You may recall the American Crisis of Atheist Attack Ads from last year around this time. You may also look forward to seeing them next year around this time. Why do we, as humans, repeat the same, useless behaviors, over and over? Because of this:

Last year, a similar campaign by the association drew strong reactions.

The head of the Catholic League linked secular humanists to figures like Hitler and the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Crazy Bill Donohue is our god.
[Pic via]

The WSJ says that terrified religious types across the nation have given in to fear of the Satanic disease and are dispensing with the use of common communion cups. That's just what the pig flu wants you to do, people!

At a United Church of Christ congregation in the suburbs of Chicago, Communion servers now slice up bread into bite-sized bits before distributing Communion; they no longer offer congregants a loaf from which to tear a hunk of bread. In the interest of keeping fingers away from communion wine, communicants at All Saints' Chapel in Sewanee, Tenn., are now instructed not to dip their Eucharistic bread into the cup but rather to sip the cup directly, since hands are often more infectious than mouths.

Christ himself further suggests that "Maybe you guys can just gaze upon me from afar" until flu season is over.
[Pic via]

People ask Glenn Beck, all the time, "what can we do? What can we do? What can we do? What can we do?" He recommends falling to our knees, to God.

Beck spends 90% of his time trying to convince people that an illegitimate and dangerous leader is actually actively destroying the nation. If you are a crazy person, that might alarm or upset you! You might think you should do something about it, even! Beck does not actually necessarily want people to act as though the terrifying things he says are true, though. He would like them to channel the fear and rage that he creates into something non-destructive. Like, who knows, praying that things will get better. Just please don't shoot anyone, guys!

Anoka, Minnesota's own Gretchen Carlson, on praying for guidance: "that's not a popular thing in this world of 'PC' where everything's 'correct.'" What is Rose Nylund's unlikable beauty contestant little sister even talking about. Has she ever been to America? You can't inaugurate a president, fight a war, write album liner notes, or kick of fucking field goal without someone praying for guidance!

Haunted marionette Steve Doocy mentions that lots of people at his church have been praying, lately, but Beck knows that is selfish praying, for themselves, and not the kind of praying that we need, which is to save the whole country, from the racist tyrant president.

(And then Beck says something slightly inaudible about Obama being "a black nationalist" because someone mentioned raising taxes maybe.)

This is an example of good things coming to those who wait. Back in late 2007—many years ago, in the distant and forgotten past!—Representative Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. was supposed to be the next Senator from Mississippi. And then he rather suddenly retired from the House, because he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Then he divorced his wife, weirdly!

But almost two years had to pass before anyone learned the wonderful details.

Now, Pickering's estranged wife Leisha has filed an "alienation of affection" lawsuit against Pickering's mistress, so that we may all learn all about his terrible affair.

Pickering, of course, lived at C Street, with the Family, all of whom live their lives according to the teachings of Jesus, and all of whom pay below-market rents, because they live in what is classified by the IRS as a Church.

Leisha Pickering alleges that some of the "wrongful conduct" on the part of the woman accused of breaking up the Pickering marriage "occurred and accrued" in Washington, D.C., "at the C Street Complex."

A source familiar with the C Street group said it is difficult to envision a resident carrying on relations with a mistress in the townhouse where he lived with other lawmakers.

And it turns out that Pickering quit the House to spend more time with his mistress, of course.

What is it with C Street? That place is like some sort of Bowery Bawdyhouse.

The blog Next Nature, which describes itself as a site devoted to "nature caused by human culture," asks the question: "How will Michael Jackson appear in heaven?"

Using childhood photo's of Michael and knowledge on basic aging trends, forensic artists constructed a portrait of how Michael would have looked at age 50, had he never undergone plastic surgery.

All of this leads to yet another question, assuming, of course, that there actually is a heaven that God's finest peoples ascend to—What physical form do we take when we get to heaven? Do we appear as we were at the moment of our death, or do we revert back to a time before aging, disease and disfigurement may have set in? Or does God let us choose which physical form we'd like to take when we arrive?

Frankly this a question I obsessed over when I was a wee Cajun lad growing up Catholic in South Louisiana. I bugged the hell out of my Mom and cathecism teachers and just about every other adult I suspected might know the answer. Never did I find one (Naturally), which is one of the many reasons I'm agnostic today.

