I usually don’t enjoy satire as I am often not in on the joke, but for this recent article about perplexed Sumerians and God’s creation, I’m glad I can laugh with everyone else:

“The Sumerian people must have found God’s making of heaven and earth in the middle of their well-established society to be more of an annoyance than anything else,” said Paul Helund, ancient history professor at Cornell University. “If what the pictographs indicate are true, His loud voice interrupted their ancient prayer rituals for an entire week.”

According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found God’s most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings.

“These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant,” one Sumerian philosopher wrote. “They must be the creation of a complete idiot.”

Should be forced to listen Twisted Sister’s Christmas album a few times:

What other bands or singers put Christmas music out for the world to cringe over? I have to admit to liking Spinal Tap’s Christmas With the Devil though. I heard both of these songs on last.fm today.

The snake offering Eve temptation!

In my frying pan! Just now! It’s totally amazing! And since I’m hungry, I’m going to drizzle all the goodness that is syrup all over it and enjoy every bite of this breakfast!

(A real sign would have noodly appendages, by the way…)

A petition is going around in California to ban divorce.

The U.S. divorce rate is 47.9 percent, according to data provided by the National Center for Health Statistics reports. That figure, however, does not include California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana and Minnesota because those six states no longer report their divorce rates to the center.

California stopped because of budget problems, said Ralph Montano, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health.

While most people would not support banning divorce, it does make sense for couples to be educated about the financial and emotional commitments of marriage, said Dan Couvrette, chief executive and publisher of Toronto-based Divorce Magazine. The publication has a circulation of 140,000, including a regional edition in Southern California.

“It’s a worthwhile conversation to have,” said Couvrette, who started the magazine in 1996 after going through his own divorce. “I don’t think it’s just a frivolous thought.”

It’s set up by a comedian who wanted to satirize the sanctimonious bullshit behind the ban on gay marriage and point to some statistics that really do exist as proof that “traditional” marriage is in trouble with or without allowing gay marriages. Gay marriage can’t possibly “destroy” traditional sacred marriage any more than people in those marriages can now.

Tis the season, after all.

Beats me why people get their dander up in December. Surely other things are worth worrying about more than how a shopkeeper greets you…

With monstrous churches all over the place, huge crosses, huge hissy fits over loss of crosses and rights to be the top dog of the holiday season every damn year since whenever, they’re not letting “humility” get in the way of self promotion?

When have they ever!?

But I digress.

The article, A grand studio dream runs headlong into reality, is all about starting a TV and movie studio in Massachusetts. The attempt to bring Plymouth Rock Studio to fruition has been wrought with scandal and lawsuits and big money problems, much of that due to the “help” they got from a group called Good News Holdings and David P. Kirkpatrick, a man with a very poor financial track record.

Kirkpatrick’s former partners in the sprawling Plymouth plan – a group of prominent businessmen who hoped to use films to project their Christian faith – allege in a 2008 lawsuit in Los Angeles that he stole the proposal from them during a time that they were in financial distress. The group, called Good News Holdings, had set up a field office in Plymouth, but, when Good News ran out of money, Kirkpatrick split and formed a new studio company. Plymouth Rock officials deny wrongdoing, but, in materials for potential investors, they warn that they may face more lawsuits over ownership of the studio.

Kirkpatrick blew a chance to film Anne Rice’s “Christ the Lord” because she actually expected to be paid some money for the rights to it but he’s also been taking credit for input into major screen gems and admires Tim Robbins’ role in The Player, if any readers recall that movie. Robbins played some studio sleazeball, apparently.

In the midst of bankruptcy, Kirkpatrick began working with a group of Christian businessmen who were eager to offer an antidote to the shallow values of Hollywood. Kirkpatrick, who said he once considered the seminary, told his new collaborators that he wanted to share their vision of spiritually uplifting books, movies, and even cellphone messages. “Spiritainment’’ they called it.

Which is where Plymouth Rock and Anne Rice come in. His grandiose promises to bring the world better (read: Christian) movies resulted in broken dreams and financial flub ups. But, still people were willing to buy in, like a woman who believed God wanted her husband to invest $200 million toward the project. Bobbit turned out to be a guy who already went to prison for misappropriation of investment funds, but Kirkpatrick kept that little secret from his Good News partners for as long as possible.

It goes on. If they wanted to make a movie out of this attempt to make movies, it could be a blockbuster. Read the rest. I’ve only told the story up to page six.

Ever heard of those? It’s for people who have a hard time committing to following through on things. All those people that say “I’ll do it when I get around to it,” really ought to check out this site that sells round tuits, although I guess you’d have to get around to telling someone else to get it for you because you’d never get a round tuit on your own, would ya?

Even better is this history of tuits with beautiful medallions being offered.

What the hell am I even leading up to, you ask. Last year, way back around Giftsmastime, I was at home in Dial Up Land and found an interesting article I couldn’t write about at the time. Now I have the time and, what’s more, the inclination. It was all about a popular children’s rhyme and how it may have actually been a hate crime to be singing and acting it out. You read that right. Hokey Pokey could be a hate crime.

according to the Catholic Church and some Scottish politicians, singing the popular tune that begins with the words “You put your right hand in, your right hand out,” may constitute an act of religious hatred.

