Well, 2012 is almost upon us. On Dec. 21 of that year—according to an interpretation of an ancient Maya calendar—the world is supposed to end. To that I respond, “Thank Christ Quetzalcoatl! It’s about frickin time!”

One of my greater pleasures in life is observing the hilarious backpedalings of certain crackpot prophets when the horrifying doomsday scenarios they champion don’t arrive. A recent example is radio minister Harold Camping, whose explanation for his incorrect rapture prediction was to claim that God was still collecting data. Then he predicted a new, modified rapture date, which came and went without so much as a single frog falling from the sky.

This is why I can’t wait for Dec. 22, 2012. Because there will be not one, but thousands of kooky soothsayers who will have to backpedal like hell once Mayageddon is proven to be horse shit. And I know it’s horse shit for three reasons:

The first is because I’m not an idiot. I realize, as a person with a full-functioning brain, that human beings are unable to predict what’s going to happen when they step out the door tomorrow morning, much less what will happen 5,126 years in the future.

The second is because the Mayas made no such prediction. This is a common misconception. There are no ancient hieroglyphs, no tomes, nor scrolls, nor scriptures that say, “Homies-of-the-future, beware! The world ends in 2012. Sucks for you, yo.”

“There are no Maya prophesies that seem to claim the world is going to end,” said Dr. Mark Van Stone, an expert in Maya hieroglyphs and author of Science & Prophecy of the Ancient Maya, in a KPBS interview. Stone said that 2012 is mentioned only once in any known Maya inscription, and all it says about what will happen on that date is that a minor god, named Bolon Yokte, will float down to Earth and “dress up.”

Yup, that’s what they believed. He was going to dress up, probably in some sort of ritualistic beak-and-feather costume, and prance around like a bird in flight.

Bolon Yokte: God of silly costumes

The Mayas never predicted an apocalypse. That was our own idiotic, superstitious interpretation of the fact that a Maya calendar “ends” in 2012. And I put “ends” in quotation marks because it’s not quite the right word. “Reverts” is the better word. There are no endings in the Maya calendar. In fact, the Maya calendar is not a single calendar at all; rather, it’s a series of 17 calendars, all of which have different cycles. For instance, the trecena calendar was on a 13-day cycle, the veintena calendar denoted a 20-day phase, the calendar round (a combination of other calendars) was roughly a 52-year cycle, containing the most common calendar, the tzolkin, which used 260-day intervals.

It’s all quite confusing and I barely scratch the surface of understanding any of it; however, for the purposes of this discussion, all we need to know is that the calendar that “ends” on Dec. 21, 2012 (called the long count calendar), is on a 5,126-year loop, after which a new cycle (or b’ak’tun) begins. So, saying the world will end in 2012 because that’s when the cycle reverts is like saying it will end on Saturday, because that’s the last day of the week.

The third reason I know that Mayageddon will not happen is because the Mayas were morons. Now, before I get a bunch of angry letters from MAAD (Maya Alliance Against Defamation), let me clarify: What I mean is, they were primitives—maybe not when compared with other civilizations of their time, but compared with more modern cultures of, say, the last 1,000 years, the Mayas were dumb as thumbtacks.

Of all the civilizations and religions in history that predicted different doomsday scenarios, we’re supposed to believe it’s these guys who had it right? The same geniuses who believed people are made of corn? The Einsteins who sliced open their penises with stingray spines to facilitate communication with deceased ancestors? The Darwins who drowned pre-pubescent children in order to satisfy a cranky rain god? The rocket scientists who divined the future by talking to birds. We’re talking about the Maya, who hung beads in front of their babies’ faces in order to cross their eyes permanently—these are your go-to guys for credible predictions? I wouldn’t let a Maya pick my next football parlay, let alone when I can safely start maxing out my Visa for an Armageddon credit blowout.

Still not convinced, crackpot prophets? OK, how about a bet? If the Mayapocalypse doesn’t arrive on schedule, you have to dress in a ceremonial beak-and-feather costume and walk around Horton Plaza with a sign that says “Bird brain.” And if the prophecy does come true, I have to give you my spot in the bunker I built when Y2K was upon us. Yeah, I know—silly me. But I was afraid I would get hit by one of those planes that were supposed to drop out of the sky.

Ed Decker
12.12.11

Imagine my delight when I read this headline on the Orlando Sentinel website:

“Lightning strike at Caylee memorial ‘could be a sign from the angels.’”

Apparently, a few hours after Judge Belvin Perry sentenced Casey Anthony to time served, lightning struck a 60-foot pine tree near where the body of Anthony’s daughter, Caylee, was found. It was also the spot where a makeshift memorial for the toddler had sprung up, with flowers and stuffed animals and whatnot. There were no witnesses to the actual lightning strike.

Naturally, the god-slobberers were all over this.

“Indeed this was God….” said a commenter on the Sentinel website.

“Goes to show ya what can happen when you play with the devil,” said another.

Tammy Vicino of Orlando said the lightning strike symbolizes “celestial justice for Caylee because ‘there was no justice here on Earth.’”

Then there was this poem, called “Lightning Struck a Tree Today,” with all of the author’s typos and gloriously atrocious grammar intact:

Lightning struck a tree today

near where they founr our dear Caylee

God & Angels both agree

that her mom, Cassey is guilty.

She then added, “Proceeds will go to Caylee.org,” which raises the question: Proceeds from what? Her anthology of “Vacuous Message Board Poetry (Volume 1: Select Infanticide Poems)”?Isn’t it incredulous that in the 21st century—with a mountain of science explaining how weather works—people still believe there’s a man in the sky who hurls incandescent spears of fire to express wrath or deliver vengeance?

Look, I’m not all that stunned or outraged by the Anthony verdict. I’m one of the few people who feel the prosecution fell slightly short of their burden of proof. However, assuming she was guilty, and God does enjoy, ahem, hurling incandescent spears of fire to express his wrath or deliver vengeance, wouldn’t you have to agree that this wasn’t one of those times? If you believe in an all-powerful Supreme Being who created every living thing and every non-living thing (such as Nancy Grace)—then wouldn’t that Supreme Being have a better sense of timing and accuracy?