How Will Michael Jackson Appear in Heaven? [Next Nature]
via Justine Bateman

Pastor Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky is having members of his church along with anybody else in the general, gun-owning public to come on down and hang out! Even better, the New York Times blog The Lede is covering it live, and writing it up quite excitedly ("12:30 p.m. We are just a few hours away from the bring-your-gun-to-church event here at the New Bethel Church in Louisville. Doors open at 4:30 p.m."). It reads like a Phish concert, except, the exact opposite. Notably, the church's insurance company opted out of insuring the church for the day:

The pastor, Ken Pagano, told us a couple of days ago that the church's insurance company was opting out for the day, and that there was some question about whether parishioners would have to leave their guns outside. But I just spoke with Mr. Pagano, and he said he had found new insurance coverage for the day. He would not say who provided it.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Other interesting things: the church is having a $1 raffle for a handgun today. When presented with statistics from an LA Times article regarding church shootings (especially an interesting one about the 18 that happened in 2008, as opposed to the 6 in 2007), Pagano noted that the security of the church was part of the reason he was holding the event in the first place: to encourage churchgoers to secure the church through private gun ownership.

The most recent high-profile church shooting was that of abortion doctor George Tiller. Law enforcement's on hand to make sure none of the guns brought in the church are loaded, but they can't check for concealed weapons (by definition).

Armed and Faithful Count Down [The Lede]
Southern California churches prepare in case gun violence shows up at the altar [LA Times]

Father Cutié, a.k.a. Padre Oprah, a.k.a. That Sizzling Attractive Mega-Pastor That All The Church Ladies Love to Daydream About, got caught by a magazine making out with a lady at the beach (35 year-old Miami lady Ruhama Canellis, btw). That's frowned on by Catholics, apparently. Now he says he's in love with her. He seems sincere. So here's his chance to make his mark as the anticelibacy priest! End this stupid no-fucking-for-Jesus rule forever!

"I don't want to be the anticelibacy priest," he said. "I think that's unfortunate."

The fact that you don't want to be the anticelibacy priest is what's unfortunate, Padre Oprah. Here you are, looking like a movie star, popular, well-adjusted, with a beautiful ladyfriend. What about your unattractive and socially awkward colleagues who are dying to get laid? Are they to speak out for themselves? Everyone will think they're freaky God pervs. You're the man who could make it happen. Do it for your boys. Stand up and proclaim once and for all: God Wants Me to Screw.

See, Mormons believe no one gets in to heaven without being baptized—fair enough. They also believe you can be baptized after you're dead—sure! And further, they believe you can be baptized without your consent, after death, by proxy, by someone you never even knew. That is where you lose us, Mormons.

So some enterprising Mormon decided to baptize Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's late mother, just last June, despite the fact that she died an atheist back in 1995. The Church of Latter-day Saints is all "oh, whoops."

According to "doctrinal background" provided by an LDS spokesman, "well-meaning Church members sometimes bypass this instruction and submit the names of non-relatives for temple baptism. Others - perhaps pranksters or careless persons - have submitted the names of unrelated famous or infamous people, or even wholly fictitious names. These rare acts are contrary to Church policy and sometimes cause pain and embarrassment."

Yes, it's so rare, and so embarrassing. It is embarrassing when someone gets ahold of the documents that show how not-rare it actually is, anyway!

Like how you guys keep baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims? And how they said they were going to stop doing this thing in 1995 and yet the committee formed—in 2005—to monitor it has met only once?

Look, Mormons, we don't care who you baptize, personally. We are just mostly creeped out by your crazy extensive "genealogical database." (But thanks for helping the family figure out which boat great-grandma Pareene came over on! That was pretty cool.)

It's because all those cutbacks at Newsweek give Americans fewer chances to learn about The Historical Jesus.

Our Secretary of State was in Mexico, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and she was all, where did that neat picture come from? Who painted that? The US media is already picking up the story, based on one source, of course: the Catholic News Agency. Here is how they reported this:

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on the tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego in 1531. The image has numerous unexplainable phenomena, such as the appearance on Mary's eyes of those present in the room when the tilma was opened and the image's lack of decay.
[...]
After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked "who painted it?" to which Msgr. Monroy responded "God!"

Yes, of course, everyone knows that. God painted it.

There is, of course, no proof of this conversation having taken place, at all, besides the words of the Catholic News Agency, who, as we just saw, happily reported as fact the idea that god came down with his cosmic oil paints and drew the lady he'd knocked up 1500 years earlier on a cloak for laughs.

