Thursday, April 12, 2012

Our Wacky World—4/12/2012

It's that time of the year again—bring out the hammer and the nails (includes graphic video):
"Christians were nailed to crosses in the Philippines today in a grim Good Friday reenactment of Jesus's suffering. Thousands of people watched as 17 devoted Catholics were 'crucified' in the gruesome annual ritual. Church leaders have condemned the practice which they believe are a distortion of the true Easter message."
Mail Online

Check out this oldie but goodie—The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus

Thomas Kinkade, quite possibly the best alcoholic Christian artist of the 20th Century, died:
"Kinkade’s star was on the decline commercially in 2007, but that didn’t keep filmmakers from securing an obscenely overqualified cast that included eight-time Oscar nominee Peter O’Toole, Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden, comic genius Chris Elliott, and TV icon Edward Asner. Oh, and also The Facts Of Life’s Charlotte Rae, whose performance here serves as a powerful reminder that she’s apparently still alive.
Click to enlarge—you know you want to...
(This is the original. Idea by Bogart) 
In a world where Fireproof, a low-budget independent movie about how Kirk Cameron should stop masturbating to pornography and be less of a dick to his wife, can gross more than $30 million, the theatrical prospects for this similarly Jesus-happy film must have looked fairly solid, especially given its huge built-in fan base and the talent involved. Instead, it received a discreet direct-to-DVD burial in 2008, for reasons that should soon become apparent."
A.V. Club

It's been said that Kinkade wasn't a hack or a huckster, that he was simply a talented artist who worked out a perfect scheme for making millions off of Christian suckers. If so, this is definitely his slickest move yet, right up there with Andy Kaufman. His oversold crap is now almost worth the sticker price. Perhaps some of the people he bankrupted will piss on his grave—I can't think of a more fitting gesture.

Meanwhile, business-as-usual in Arizona inches another notch towards utter idiocy as the former DA of Maricopa County is disbarred and calls a press conference:
"Other men, far greater than I, have gone to jail in defense of principles they believed in and so they would not kowtow to a corrupt ruler," Thomas said at one point. "People like Gandhi, people like Dr. King, people like Solzhenitsyn, people like Thomas More, people who stood for something....and I'm going to stand firm." 
"Gandhi?" wondered one onlooker in amazement.
Crooks & Liars

My heart bleeds. At least he didn't use the Galileo gambit.

"Sometime in the late 20th century a naked man bent over, spread his ass and took a picture. Eventually that picture, known as Goatse, became one of the most venerable memes in internet history. Who is this man, and how did his ass take over the internet?"
Gawker

"Dr. Bruce Copen developed Ruth Drown’s concept further to produce his “Electronic Vibro Potentiser” (EVP). With the EVP, you can test a homoeopathic remedy either on the basis of a test substance or a corresponding rate. Essentially, the procedure is the same as for radionic analysis, except that instead of the rates for organs and symptoms, you refer to the rates for the homoeopathic remedy, nosode, flower essences, Schussler salts, etc. 
"The great advantage of radionics by comparison with other test methods is that you do not require any test sets. All of the information which you require can be generated from rates. This gives rise to entirely new possibilities for remedies for which there had previously been no remedy providing (e.g. the period system of elements, radioactive materials, allopathic medicaments). This gives rise to fresh possibilities, particularly for diagnostic therapies."
Copen Labs


Brown/yellow/red/non-"white" people don't mind being killed. They can take it. Experts have been pointing this out for years:
"The natives of these tribes love fighting for fighting's sake," Chief of Air Staff Hugh Trenchard assured Parliament. "They have no objection to being killed." The military's argument was that, though the often indiscriminate air attacks might perturb some civilized folks back in London, such acts were viewed differently by the Arabs. As one British commander observed, "'[Shiekhs]...do not seem to resent...that women and children are accidentally killed by bombs."
Tiny Revolution

“What got me to Jesus was very simple. With the education levels and knowledge of the societies back 2,000 years ago, Jesus had to be the son of God, because the people there would not have the imagination to make up stories like walking on water, rising from the dead, and changing water into wine.”
Simple is right. (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)

'In the day's most startling testimony, a detective read internal church memos about a priest who allegedly "joked about how hard it was to have sex with three boys in one week." His accuser also stated that the priest had a "rotation process" of boys spending time sleeping with him.'
AP

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, together forever:
"I asked the LDS Church to confirm my hunch. And in a rare move, the Church obliged: Sally Hemings and Tom Jefferson, I was told, have been posthumously sealed as husband and wife in an LDS Temple."
Slate

"I was in church on Sunday," Carlsbad Police Chief Daniel Fierro said, "and I heard three different people talking about rabies and skunks."
The Register

"The ancient herb has been touted around the world for thousands of years for everything from gout to childbirth, but scientists now know it carries serious risks of causing kidney disease and urinary cancers."
AFP