The timing was certainly ineffectual. That lightning bolt hit the tree several hours after sentencing. Laaame! It should’ve been immediate. Actually, it should have been two days earlier, when the verdict was read. The sentencing was just anti-climactic. Any deity with halfway decent PR skills knows that verdict readings are the best time to send celestial messages of wrath and vengeance.  Not to mention, it was the verdict that would have launched God into a tirade. He would have roared, “That’s fucking bullshit!” and marched directly over to his Locker of Celestial Weapons of Wrath and Vengeance, retrieved the brightest, sharpest lightning bolt (plague and pestilence being a bit much for this situation) and dropped it right between the squiggly 666 marks on the top of Casey Anthony’s dome as she hugged and kissed her lawyers.

Certainly, that would have been a more effective message than striking a pine tree, in the woods, several yards from her memorial site, unseen by anyone. The only message that sends is: God hates sap.

“That is what I call Karma,” Michelle Cooper told the Sentinel reporter about the lightning strike, to which I say, “Yeah, girl, Karma! That’ll teach a tree to be all tall and shit.”

God’s accuracy was awful, too. Clearly God wasn’t aiming for the tree. He was aiming for the spot where Caylee’s body was found, 20 feet from the tree—which is bad aim even for a bunch of retired army buddies playing drunken-fat-guy lawn darts. However, for the Almighty—who doesn’t drink and is quite buff—well, let’s just say the 2007 Republican presidential debate it ain’t.

Remember that lightning strike? When moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Rudy Giuliani about his soft stance against abortion? Just as Giuliani began to answer, lightning hit the building and fritzed his microphone. Now that is timing and accuracy!

Another fantastic example of timing and accuracy was an incident in 2003, when lightning struck the steeple of a church in Ohio—at the exact moment the preacher was shouting up to the heavens for God to give him a sign. Of course, nobody said, “See, God hates churches,” even though it caught fire and sustained about $20,000 in damages.

Speaking of churches and lightning, after Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1753, it was condemned as an instrument of Satan. The reason? Because lightning is a display of God’s displeasure and it is blasphemous to interfere with God’s will.

What followed was predictable, sweeping, church-incited hysteria resulting in lightning rods being torn from roofs throughout Europe and America, and more than a few “witches” being burned for meddling with the will of God:

• In Boston, Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of Old South Church, blamed the lightning rod for causing the Massachusetts earthquake of 1755.
• St. Bride’s Church in London had been destroyed by lightning several times before they put up a lightning rod.
• In Austria, the Church of Rosenburg was struck so often and with so many casualties that the peasants feared to attend services. It was not until 1778, 26 years after Franklin’s discovery, that church authorities finally permitted a rod to be attached. Then all trouble ceased.
• In Germany, within a span of 33 years, nearly 400 towers were damaged and 120 bell ringers were killed before they got around to installing a rod.
• Then there was the most infamous case of the church in Brescia, Italy, that scorned lightning-rod technology despite having 200,000 pounds of gun powder stored in its vault. When lightning struck in 1767, a large section of the city was destroyed and 3,000 people died.*

It took churches decades to accept the science of the lightning rod and thousands more lives were lost because—well go figger—lightning prefers tall things. I guess that explains why our little bolt in Orlando hit a tree and not the spot on the ground where they found Caylee. But wait! If God was aiming for the shrine, and the lightning was aiming for the tree, doesn’t that mean that the will of lightning is greater than the will of God? I imagine the Lord thy God being quite frustrated by that conversation.

Lord Thy God: OK, Lightning, I want you to strike Casey Anthony on the head as soon as the verdict is announced.

Lightning Bolt: Sorry, I don’t believe in the death penalty.

God: Grrr! OK, well, we have to send a message of some sort. How about you jolt the memorial site?

LB: Nah, I’d rather hit a pine tree.

God: A pine tree!? But why?

LB: Cuz they think they’re sooo cool being all tall and shit.

Ed Decker
06.20.11

*Thanks to Evolvefish for the history of the lightning rod
BONUS FEATURE

More Vacuous Infanticide Poetry
by Edwin Decker

“Lightning Struck a Tree Today (Part 2).”

Lightning struck a tree

near where they found Caylee

God’s and angels both agree

you must be batshit crazy

What is this 1383 A.D.?

Giant poster of Pope Paul II at Vatican

As many of you know, I was in Italy with family recently, and happened to be at the Vatican while they were gearing up for the heavily anticipated beatification ceremony of Pope John Paul II.

What a spectacle!

Beatification is the last stage before canonization, which is when a particular holy-person is recognized as a saint. To be beatified, the Holy-Person-in-Question (HPQ) must have performed a Vatican-approved, posthumous miracle. Then the HPQ must perform a second miracle to be canonized.

The first miracle has already happened. A Parkinson’s beleaguered nun prayed directly to Deucey (my pet name for Paul II) and lo, was her disease promptly cured. The alleged miracle was investigated by the Vatican’s top theological and, ahem, medical experts and approved by current pope Benedict XVI, leaving Deucey to perform only one more miracle—which explains why your devout Catholic grandmother constantly keeps checking the back of her tortillas.

It is important to note that this process does not make the HPQ a saint. It merely recognizes that they have always been one, that God deemed them a saint a looong time ago, before they were born probably, and I gotta say, if I were an un-canonized saint—chilling beside the pool at God’s palace, trying to enjoy my ambrosia margarita while all these Vatican assworms were demanding I show them a second miracle, I would jump down onto the dome of St. Peter’s and say, “Listen up pissants! I’ll show you as many miracles as I freaking feel like showing!”

Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of controversy surrounding Deucey’s canonization, largely because Pope Benedict is rushing the process. He waived the traditional five-year waiting period and pushed the rest of the phases through so quickly, the beatification of Deucey is now on record as being the fastest in papal history. Which makes me wonder, when Deucey is canonized, of what will he be a patron?

