I'd love to hear these people be gracious. Admit that they've got enough. Admit that they're not the only people that matter. Admit that what a bunch of fat guys in funny hats did fifty years ago to help line Parammount's pockets is not actually sacred and incontrovertible.

For those concerned about my blood-oxygen level, rest assured I will not be holding my breath.

The Supreme Court

Memo to the Supreme Court: YOU WILL BE DUMB.

In accordance with the Bush Administration's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, we at You Are Dumb Dot Net have substantial intelligence. That substantial intelligence leads us to believe that the Supreme Court will overturn the ruling that says "Under God" shouldn't be in the Pledge of Alliegance. As a result, they will qualify as DUMB.

Of course, the Pledge itself is stupid. It's a waste of time. I've recited the pledge thousands of times in my childhood, having been forced to do it in homeroom, in assemblies, and whatnot, and yet, somehow, I neither watch Fox News nor attend church services regularly. It is therefore ineffective, and should be sanctioned under the No Child Left Behind guidelines.

Are we afraid of moles? Enemy agents who will be ferreted out or turned by recitation of this magical phrase? Are we afraid that children will grow up not realizing they are American citizens? They're children, for fuck's sake. You've got about a two week window between when they finally understand what they're being asked to say and when they stop caring for this "pledge" to have any effect at all. It's pointless ritual.

But if we gotta have it, and apparently we gotta, judging by the amount of uproar this has been causing, then jamming "Under God" into it back in 1954 in a blatant power grab by the Yay Jesus crowd should be reversed. Because grammatically, the Pledge of Allegiance is tantamount to state sponsorship of monotheism.

Yes, I said grammatically. Because if you strip away all the bullshit that people arguing about this use to support your position, the question you're left with is what, exactly, does the Pledge say? I don't care how long we've been saying it. I don't care how important it is to insecure Christians that they need the government to constantly acknowledge their majority and power. Let's look at the words in question.

The Pledge of Allegiance is entirely in the present tense. The Pledge is surprisingly verb-light, but both verbs, "pledge" and "stands" are present tense. With no other indicators, we must therefore conclude that the whole thing is intended to be in the present tense. Ergo, the Pledge claims that RIGHT NOW, in the present, the United States of America is "under God".

Second, "God". Singular. The possibility of more than one God is summarily excluded. One could go even further and say that the strong implication that this is the Christian God is there in spades, but we're talking pure grammar here.

So there we have it. Every single day, in schools across the nation, people in a position of power are making the statement in front of students that, right now, the United States is under one God. State-sponsored monotheism. Clear violation of the First Amendment. The government should not be expressing a preference for one god over many gods, or one god over no gods. End of story.

Of course, that's not how it's gonna go down. Not with this Supreme Court. Not in Dubya's America. Not in a country where it's perfectly OK for journalists to ask presidential candidates if they accept Jesus Christ as the son of God (Newsweek / Howard Dean) or if God is on America's side (Debate moderator / John Kerry). And certainly not with this test case. Atheists really need better poster boys than a father with limited visitation rights whose babymomma actually disagrees with him about the whole Under God thing.

Nope. God's going back into the Pledge with the help of at least six, and probably more, of his berobed Divine Hands. Because they won't be doing their goddamned job, which is to look at the facts and see how they stand. And even giving the Pledge an unfair benefit of the doubt, it breaks the rules. But it'll get a pass, because the Supreme Court will be DUMB. Guaranteed.

Empty Hands, Empty Mouths

Memo to the Overly Passion-ate: YOU ARE DUMB.

Enough with the Jesus already. We get it. Enough with the controversy and the arguing. Enough with the going to see it over and over. We know. Everybody loves the Jesus. Hooray for the Jesus. $51-million dollar weekend for the Jesus. $212 million total for the Jesus. Good thing all that money isn't stacked up on tables, or he'd have spent so much time tipping 'em over that he'd be forever known as The Guy That Got Three Hernias Tipping Over Money Tables.

It's like Titanic. You know how it ends, but you keep going back. Except this time, you don't get to see Kate Winslet's boobs. It's like Lord of the Rings, except, you know. You all think it's a documentary.

I realize, by the way, that I am now the last fucking commentator on the planet to weigh in on this thing. I wanted to ignore it. Oh, how I wanted to ignore it. But you wouldn't let me, would you? You had to keep writing Op-Ed pieces and letters to the editor and talking about it in the restaurants and the cafeterias and the break rooms. It's Anti-Semitic. No, it's Jewtastic. It's too violent. It's not violent enough. It is as it was. It is as it wasn't. Have you gone yet? Are you going to go? Why aren't you going? How many times are you going? Are you bringing your kids? Are you bringing them the second time you go? The eighth?

Oh, sanity, why hast thou forsaken me?

Personally, I found "The Passion" to be a huge disappointment on two counts. First, because they pussied out and put subtitles in. Back in the day, the buzz was that it was gonna be all in Aramaic and Latin, but there wouldn't be any subtitles. And that woulda been funny, because, let's face it, the target audience for this film is not "students of dead and mostly-dead languages". All the post-movie pontificating would be infinitely more entertaining if everyone talking about the movie had to pretend they could get the gist of the dialogue. Just imagine it. You know you can.

And on the second count, I'm highly disappointed because on the first day it was released, it killed a woman. A 50-year-old woman's heart gave out mid-flick. Oh, they said it didn't have anything to do with the movie, but, and this may seem wrong to some of you, I was so hoping it'd be a trend.

I know, I know. How awful. Every death diminishes us all, yada yada. But seriously, if, say, one person out of every three showings dropped dead, at least all the Passion hype would have some meaning. It's like fugu. Nobody would give a shit about eating blowfish meat if it wasn't for the whole "improper preparation and you could DIE" thing. They'd just grind up all the blowfish, throw them in with everything else they use to make fish sticks, and we'd all go about our business.

Yet somehow, despite the lack of that potential-fatality sales draw, The Passion keeps rackin' 'em in. And luckily, since the entertainment industry hates success, there's no chance of The Passion inspring dozens or even hundreds of Jesus-related spinoffs to try to get a piece of the big Messiah pie. Yep. The entertainment industry will show restraint and... who are we kidding. It's "Millionaire" all over again. Remember when they thought we all loved game shows because we all decided to watch Millionaire? Well, now they think we all love Jesus. GREAT JOB, PEOPLE.

But hey, let's look on the bright side. Let's say they look at The Passion, and decide they'll only greenlight Jesus projects with a creative pedigree equal to or higher than Mel Gibson's. So with the bar firmly set at "radical member of a fringe sect and son of a notable Holocaust denier", you won't get to do your Jesus project if you're... um... a chronic public masturbator with a $5,000 a day coke habit. Which, admittedly, does eliminate a not insignificant fraction of the entertainment industry, but not enough to keep "nails through the palms" from being the new "dark shirt dark suit bright tie".

You laugh now. Oh, how you laugh. But a year from now, when Chuck Woolery is nailed to a big cross, and that cross is nailed to an even bigger wheel, and some Midwestern housewife is spinning the beloinclothed Woolery in the hopes of an all-expenses-paid trip to the Wailing Wall, you'll look down at your yellowed, faded ticket stub and realize that YOU WERE DUMB.