Funny story: there is this one reporter named Tim Shipman who writes for The Telegraph, in London. He just publishes whatever he hears from anyone without "corroborating it," which leads to a lot of stories that are kinda made-up!

In the past year he reported that close allies of Gore were pushing him into the Democratic race to end the Clinton-Obama standoff, that former President Bill Clinton warned that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama would have to "kiss his ass" to get an endorsement and that a source close to the new president worried that the insultingly cheap gift of DVDs he gave to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown meant that Obama was "overwhelmed" by his job. Democrats who worked with those campaigns told TWI that these stories were, respectively, "a total lie," "just not true," and "something nobody thinks is true."

Shipman is amused by the criticism. "I never report what I'm not told," he said. "If I have one source who tells me this, I will write that in." After the campaigns or furors are over, he said, the stories hang together, "except, obviously, for the bit about Gore."

Which would be the end of it, because hey, who cares, it's just some English paper. But then there is Mr. Drudge! He pushes these stories into what we charmingly refer to as "the mainstream," which is a bunch of screaming psychopaths on cable news and the narcissistic theater kids who make up the White House press corps.

Not that you can entirely blame the foreign press, of course. There is also Maureen Dowd.

So, look for this amusing Clinton gaffe to go, uh, somewhere. Because Hillary didn't know that God painted that pretty picture.

And thank Him for it! Martha was all slurring her way through the first of what was to be an hour of weird drug double-entendres (Jimmy was going to make chili in a CROCK-POT, see?), but no, time to listen to Cardinal Egan introduce the new archbishop instead.

• His Holiness got a mess of bad publicity when he un-excommunicated (recommunicated?) Bishop Richard Williamson. Williamson split from the church due to the liberalism of Vatican II, and also he denies the holocaust. That's really the biggie, there. Oh, sure, he'll admit that a couple thousand people died accidentally in the concentration camps, but the whole "6 million Jews" and "gas chambers" thing? Total myth! When news of the recommunication of this lunatic broke, it took Pope Ratzi two weeks to respond with his half-assed promise to make the Bishop deny his firmly held beliefs that Jews are the enemies of Christ and that they're agents of the Freemasons. And now the Jews are all mad for some reason!
• Ratzi got less press for another odd move: he brought back Plenary Indulgences. Whoo! Plenary Indulgences!! Those are when the church, uh, forgives for you all your sins and gives you basically a "get out of Purgatory free" card. The idea here is to trick lapsed Catholics into going to confession, and then with some special prayers they get one of these magic tickets to heaven. Fun fact: the selling of Plenary Indulgences is one of the things that ticked off Martin Luther! Readers are advised to take advantage of this St. Paul's Birthday Indulgence deal—they're letting anyone have one.
• Oh, meanwhile the Vatican's getting all caught up in Italy's own version of the fucking Terri Schiavo thing.
• And finally, the Church is officially cool with Charles Darwin. (For those keeping score: evolution: real. Holocaust: pretend.) To be fair, Creationism is really more of a Nutty American Protestant thing than a Catholic thing, but the Church has not traditionally been too pro-science.

Now you may wonder why, exactly, Pope Ratzi is getting such awful press when his predecessor was basically the most beloved Pope ever. Well, for one, Pope John Paul wasn't a member of the Nazi Youth who was then in charge of the Inquisition. But more importantly: "the Pope, unlike his predecessor, does not have a full-time press officer."

Well that explains it.

"It seems to have been agreed by every single media outlet that only one group has the right to challenge Obama's promotion of 'Pastor' Rick Warren, and that group is the constituency of politically organized homosexuals."

That is but the first sentence, of many, in Hitch's fun new column about Warren, which is headlined "Fuck You and Your Fucking Joke of a God, Jesus-Dick." Ha, no, that is not the headline, because the editors of Slate only indulge Hitch so much (too much). Anyway, yes, all we media outlets got together a while back and decided that only "politically organized homosexuals" would be put off by this Warren character. We totally forgot drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjays!

Hitch, a politically unorganized heterosexual, dislikes Warren because of Syria.

And a shame, too, that on Inauguration Day we may also have to stand still—out of respect rather than fear, it is true—and listen to a man who is either a half-witted dupe, a hopeless naif, a cynical tourist who does favors for the powerful, a religious nut bag, a cowardly liar, or perhaps some unappetizing combination of all five. I personally think that the all-five answer is the correct one, because you cannot just find yourself in Syria, smirking into the face of the local despot and being treated like a treasured guest.