As you probably know, there is a patron saint for just about anything you can think of. There is a patron saint of train travel, a patron saint for financial success, a patron saint against shipwrecks, a patron saint against witchcraft, a patron saint for bankers, bakers, bikers, beggars, bruises, butchers, butlers, beekeepers and babies. There is a patron saint for blackbirds, blacksmiths, blackheads and black people (the patron saint of Negroes is Benedict the Black). There – is a patron saint of bartenders (my man, Saint Amand of Maastricht). There is a patron saint for greeting card manufacturers (St. Valentine) because, you know, blessed are the greeting card manufacturers! There are also highly silly or embarrassing patronages, such as patron saint against scabies, warts, hernias and hydrophobia and I hope, when Deucey is canonized, he’s assigned one of those embarrassing patronages, something like, “patron saint of fromunda”—because the whole thing stinks!

That’s why Benedict is rushing Deucey through the process. Because any discussion of his potential sainthood must include the fact that it’s largely his fault that The Lord’s Church became such an enormous smoking and sparking engine of sexual molestation. (Talk about a Deus ex machina!). So, the instant some miracle-hungry Bible clutcher finds a grease-stained tortilla that vaguely resembles a man’s face, Benedict and his Vatican experts will rubber stamp it as a miracle faster than anyone can say, “Hey! That taco stain looks like Lady Gaga!”

They’ll canonize Deucey even though any clear-thinking person (who, um, happens to believe in saints, angels, praying and miracles and stuff) knows no real saint would’ve let the abuse scandal happen. Any clear-thinking person (who believes in holy dead people who return to Earth in the form of magical ethnic foods) knows that not only is the former pontifex maximus not a saint, but that he’s the exact opposite: He’s an Aint: as in, the Patron Aint of Letting Children get Systematically Sexually Abused (oh, and also, of diarrhea and dingleberries).

And he let it happen alright. Consider the case of Father Marcial Degollado, who continued to receive Deucey’s protection even after a guilty verdict. Consider assface Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, whom the former pontiff scuttled out of town (moments before his arrest) and rewarded with the ultra-cushy job of Archpriest in charge of Basilica Maggiore in Rome—instead of granting Law the more appropriate title of, Arch-Pederast in Charge of Lava Pit 36 in Hell.

Arch Assface

Deucey did not punish a single child-raping scumbag or any of the high-ranking scumbags who shielded child-raping scumbags. Because he either didn’t know what was going on (which means “The Holy See,” didn’t see shit) or he knew and kept oiling and gassing the engine—the Rapus ex Machina—anyway. So it will take more than your standard, Cure-One-Case-of-Parkinson’s kind of miracle to make me believe that asshead was a saint. Admittedly, I’m a bit of a miracle snob but, c’mon—curing Parkinson’s? Cancer? That shit don’t impress me. Diseases go into remission. It’s rare, but it happens; and it’s just plain silly to confuse our ignorance about disease with divine intervention.

I was talking about this with my wife’s parents. We pondered the age-old question, “How come God never heals amputees?” I’m sure lots of people throughout the centuries have prayed for their limbs to be returned, so why has that type of miracle never happened? Because that type of miracle would be a freaking miracle! The real deal! It’s the kind of thaumaturgy Deucey would need to show me in order to even consider canonizing him. Here are a few other miracles I’d accept from Paul II:

• Replace every gun on the planet with a toy bang-flag gun.
• Instead of frogs, make jalapeno poppers fall from the sky.
• Make NFL players and owners suddenly realize their greed and agree to reduce everyone’s salaries enough that parents can bring some of their kids to a game without having to pawn the others.
• Make all traffic-control video cameras also record the bedrooms of the City Council members who voted for them.
• Make Fox News self-aware.
• Make a strip club ATM that doesn’t charge more than the amount you’re trying to withdraw.
• Make the CEO of every oil company suddenly realize his greed and—actually, just smite all the oil company CEOs.
• Turn Newt Gingrich into a newt.
• Sara Palin / Michelle Bachman lesbian sex tape—free download!
• On your next taco appearance, turn the guacamole back into an avocado.

Are you hearing these prayers, Deucey? Screw this Curing-One-Person-At-A-Time, noise! How about curing everyone who got AIDS because of your medieval, anti-condom crusade? Or, if you really want to impress me, go back in time and un-molest all those kids whose lives were destroyed on your watch. Now that’s a miracle I could rubber-stamp.

Click here to order your limited-edition Vaticondoms: The Condoms with the Pope on the Package!

My man, Saint Amand of bartenders

Image by Karyl Miller (http://www.millerreport.com/)

“The 20-year legal fight over the cross on Mount Soledad took another turn Tuesday when a federal appeals court ruled the towering landmark [is] unconstitutional”

—San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan. 5

I love this ruling. I do believe that a giant, Latin cross on the city-owned peak of the tallest mountain in the area is an example of government “establishing” a religion. I also believe this issue is complex and nuanced. I believe is reasonable, for those who want the cross to stay, to pose such questions as:

1. Is the seemingly endless legal battle worth our time and money?
2. At which point does the historic and the religious become inseparable?
3. What does the word “establishment” exactly mean in the context of the Constitution?

On these questions, reasonable minds can disagree. However it is difficult to find reasonable minds in a group that interprets the words of a 3,500-year-old Testament—written by a bunch of toga-wearing winos—literally, as if it were, you know, a Bible or something.

In the case of the true believer, “reason” has nothing to do with it. Their arguments tend toward the ridiculous and reactionary—such as the opinion (articulated in the U-T article cited above) that the Soledad cross “is a secular landmark amid a larger [war] memorial and has no explicit religious meaning.”

Secular landmark? No explicit religious meaning? Question, when God was passing out brains, did you think he said, “pains” and ask for a dull one? OK, sure, the cross may have had a couple of now-obsolete meanings that predate Christ by a few hundred years. However in this country, in this century, saying the cross is a symbol of something other than Christianity is like saying “My Ding-a-Ling” is a song about Chuck Berry’s retarded brother.

