Two amusing items from the past week
In O.o news, there's a new Left Behind video game, based on the books that have some people convinced God's going to beam them up to Heaven any minute.
Mark Morford pitches the new Left Behind video game to its target demographic.
Are you a true believer? Do you just know deep down in your black Wal-Mart socks that every word of the Bible is the absolute literal truth and nothing dare be doubted and anyone who thinks that God is merely an ambisexual omniblissful bloom of moist divine nondenominational honeydew melon should be strung up by their small intestine and beaten with sticks sharpened by Mel Gibson's teeth?
...
Praise Jesus! Your video game has arrived.
Behold, blessed children, the new and upcoming "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game, based on the freakishly best-selling series of apocalyptic trash-lit books. It's an ultraviolent, hilariously inept, wondrously accurate portrayal of what every true right-wing Christian fundamentalist really fantasizes about after they've had one too many pink wine spritzers and have logged a few hours in the gay chat rooms and have sufficiently indoctrinated their happily numb kids with tales of vile homos and scary "progressive" liberals who want to buy them candy and tattoo their sacrums and feed them organic hot dogs.
Basically, you go out in the streets of New York and mow down or convert (surely the less popular option) all the non-believers (including mainstream Christians).
Is it worth delineating all the appalling whorings of Christ's true message in this thing? Do you need to imagine the explosive reaction if, say, a powerful Muslim organization came out with a major video game where Islamic fundies killed hapless Christians with machine guns in order to restore the world to Allah? Or if the KKK or Aryan Nations created a game where you get to "cleanse" 'Merka of all the Jews and blacks so happy white people can stop being so scared of hip-hop? Verily, you do not.
He goes on in this frothy, five dozen words a sentence manner, and it's a rather amusing read. But this is my favorite part about the new game:
When you get bored with the sanctimonious drabness of fighting on the side of a hateful Christ (which, invariably, you most certainly will), the game apparently allows you to switch modes and fight for the army of the Antichrist, unleashing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on the flesh of the righteous as you blow away Bible-thumping soldiers who, just before they die, secretly confess their intense gay love for their platoon commanders. Isn't that thoughtful?
...
Sure, brainwashed fundamentalist kids will love playing on the side of God. For a while. But then the dark side will beckon. The irresistible scent of rebellion will hit their noses like hot porn pizza. They will fall into the clutches of a crazy self-defined happiness, they will squirm and giggle and feel anarchic and seditious and free, running clean in a place where the beer is cold and the dancing is hot and no one is telling them they have to kill someone because that person dared to believe that God isn't, well, a misanthropic, murderous jackass.
Hee! Seen on Betty Bowers: "The real Jesus forgives your Jesus for being a greedy Republican warmonger."
And, a DailyKos diary from Monday that continues to crack me up: Bush Abrogates 3rd Amendment, Just to Complete the Set
American citizens will now be compelled to allow British soldiers to live in their homes, thanks to a new signing statement from President Bush.
By negating the Third Amendment, the new order completes the abrogation of the entire United States Bill of Rights. High-level White House sources have indicated that this was Bush's sole purpose in issuing the statement.
(Yeah, I know, the 3rd Amendment doesn't specify British soldiers, but it's funnier that way.)
The new signing statement was written into the margin of an unrelated bill blocking any recount of votes in the massive GOP sweep of the 2006 elections, giving Republicans a resounding majority in 53 states. Some Democrats mildly protested the vote count in December, citing mathematical studies which they claimed demonstrated that only 50 states had existed prior to the election. Republicans denounced this as "math," and the question remained unresolved for weeks.
The story gained further notoriety when bloggers in the state of North Florida found that three days before the election, the Veterans Administration had declared the entire black population of the state as Killed In Action in the 1944 battle of Anzio, even though several hundred Republican votes in the state were apparently cast by manatees. Some activists have argued that manatees, which typically inhabit warm, shallow estuaries, would be unlikely to have reached the appropriate polling places.
However, in January, a blonde tourist from Connecticut went missing, and the news channels dropped about the story completely.
Read the whole thing. You'll laugh, you'll moan, you'll rail impotently at the sky.