Then in the last paragraph he really goes off on Warren. Also there's another odd swipe at the gays, for being so selfish, what with hogging all the Warren-hating, and not caring about Syria.

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Giving the invocation at a presidential inauguration is already a stupid tradition, and Reverend Wright was maybe too much to hope for, but here we go with Rick "It's Not My Job to Tell the President Not to Torture People" Warren of that Saddleback Church, which, like all megachurches, sounds gay.

Warren is a largely inoffensive figure, except as yet one more in long and historic line of American Huckster Ministers, but he's still a right-wing crank in mainstream clothing, like Mike Huckabee. He was pro-Prop 8 for "free speech" reasons, which is a crock of misleading shit.

So the gays aren't thrilled about this. Obama better get an extra campy musical act to make it up to them.

Advertising was historically seen as kind of lowbrow for the work of GOD, but now, what with the atheists attacking and the shitty economy making people long for some salvation, churches are taking advantage of the chance to land new recruits. Right here in New York, the modern-day Gomorrah!

“I think advertising is simply a technique; it’s value neutral,” [religious man who advertises] said. “It can be used to exploit, or it can be used to promote positive messages.”

And what this campaign is selling “is certainly more of an enduring product than the latest potato chip,” he added.

Even Pringles? That's debatable.
[NYT. See the whole quirky campaign here]

Responds Rep. Steve Scalise (R. Louisiana): “I demand an immediate apology from Michael Moore to the people of south Louisiana for his offensive and inappropriate comments. People in Louisiana, regardless of political affiliation, are making plans to leave to protect their families from this serious storm, and the God I know would not share Michael Moore’s glee for our plight.”

Um, yeah, Moore said an idiotic thing. But could the congressman have maybe included more people than just his constituents in his demand for an apology? [FoxNews via OhNoTheyDidn't]

Dear God,

Hi, God, it's me, Heather O'Rourke — the little girl from Poltergeist. How's tricks? I know how busy you must be dealing with the whole Isaac Hayes thing right now (my vote: let him in!), but when you get a second, I was hoping I might ask you for just one tiny little favor. It would really mean a lot, and I've been really good all these years and haven't requested anything except for that pony, but that was, like, 20 years ago when I first got here, and you never got back to me. No probs, though, God — I'm kinda glad it didn't work out, because now I need you to do me a much more important solid: Can you please smite the people responsible for this planned remake of Poltergeist?

I don't quite know how these things work; Brad Renfro told me you helped out with his dealer not too long ago, and that depending on my grievance I could get some "real fucking payback" (his words not mine, LOL). And I think I've got a pretty strong case. I'm sure you've heard about all these movies MGM is recycling — Red Dawn, RoboCop, etc. — which is all pretty tacky, if you ask me. Like, really, God, aren't there any new ideas? Then I heard this morning that they hired some writers to remake my movie Poltergeist. I couldn't believe it! We had such a good thing going back in 1982, and now they're just gonna go and unimaginatively squeeze another few dollars out of the property. I'm practically spinning in my grave!

Now listen, God: I have always minded my manners and been nice to everyone, as per Your dictates. But this really ticks me off, and if everyone else down on Earth gets to bomb, rape and kill each other with impunity, I don't see why I can't just this once ask you to strike someone with lightning or cast them opposite Billy Bob Thornton or at least scare some honest-to-You sense into them. Have you seen Poltergeist, God? I mean, I know you probably anticipated a lot of the twists, but didn't we do a good job overall — good enough to be left alone, anyway? It's not like we made Short Circuit (another forthcoming remake, but that's not my problem) or anything.

And frankly, God, You've already made enough trouble with the whole curse that brought me and my on-screen sister Dominique Dunne here prematurely. I think teaching these heathens a lesson would be a healthy first step in rehabilitating Your image among us.

Anyway, the people at MGM are named Harry Sloan, Mary Parent and Cale Boyter. The writers' names are Stiles White and Juliet Snowden, but I guess technically it's not their fault that this is happening, so please go easy on them — maybe an extended power outage, or an erased hard drive if they dare to revive my signature line, "They're heeeeeere." I trust You to determine the punishment for the studio people, though, especially with those other perversions they've wreaked of late. In fact, if You could get Tom Cruise himself to kill this project, I promise to clean my room and make my bed and eat my vegetables as long as I... well, You know.

So how about it, God? I'm really a sweet girl, but isn't enough enough? Let me know...

xo,

Heather

PS Leroi Moore, God? Really? That's just mean.