The cross is the central symbol of Christianity. Every believer worth his weight in Frankincense owns and displays one somewhere, whether in their homes, adorning the bodies or dangling from their rearview mirrors. The only Christian who doesn’t have a cross in his possession is Christ himself (crosses make Jesus squeamish), so let’s please not entertain this “secular landmark” notion any further.

Another example of an unreasonable reasoning by religious reactionaries is the recurring, false analogy between the Mount Soledad cross and the Ground Zero mosque.

“I think it sucks,” wrote one of my god-fearing Facebook friends. “We can build mosques near ground zero, [yet] tear down crosses, all in the name of a First Amendment?”

Now, this friend is usually a smart fellow. I was astonished that he hadn’t divined the obvious difference between the two situations: The cross is on public land while the so-called Ground Zero mosque was to be built on private property. What was even more astonishing was, after pointing the difference out, he didn’t seem to understand why it mattered, which tells me that he’s hysterically blinded to matters regarding faith.

Finally, another utterly unreasonable reaction to the ruling was from the American Center for Law and Justice, which said the ruling is “a judicial slap in the face of veterans.”

Now, if the good folks at the American Center for Pandering and Tearmongering had done some research, they’d have learned that there are plenty of vets who applaud the court’s decision. Indeed, it was a veterans’ group that nudged it forward, via The Jewish War Veterans of the United States v. Rumsfeld.

Jewish vets love crosses the way Marie Antoinette loved guillotines, so it’s unlikely any were offended by this court ruling. Nor will Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu soldiers feel dissed. OK, sure, maybe the Christian soldiers might be all butt-hurt about it, but it’s not the solider part of them that cares, it’s the Christian part.

I asked a former neighbor of mine, Sergeant Seth Reil, of the Marine Corps K-9 unit, what he thought about the “slap in the face” comment. Sergeant Reil, it should be noted, handled the bomb sniffing dogs that sussed out enemy explosives. As the first person to enter a suspicious zone, it was and  extroardinarily dangerous job.

“The Christian community has completely discounted the sacrifices made by members of other religions . . . or those who don’t worship a higher power at all,” said Sergeant Reil. “[It] has ‘slapped’ veterans in the face with their bigotry and intolerance. As a veteran, I fought for freedom for my family, and yours, not for a cross on a hill.”

That’s the thing about this, It’s-Just-a-War-Memorial-and-Has-No-Explicit-Religious-Meaning bullshit. If it’s really about commemorating American soldiers, then put a symbol up there that represents all of them, like the U.S. flag, because, when you think about it, there’s only one thing American soldiers have in common, and that’s America. I ask you, what vet could be offended by Old Glory? What American, for that matter? It’s a no-brainer!

What’s that now? Not a fan of the flag idea? “Been there and done that,” you say? That’s alright, I have three more ideas:

• Erect a 100-foot statue of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar beside an enormous, functioning stack of Marshall amplifiers. Every day at noon, pipe Hendrix’s live, Woodstock version of “The Star Spangled Banner” through the amps. Set volume knobs at 11 and blast it across the land.

• Keep the cross where it is, but also include, of equal size, the religious symbols of every soldier who ever fought in any U.S. war. Those would include Hinduism, Islam, Rastafari, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shamanism, Zoroastrianism, Druidism, Wicca, Vodun, Baha’i, Mormonism, Buddhism, O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, Estonian mythology, Klingon, Eskimo, Scientolo—ah, to Hell with this idea, just ditch the damn cross!

• Forego symbols altogether and honor past and present soldiers with something actual—something that matters—like immediate troop withdrawal, and a kibosh on the insane, perma-war mentality of the military industrial complex.

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine

Ed Decker
01.19.11

This “No mosque at ground zero” backlash has spiraled out of control. Not until all the erroneous, exaggerated and / or hypocritical hype swirling around the issue ceases will anyone be able to have a reasonable debate about the issue. For instance:

• Stop calling it a mosque. The proposed Cordoba House will not be a mosque. It will be a 13-story Islamic cultural center featuring an auditorium, performing arts center, fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, theater, childcare area, bookstore, culinary school, art studio, food court, 9/11 memorial and an interfaith prayer space which, itself, does not even meet the definition of “mosque.”

• Stop saying they want to put it on ground zero. It will not be on ground zero, it will be near it, which means—it don’t mean nuthin’. The word “near” has as many meanings as the number of people who utter it.

• Stop saying the Cordoba Initiative is offensive to the relatives of the victims of 9/11. The families and friends of the victims are not a single entity. And many are in favor of the initiative, such as the group September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which feels the best way to honor their loved ones is to stay true to our national convictions.

• Stop saying that Muslims are taking over the country, and that we must stop the Islamification of America. How could we be in danger of being Islamified when everyone knows it’s the Mexicans who are taking over? Or wait, is it the blacks? Puerto Ricans? Eyetalians? Irish? Darn, I forget. Which were the ones that hump like rabbits and leech off the system again? Anyway, the point is, we’re in far more danger of the increased Christianification of America than anything else.

• Unless you’re a deaf, dumb, blind, prematurely born infant living in an opaque incubator, stop saying, “President Obama supports the Cordoba project because he is a Muslim.” Enough already! He’s not a fucking Muslim! And stop saying “Muslim” like it equates him with terrorism.

• Christian conservatives must stop saying that this is not an issue of religious freedom because “the Nation of Islam is not just a religion, but a system of laws and political principles.” They must stop saying this because the same could be said about their age-old argument that, America is a Christian nation and that our laws are based on Christian principles.

• Stop playing “Born in the U.S.A.” at your anti-Islam rallies. “Born in the U.S.A.” is not a jingoistic, xenophobic, rootin’ tootin’ pro-America anthem; it’s a eulogy for the death of America’s ideals—which, hmm, I guess is ironically appropriate after all.