P.S. - Sorry for the triple post. LJ kept telling me it couldn't post, I wasn't logged in, and other weirdness.
Mark Morford pitches the new Left Behind video game to its target demographic.
Are you a true believer? Do you just know deep down in your black Wal-Mart socks that every word of the Bible is the absolute literal truth and nothing dare be doubted and anyone who thinks that God is merely an ambisexual omniblissful bloom of moist divine nondenominational honeydew melon should be strung up by their small intestine and beaten with sticks sharpened by Mel Gibson's teeth?
...
Praise Jesus! Your video game has arrived.
Behold, blessed children, the new and upcoming "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game, based on the freakishly best-selling series of apocalyptic trash-lit books. It's an ultraviolent, hilariously inept, wondrously accurate portrayal of what every true right-wing Christian fundamentalist really fantasizes about after they've had one too many pink wine spritzers and have logged a few hours in the gay chat rooms and have sufficiently indoctrinated their happily numb kids with tales of vile homos and scary "progressive" liberals who want to buy them candy and tattoo their sacrums and feed them organic hot dogs.
Basically, you go out in the streets of New York and mow down or convert (surely the less popular option) all the non-believers (including mainstream Christians).
Is it worth delineating all the appalling whorings of Christ's true message in this thing? Do you need to imagine the explosive reaction if, say, a powerful Muslim organization came out with a major video game where Islamic fundies killed hapless Christians with machine guns in order to restore the world to Allah? Or if the KKK or Aryan Nations created a game where you get to "cleanse" 'Merka of all the Jews and blacks so happy white people can stop being so scared of hip-hop? Verily, you do not.
He goes on in this frothy, five dozen words a sentence manner, and it's a rather amusing read. But this is my favorite part about the new game:
When you get bored with the sanctimonious drabness of fighting on the side of a hateful Christ (which, invariably, you most certainly will), the game apparently allows you to switch modes and fight for the army of the Antichrist, unleashing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on the flesh of the righteous as you blow away Bible-thumping soldiers who, just before they die, secretly confess their intense gay love for their platoon commanders. Isn't that thoughtful?
...
Sure, brainwashed fundamentalist kids will love playing on the side of God. For a while. But then the dark side will beckon. The irresistible scent of rebellion will hit their noses like hot porn pizza. They will fall into the clutches of a crazy self-defined happiness, they will squirm and giggle and feel anarchic and seditious and free, running clean in a place where the beer is cold and the dancing is hot and no one is telling them they have to kill someone because that person dared to believe that God isn't, well, a misanthropic, murderous jackass.
Hee! Seen on Betty Bowers: "The real Jesus forgives your Jesus for being a greedy Republican warmonger."
And, a DailyKos diary from Monday that continues to crack me up: Bush Abrogates 3rd Amendment, Just to Complete the Set
American citizens will now be compelled to allow British soldiers to live in their homes, thanks to a new signing statement from President Bush.
By negating the Third Amendment, the new order completes the abrogation of the entire United States Bill of Rights. High-level White House sources have indicated that this was Bush's sole purpose in issuing the statement.
(Yeah, I know, the 3rd Amendment doesn't specify British soldiers, but it's funnier that way.)
The new signing statement was written into the margin of an unrelated bill blocking any recount of votes in the massive GOP sweep of the 2006 elections, giving Republicans a resounding majority in 53 states. Some Democrats mildly protested the vote count in December, citing mathematical studies which they claimed demonstrated that only 50 states had existed prior to the election. Republicans denounced this as "math," and the question remained unresolved for weeks.
The story gained further notoriety when bloggers in the state of North Florida found that three days before the election, the Veterans Administration had declared the entire black population of the state as Killed In Action in the 1944 battle of Anzio, even though several hundred Republican votes in the state were apparently cast by manatees. Some activists have argued that manatees, which typically inhabit warm, shallow estuaries, would be unlikely to have reached the appropriate polling places.
However, in January, a blonde tourist from Connecticut went missing, and the news channels dropped about the story completely.
Read the whole thing. You'll laugh, you'll moan, you'll rail impotently at the sky.
P.S. - Sorry for the triple post. LJ kept telling me it couldn't post, I wasn't logged in, and other weirdness.