A spokesman for the leader of the church in Scotland said the song had disturbing origins.

Critics claim that Puritans composed the song in the 18th century in an attempt to mock the actions and language of priests leading the Latin mass.

Now politicians have urged police to arrest anyone using the song to “taunt” Catholics under legislation designed to prevent incitement to religious hatred.

I wonder how that went. Since I never heard of mass panic in playgrounds, I guess it went the way of the dodo.

Supporters of Rangers FC have been banned from singing anti-Catholic songs at Ibrox stadium to taunt their rivals Celtic, a club with Catholic roots.

But fans of the club are said to be discussing on internet forums the possibility of getting round the ban by singing the Hokey Cokey at next week’s Old Firm derby between the clubs.

Peter Kearney, a spokesman for Cardinal Keith O’Brien, said:

“This song does have quite disturbing origins. Although apparently innocuous, it was devised as an attack on and a parody of the Catholic mass.

Or it’s about cheap and inferior ice cream and a song invented in 1942.

“If there are moves to restore its more malevolent meaning then consideration should perhaps be given to its wider use.”

According to the church, the song’s title derives from the words “hocus pocus”.

That idea has made the rounds, but Wiki credits Canadian soldiers in WWII for providing Jimmy Kennedy with the inspiration for what later became his Hokey Cokey hit.

Jimmy Kennedy Jr. quoted his father’s writing:

“They were having a hilarious time, singing and playing games, one of which they said was a Canadian children’s game called The Cokey Cokey. I thought to myself, wouldn’t that be fun as a dance to cheer people up! So when I got back to my hotel, I wrote a chorus based on the feet and hand movements the Canadians had used, with a few adaptations. A few days later, I wrote additional lyrics to it but kept the title, Cokey Cokey, and, as everybody knows, it became a big hit.”

According to Kennedy Jr., his father told him “the unusual title was to do with drugs [cocaine] taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves up in the harsh environment where they were prospecting.”

That’s even better than 17th century Puritans. It took some hunting to find the National Post’s response to this business, but it’s unclear if they’re reporting on what Wiki has, or if they’re Wiki’s source. Around and around, eh? I can’t find any sites explaining how many prospectors O.D.’d before scurvy got them or anything, but hey. It’s still one hell of a story.

People would rather take offense than do research first. A hoax is just good enough to be believed by one person who tells a few others and soon it’s as real is lemon sorbet. Mmm..sorbet…

It’s been just over a month since I wrote about the attack of the clever raven, but now via Brother Richard I discover a bird may have caused a malfunction in the Hadron Collider recently.

While it’s humbling enough for most researchers to remember that one little bird can threaten millions of dollars worth of equipment, others are not so sure it’s a random accident. Time Magazine reports that a bird’s dropped dinner overheated some of the mechanisms, but rather than blame gravity, a couple physicists are actually claiming the bird may have been sent back in time for a mission it may or may not have completed.

Seriously.

two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future.

Never mind the paradox problems inherent in that…yeesh.

Sorry. I don’t even like that song. However, it was all I could think of to lead into results of an attempt to bring Christian vanity plates to cars in South Carolina. Similar stories have been in the news before, but now the Daily Telegraph reports on the pro-choice judge who said the one word they never wanted to hear: NO!

The southern state’s legislature had already approved the licence plate, but Cameron Currie, the district judge, said the plate was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment, which requires the separation of church and state.

“Such a law amounts to a state endorsement not only of religion in general, but of a specific sect in particular,” Ms Currie wrote.

Well done, Judge Currie, for coming down the side of equality here instead of preferential treatment.

“Whether motivated by sincerely-held Christian beliefs or an effort to purchase political capital with religious coin, the result is the same.

“The statute is clearly unconstitutional and defence of its implementation has embroiled the state in unnecessary (and expensive) litigation.”

Via Friendly Atheist, I get a link to more information showing just how petty and egotistical this plate war is.

some legislators openly admitted that they would not vote for similar plates for minority faiths.

Nobody would be forced to buy them; vanity plates are entirely optional. Generally I think they’re pretty stupid, but whatever. If your whole identity is tied up in how strangers see your car, you’ve got bigger problems than what your license plate says.

(If you think that’s bad…)

I nick this from a commenter called “Tis Himself” at Pharyngula:

No! No! No! Let me explain the origin of Halloween:

During colonial times, in Boston, Massachusetts, there was an itinerant hot dog salesman named Horatio. He was much beloved because of his habit of wandering the town dressed in outlandish clothing and giving out free samples to all the boys and girls. One October 31st, there was a terrific storm — a true nor’easter. Horatio went into the nor’easter without his sou’wester, and so he got swept out to sea.

All the Boston children were saddened by this, so to cheer them up, the town council instituted a holiday in which costumed children went door-to-door collecting hot dogs. However, since the town frankfurter salesman was now dead, the hot dog supply was unreliable. So it was decided to give out candy instead. This holiday was called after Horatio’s call when he was selling his hot dogs: “Hallo! Weenies!”

Nice one.