• Stop saying terrorists will use the Cordoba House as a place to plot future attacks. Christ, is Fox News the only thing that gets piped into your incubation chamber? Do you really believe that a group of covert terrorist sleeper cells are going to convene in the building upon which every eye in the country is suspiciously fixed; a place that’s surrounded by people who would accuse you of terrorism if you walked by with a gyro in your hand; a place that will be scrutinized, demonized and spied-upon for years to come? Really? This is the location at which you think the next terrorist plot will be hatched?

• For crying out loud, stop saying, “I believe in religious freedom but….” There is no but in the First Amendment. No asterisks. No footnotes. There is no contingency that says, “Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion except when we’re really, really afraid of that religion.” Ah, but isn’t that the American way? We behold the Bill of Rights during times of peace, but during scarier times of high global tension—when we need them most— we toss our convictions in the trash like a black banana.

Oh well, whaddya gonna do when fear and suspicion take root? Still, if we’re going to be intolerant in terms of religion, then we should at least be consistent. From now on, let’s not allow any Roman Catholic churches near schools, playgrounds or other zones where young, molestable children congregate. Nor should there be any churches near abortion clinics or government buildings, since several Christian terrorists have bombed and murdered the people inside. Don’t build any Christian, Muslim, Mormon or Jewish buildings near gay communities, because those religions have been pissing on homosexuals for centuries. Ditto the YWCA, Curves, Chippendales and any other “sacred” female grounds, as organized religion has been pissing on women for centuries, too.

Look, I hate Islam as much as I hate the next religion. To me, they are all intolerant, idiotic and responsible for terrorism in one way or another. But I love the First Amendment. So how about we take this opportunity—after all our self-aggrandizing talk about America being the greatest country—to show the world what we stand for? Let’s show our enemies they don’t scare us and put that 13-story Muslim center smack-dab in the middle of ground zero, like a massive fuck-you finger directed at our enemies, or a welcoming boner of peace, poised and positioned to spread the seed of human rights all over the planet.

First, let’s get the disclaimer out of the way. Fred Phelps is, in fact, a toadfucker. Ditto his family, his friends and all the assphibian followers of his Westboro Baptist Church, who deserve to be repeatedly dunked in the deepest, scaldingest lava pit in Hell if Hell actually existed.

You’ve heard of Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), right? This is the organization that despises homosexuality so much that the URL to its website is GodHatesFags.com. They believe The Lord is punishing America because we “enable” homosexual behavior. They’ve made a name for themselves picketing the funerals of people like Coretta Scott King (a revolting effort), Mathew Shepard (sickening), the victims of the Sago mine disaster (sickening and silly), Mr. Rogers (WTF?!), Ronnie James Dio (well, that makes sense) and Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder—not because he was gay (he wasn’t), but because the WBC believes soldiers, by virtue of their enlistment, further enable America’s enabling of homosexuality, so God smite him.

With picket signs like “U.S. Fag Army” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” WBC has really proven itself to be out of its mother-lovin’ skull! But get this: As gnat-shit crazy as Westboro Baptist Church is, it isn’t one iota more deranged than any other church—certainly not more so than the Roman Catholic Church, nor the United Methodists, the Evangelical Lutherans, the Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and the rest.

Just check the chatterdome—the TV talk shows, talk radio, Internet and all the other forums in which these WBC pickets are being discussed. Observe how many religious-types are denouncing WBC, saying that the church isn’t representing the word of God, that picketing soldiers’ funerals is against The Lord’s wishes and that Jesus loves and forgives homosexuals—which is every bit as insane as the insanity Phelps is spewing. Because they’re all doing the same thing: They’re all acting as if they know what God wants or thinks. And you know what? It’s actually the Westboro Baptist Church, and not the more mainstream churches, that has the better grasp on what God wants or thinks. A quick look at the Bible will prove it.

“[B]ut the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” Luke 17

You hear that, people? God murdered every living being in Sodom and Gomorrah (infants included) because some of them were wicked. And, he’s about to do it again—to us! Indeed, The Lord Thy Father is every bit the barbarian Fred Phelps says he is. Check it out: God murdered Judah’s son for no stated reason. God murdered Lot’s wife for committing the terrible sin of looking back. God brought a seven-year famine to the entire planet. God recommends the death penalty for the owners of disobedient oxen. God sends babies to Hell who haven’t been baptized. God drowned everyone on the planet except Noah and his family. God killed Nick Drake, yet Celine Dion lives on. God will let a serially murdering, corpse-dismembering, cannibalistic monster into Heaven if he confesses on his deathbed, yet will send an African aboriginal to Hell for never having heard of Jesus. And, of course, all through the Bible are quotes from God in which he reveals a murderous hatred toward homosexuals. Clearly, if there is a God, and the Bible is his Word, then the Westboro Church is right about what it preaches.

The same is true of extremists in other religions, too. Muslim fundamentalist terrorists, for instance, have correctly interpreted the Koran as being hostile toward nonbelievers of the Muslim faith. “Kill them wherever you find them,” it says, which, I would argue, means you’re not a good Muslim if you’re not running around killing infidels all the time. Ditto the Bible and Christians. Sure, there are plenty of quotes in the Bible about God being the loving Father and protector and all that, but they are rendered obsolete by all his rampaging and city-smiting. Put another way, it doesn’t matter how many blind and crippled people you healed when you have even one apocalyptic plague on your record. Take the Plague of Death to Firstborn Sons, for instance.

“Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well.” Exodus 12:29

Wow! God really is an all-round sumbitch. He certainly isn’t very nice to bovines. And while he may condemn abortion, he apparently isn’t all that opposed to killing kids after they’re born. Anyway, the point is, all WBC is doing is parroting the Bible as it’s written. Naturally, I happen to think the Bible—as it’s written—is a pile of oxen shit, which is why I get to call the WBC an insane bunch of toadfuckers, while anyone who believes the Bible to be the true word of God, does not.

At the behest of a friend, I logged on to The Mikey Show website to listen to several of his Friday-morning radio testimonials.

For those who don’t know the back-story, in January, Mikey Esparza, the infamous morning cock-jock, left Rock 105.3 (KIOX), and moved to FM 94/9 (KZBT), where the new Mikey morning show now resides. The Mikey Show is like every other morning monkey-house program, with one exception: Every Friday, at the end of his broadcast, Mikey—former purveyor of filth, smut and depravity; former self-proclaimed shit-talking assdouche—tells his audience the story of how Jesus saved his life. He calls the segment his “testimony,” and it is, judging from the shows I’ve heard, the same thing every week: Mikey cues up the melodramatic music bed—a gloomy, meandering, reverb-drenched guitar track (think Ry Cooder on morphine)—and, in a soft, contemplative voice, tells the story of his sexual molestation as a child and the vortex of depression, self-loathing and addictions that ravaged him until Christ came along.

“In 2003, I was laying in bed one night,” he says. “I knew I was going to die, so I asked Jesus to come into my life.” Apparently, Jesus did just that, because soon after, Mikey’s life began to steadily improve.

At the end of his Friday testimony, Mikey tells people with addiction problems where on his website they can find help, then segues into a song. It’s usually the same song, a tune by Third Day called “Tunnel,” about which he implores, “Listen to the lyrics. I mean, really listen. It’s a song of hope.”

Now, I want you to understand that despite my many sarcastic writings about religion and the religious, I don’t have a problem with Mikey’s radio testimonial—per se. For one thing, I’m usually up all night drinking, drugging and sacrificing small animals, so rising early enough to catch his blubbering is difficult. Secondly, and I’ve said this before, I don’t blame believers for spreading The Word as they tend to do. Truth is, if I were to believe in that stuff—if I were to believe that there’s a great ancient king who sits in a throne overlooking a city on the clouds, where the houses are carved from giant strawberries and a chocolate river runs through the village square, and all you have to do to live in this fantastic city is to heed the king, but if you don’t heed the king, then you go to this other city, down below, where it rains boiling blood all day and the vapors from a lake of fire melt your eyeballs over and over again, for eternity—then, yeah, you bet, every freaking column I were to write till the day I die would be about accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior and how to stay the hell out of Hell. So, I get why Mikey talks Jesus talk on the air. What I don’t get is why 94/9 allows it. Everybody knows, rock ’n’ roll radio is no place for religious worship!

Hey look, 94/9, I love you guys, but c’mon. Forget about the contradiction in your scheduling one of those morning hornblower shows after years of snickering at other radio stations for having morning hornblower shows. Forget that your tagline says you’re “about the music,” even though these morning chatgasms have nothing to do with the music. And forget how you incessantly bragged that you never talked over the songs, even though, now, not only are you talking over the music, but you’re talking over the music—with Jesus talk!

Et tu, rock radio station? Can’t you just leave the Jesus music to the choirboys, church organists, sweater-vested smiley-minstrel  folk groups and vocally marginal, Brillo-haired housewives whose families convinced them to record albums of drippy worship songs? Rock ’n’ Roll is Satan’s domain, dammit, and any radio outfit that doesn’t understand that should be stripped of its rock credentials and become a 24-hour Pat Boone-a-palooza station.

So, yeah, it’s 94/9, not Mikey Esparza, who’s to blame for this crime against rhythm and bluesmanity. That said, Mikey, if you’re reading, I have two pieces of advice, both involving the music in your testimonial segment:

1. Lose the guitar bed. It’s an obvious manipulation of your listeners’ emotions. Earnest testimonials about molestation, addiction and despair don’t need sappy, reverby music backgrounds. Once you rip a listener’s heart out of his or her chest, it doesn’t much matter what you do with it next. After that, it’s all overkill. Just tell your story unaccompanied by musical melodrama and let the words do all the heart-ripping.

2. If you’re going to play the same song at the end of your testimonials, and you implore the audience to listen to the words, well, then, you had better be certain the words do not suck. They need to be intelligent, unique, creative words and not a repetition of clichés, such as with the lyrics of “Tunnel”:

“There’s a light at the end of this tunnel / Shinin’ bright at the end of this tunnel / For you, for you / So keep holdin’ on…”

That’s your song of hope? Ok, sure, if by “hope” you mean, I hope somebody stabs me in the ears with a pair of scissors. Telling someone to concentrate on the words to Tunnel is like telling the heretic you’re torturing to concentrate on the spikes of the iron maiden you’ve strapped him into. “OK, now, listen carefully to the sound of the blades as they pierce your flesh and organs. I want you to listen, I mean really listen, to the sound of your own screams.”

Other than that, Mikey, good job on taking your life back. I would argue that it wasn’t Jesus that saved you, but that’s hardly what matters here. You are alive and thriving and helping people in your sincere, though utterly ridiculous, way. I can respect that.

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat

EJD
03.03.10

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a discrimination case brought by The Christian Legal Society (CLS) against University of California’s Hastings College of Law (UC Hastings) because the university denied the Christian group recognition as an official campus organization based on the Christian group’s policy against homosexuality.

Put another way, UC Hastings excluded the CLS because the CLS excludes gays.

Of course, the CLS—and just about every other Christian group in the country that thinks “The First Amendment” is a term Italian seamstresses use to describe the initial time they repaired an item of clothing—have expressed their disgust for the UC Hastings’ decision.

“Public universities shouldn’t single out Christian student groups for discrimination,” said Kim Colby, a spokesperson for the CLS. “We trust the Supreme Court will not allow UC Hastings to continue to deprive Christian Legal Society… by forcing the group to abandon its identity as a Christian student organization.”

Wow. “Discriminate”? “Deprive”? “Single out”? “Force to abandon”? This from the people who are always running at the mouth about how this country was founded on Christian principles, by Christian forefathers, and is overwhelmingly populated by Christians—yet somehow manage to get their rectums all in a rectangle because they think they are the ones who are being excluded.

Not only are these people not victims of exclusion, they are the excluders of the worst sort. They are The Exclusionista—an organized, rampaging junta invading The City of Inclusivity, storming its palace, killing the burgermeister and raping his wife and daughters. After all, who “discriminates” more than the religious right? Who “deprives” and “singles out” more than the moral majority. Who “forces to abandon” more than those fundamentalist faith-crazed homothropes who commit their sons and daughters to reparative aversion therapy and other forms of mind control to “force them to abandon” their same-sex predilections? I believe there is a special desk job in Hell’s DMV for anyone who can do that in the name of their faith and have the gall to claim victimhood.

Take, for instance, the holiday season. Oh, how they stomped and spit and shat themselves when (and if) they were prohibited from erecting their nativity scenes on government property, all the while ignoring that, when government favors one religion, it does so at the exclusion of the others.

Ditto the Mount Soledad war memorial controversy (which, incidentally, may be headed back to court). The Exclusionista howled to Christ on high whenever anyone tried to exclude their precious, bloated cross from city land, forgetting that the cross excludes every fallen soldier who did not believe Jesus died for our sins yet died in our fucking wars regardless.

Then you have Proposition 8 and the gay-marriage debate. Prop. 8 is The Exclusionista’s magnum opus. It is their finest symphony and, really, Prop. 8 should be called, “Symphony Eight,” because it’s so good that it’s actually one better than Beethoven’s Ninth.

Also known as “My little symphony in F.U.,” The Exclusionista’s eighth begins with two oboes prancing across the first movement like two fems figure-skating upon a frozen lake of gayness. Then the baritone bassoons thunder in, as if to say to the oboes, “Get off our ice, get off our ice, you are so gay, get off our ice.” And the oboes go, “No, no, no, we will not go,” and back and forth they continue until the clarinets and flutes—the goodwinds—pipe in, imploring the gays, “Please, gays, please, get off the ice. The bassoons will kick your ass real bad if you do not soon get off that ice,” and the trumpets trumpet their approval and the chimes chime-in in agreement, and then, for the finale, the bassoons and woodwinds (et tu, woodwinds?) all come crashing down on the oboes to the savage beat of the homophobic timpani.

“All student groups have the right to associate with people of like-mind and interest,” said Gregory S. Baylor, a lawyer representing the CLS. And you know what? He’s right. Indeed, not only student groups, but every organization or individual has the right to associate with whom they choose, such as, hmm—say—the people who attend or operate a university. UC Hastings has the same right, right? They have a right to jettison the CLS because, if it’s OK for the CLS to exclude gays, then it’s OK for UC Hastings to exclude gay excluders. Ditto the rest of us. If you want to have a lodge that doesn’t allow gays, then fine, go ahead and exclude the gays. You can call it the He-Man Homo-Haters Club for all I care. And if you want to start a group that excludes Jews, blacks, Albanians or alcoholic mimes, then so be it. Alcoholic mimes can start their own group. And they, in turn, can jettison the stoner clowns. Exclude all you want, people, just don’t cry like Glenn Beck at a Coldplay concert when you get excluded, too.

And don’t expect a dime of the public’s money to support your bigoted private clubs. Don’t expect to be endorsed with land grants or tax exemptions that were paid for by the very people you want to exclude. And, most assuredly, Christian Legal Society, if you want to be an officially recognized organization on the campus of a publicly funded school, then dump your group’s medieval bylaws into a time capsule and send them back to the 14th century, where they belong.

While perusing the Internet, I stumbled upon a video series called Kids Talk About God the Christian fundamentalist version of Art Linkletter’s Kids Say the Darndest Things.

Basically, a group of young children answered questions about religion in their typically simplistic, discombobulated, adorably childlike manner.

For example, when the question “What is Heaven?” was posed to a cute, pig-tailed, blonde girl (about 5 years old), she answered, “Heaven is a big, big place, and it’s very nice for you.”

When the tubby boy with the crew cut (10-ish) was asked, “What do they do in Heaven?” he responded, “It’s a place where you go to music every day, and learn songs because God has a big old choir.”

And when the adorable olive-complected girl (7-ish) with the plastic-rimmed librarian glasses was asked, “What do angels do?” she replied, “Angels come to my room and protect me from monsters.”

Some of the Kids Talk About God (KTAG) responses were cause for concern, such as the girl who was asked, “Do you ever sense the presence of God?” and said, “God always talks to me and says, ‘God is near, God is near.’” To which I say, “Get that girl some therapy.” All kidding aside, religious people, anyone who thinks God literally speaks to them is in need of professional help. Even God would tell you that, if God ever actually spoke to people.

And when another cute, pudgy crew-cutted boy was asked the same question about sensing the presence of God, he answered, “Sometimes, when I’m in the shower, he taps me on the shoulder… and I look back… but there’s nobody there.’”
To which I say, “Are you sure that wasn’t your stepfather, kid? Maybe you should ask him about at it dinner tonight.”

Boy: “So there I was, alone in the shower, and God touched me.”

Stepfather: “Er, uh, yes, son, that must’ve been God. I was nowhere near the bathroom at that time.”

Anyway, as cute and hilarious as these KTAG interviews are, they are also a tad depressing for the future of a free-thinking America. I listen to their notions about religion knowing full well that most will grow up thinking and talking about God in the same infantile way they do now–as if God is an old white guy in the sky, with a beard, and a crown, on a throne, with a choir, who watches over everybody in the world but still has time to talk to you.

To underscore this point, I found comments on the web from adults (with no connection to Kids Talk About God) who happened to be answering the same or similar theological questions: For example, the question “What is Heaven like?” is answered on the North Star Zone website.

Heaven is “a brilliant, shining city,” writes the author, “with light streaming through its jasper walls and pearly gates, and a full spectrum of color gleaming from its jeweled foundation.” (Yeah, sure, and the roads are paved with chocolate and the trees are cotton candy!)

On the blog Praying in Victory the host tackles the question “What do angels do?”
“Angels are like secret agents working on our behalf,” he writes. “They follow you around waiting for you to tell them what to do.” (Great, so fetch me a beer Angel).
And on a Yahoo! message board, this reply to the question “Do you ever sense the presence of God?” wins the prize for Best Circular Reasoning in a Religious Discussion:

“He is always with me. I believe in Him. I believe because I know He exists. He is my life. My proof.”

Jesus Christ, people! Your reasoning, your logic, your notions about these matters are impossible to distinguish from the children’s notions, because they are the children’s notions. The children never outgrew the fairy tales. That’s why, as cute as those rug-rats are on the KTAG interviews, I feel such sadness for them, for us, for the future of a free-thinking America.

With two exceptions:

1. When a bunch of punks were asked, “What color is God?” it was a pasty-faced bald boy–who broke from the pack and said, “I think God is every color because he created everything.”

Hallelujah, son! That’s as close to a rational thought as one can have when one is trying to describe the physical attributes of a deity. Because, if God is every color, then he is no color at all, and probably no gender, no race, no age and has no facial hair, either–which makes a helluva lot more sense than the old-bearded-white-guy-who-lives-in-the-sky theory.

2. But it was the brown-haired, freckled girl who won my heart and gave me hope for future generations of America. When asked, “How do you win the race of life?” She answered, “You pray and read the Bible and be very good.”

Now, it’s not what she said that was so wonderful, but how she said it. She said it with a mischievous smirk and a sarcastic tone. It was as if she knew this was what her parents, the interviewer and all the adults in her life expected her to say, but her rebellious little brain was already planning on cutting class, smoking cigarettes and showing her privates to boys in the woods behind the school.

There’s hope for us yet, people, there’s hope for us yet.

Ed Decker
12.10.08

I watched the Pope’s recent appearance at Yankee Stadium with great sadness. The reason for my sadness was because I missed an opportunity to do some good in the world.

See, I had a fantastic plan.

Ever since I learned the Pope was going to hold mass in front of nearly 60,000 Catholics in Yankee Stadium, I had this idea to invent a bomb and drop it on them. Not an exploding-shrapnel-death-and-destruction type of bomb–rather, a bomb that bombs only righteousness and goodness to mankind.

The plan was to make a device that, upon detonation, releases some sort of intelligence gas, then fly it over Yankee stadium and drop it, thereby bringing common sense and rational thought to a stadium-full of Catholics at once.
And I almost succeeded. I actually created a bomb that would release a gas that is concentrated with the molecules of rational thought. The only problem was that the gasses also boiled your bone marrow, so the effin FDA–always the sticklers–didn’t approve it. Thus was my golden opportunity lost.

But can you imagine if it were successful? Can you imagine if, in an instant, 60,000 Catholics; hundreds of high-level Cardinals, Bishops and Priests; the Pontiff himself; and a couple of dozen Yankee players were stricken with the vapors of rational thought? Wouldn’t it just be awesome to see that happen? Then the guys who operate the JumboTron — themselves fumigated by the gasses of rationality — would start looping quotes from famous free thinkers on the giant screen. So as each person in the stadium feels the effects of the vapors, they simultaneously see the quotes and realize how much sense they make.

“Where knowledge ends, religion begins,” the words on the JumboTron say.
Well, yes, that makes perfect sense to me now, the soon-to-be formerly faithful think.

“Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.”

Oh, my God, yes!

“God always behaves like the people who created him.”

So true, so true–why hadn’t I thought of that before?

Then the last quote in the loop appears:

“Religion does three things effectively: divides people, controls people, deludes people.”

And all 60,000 formerly faithful simultaneously understand their lives to have been a sham, and they begin to murmur, grumble and stomp until the entire stadium rumbles on its foundation.

But then, because they have common sense, they realize this is a good thing, that they’re unshackled now, liberated, free to live their lives as they see fit. So the formerly faithful rejoice, and they sing and dance and start a wave–a wave of rational thought that ripples around the whole stadium.

Then the crowd becomes quiet. And a Deacon — himself afflicted with the fumes of free thinking — approaches the microphone.

“May the vapors of rational thought be with you,” he sings.

“And also with you,” the choir responds.

Then the Deacon speaks the new-and-improved Gospel According to John:
“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Where I am going. Do you know the way-ay?’ Ah, who am I kidding? How do we know what Jesus said? We were not there. For all we know, he said, ‘Where I am going is the Tijuana strip clubs. Take 805 south. That is the way-ay.’”

Then the Pope — himself tingling with the carbonation of critical thinking — finally addresses the crowd.

“My Brothers and seesters,” he says with frail German accent. “Vaht a colossal dope I have been. Vaht was I thinking?! Jesus was mortal, virgins don’t get pregnant and Noah could never have fit all those animals on one boat. So screw this noise, my chil-druhn–let us par-tay!”

And just like on graduation day, all the high-level clergymen throw their funny hats in the air.

And the P.A. cranks Black Sabbath.

And the nuns dry hump each other and gasp, “So long, it’s been so long!”
Then, when “mass” is over, the Pope flies back to the Vatican and uses all the power and treasure of the Catholic Church to continue fighting poverty, hunger and disease and none of it for converting people into believing in fairy tales.
And all the New England Catholics return to their lives and begin spreading the highly viral vapors of intelligence to other Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Red Sox fans.

And they stop teaching their children to believe fairy tales like Creationism, The Garden of Eden and that abstinence is the only reliable birth control.

And people get off their praying knees and start actually doing shit to improve their lives and their world.

And bookstore owners remove all the Bibles from the religious section and put them where they belong: in the comedy section.

And the formerly faithful Yankees players stop thanking God for their clutch performances and instead give thanks to the real reason for their successes–steroids–and start taking more.

And judges remove religious statues and plaques from city property.

And the words “Under God” are removed from the Pledge of Allegiance and instead used as the title of an upcoming gay-porn movie about Priests boinking altar boys.
And formerly Christian rock bands stop singing about Jesus with their eyes closed and their open hands raised to the heavens and go back to singing about sex and drugs with one foot on the monitor and the microphone stand raised upside down in the air.

And strangers no longer knock on my door when I’m eating, except to say, “You were right, Ed, you were right all along.”

Alleluia, alleluia, ah-ah-lay-lu-jah!

READ OB SICKBOY’S RESPONSE

Ed Decker
04.30.08