SuperPope: ex Cathedra

Television Christianity

Ugh.

Television used to represent a sort of alternate reality in which Christians were never seen or heard.  I didn’t have too much of a problem with that.  But now days it seems increasingly popular to feature guest characters who portray Christians as disingenuous, ignorant, or intolerant.

For example, a recent episode of E.R. one of the characters – a lesbian – was reunited with her mother after having been given up for adoption as a child.  Her mother was touring with a Christian singing group and stopped by to meet her.  When the mother discovered her daughter was a lesbian, she was appalled.  Later in the episode she attempted to reconcile with the daughter by saying that she loved her anyway.  The daughter threw it back in her face, saying, “I don’t want your love without your acceptance”. 

Think about what she is saying for a moment.  The daughter didn’t want her mother’s love unless she would also accept her choice to live a homosexual lifestyle.  However, the daughter was equally unable to accept her mother for her beliefs, which told her that homosexuality was a sin that cannot be condoned.

So, who’s the hypocrite here?  Of course, we are expected to side with the daughter, and the lesson learned is supposed to be that we should not only love everyone but embrace everyone for their beliefs, no matter how much we personally disagree with them.  Instead, a viewer paying attention will merely learn that people are quick to dismiss Christians as “a bunch of hypocrites,” not realizing that in saying so they are merely revealing the hypocrisy in themselves.

Another example was on an episode of "Bones."  A DJ was found dead and appeared to have overdosed on methamphetamines.  As it turns out, he had been framed, and was a Christian DJ.  His father, defending his son, says something along the lines of, “My son didn’t do drugs.  He was a good kid.  I taught him to have a personal relationship with Jesus.  Do you understand what I’m saying?  A personal relationship!  Look at this plaster cast of his hands he made as a boy.  When he was young, I took this to a palm reader, and she said she didn’t see any evil in these hands.  So please, find the killer.”

What?  In one breath you talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and about consulting a palm reader?  Who writes this stuff?

The father also makes some cheesy comment about “iniquity” being a “Bible word”.  Uhhh…actually, it’s just an archaic English word.  Unless you believe the Bible to have been originally written in King James English.

But the latest and most annoying example of Christian portrayal on Television was this past week on “Lost”.  The character Eko is a Catholic priest.  He tells the character Claire that her baby needs to be baptized.  He says, “Do you know what baptism means?” to which she replies, “It makes it so you get into heaven”.  He smiles in response.  I expected him to correct her, pointing out that no just God would send someone to hell for not having water ritualistically dumped on their head.  But instead, he validates her statement.

Then he says this, “When John baptized Jesus, it is said that the heavens opened up and a dove came down.  This told John something.  It told him that he had just cleansed this man of all his sins.”  After this he baptized both the mother and the baby.

Now, I don’t care what denomination a Christian comes from:  No Christian believes that Christ was baptized in order to be forgiven of his sins.  Christ was equally God and man.  He committed no sin.  These are basic and essential tenets of Christianity.  Besides, when Jesus approaches John for baptism, John says, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”, says that he isn’t even fit to untie Jesus’ sandal, and that Jesus should instead be baptizing him.  And even when John is baptising others, he makes it clear that baptism is a sign of repentance, not an act that grants salvation from sin.

So I wonder:  Is it that hard for the script writers on these shows to find somebody in Hollywood to consult with who has at least opened the Bible before having characters pretend to share what it says?  Could be.  But I’d rather Christians not be represented on television at all than be portrayed as a pack of hypocrites and superstitious fools.

There's a 100% chance you're an idiot.

Maybe it’s because I was raised by a physicist and a mathematician, but it makes my skin crawl when a weatherman predicts a "100% chance of rain."

A 100% chance is not a chance…it’s a certainty. There is never a certainty that anything is going to happen unless it is already happening. A nearby star could go supernova and emit a gamma radiation burst that strips away the atmosphere, a comet could vaporize the Gulf of Mexico, Jesus could come back, or a butterfly could fan its wings on an Amazonian tree branch…not necessarily in that order.

I guess meteorologists are so often wrong that when they’re almost sure they want to make it look like they’re completely sure. But statisticians they are not.

Going to Hell in a Breadbasket

Check out this news story.

This is what happens when people substitute a symbol for the truth behind it. When you make ritual mandatory you run the risk of sweeping grace under the carpet, and that's just what's happened here. This little girl was born with an inability to consume wheat products. Because of that, is the Catholic church saying that she is predetermined to be damned to Hell? Is she alone incapable of salvation?

You’re welcome to join a Baptist church, Haley. You can take communion with Cheese Whiz if you need to so long as you do it in remembrance of Christ. And our “wine” is better for you, too. It’s Ocean Spray grape juice, so it’s fortified with vitamin C.

Low Carb Soft Drinks

When I was shopping at Wal-Mart on Saturday a little old lady handed me a sample of Pepsi Edge. I had been wanting to try it, so I gladly took a couple of sips. A few steps later I dumped what was left in the trash.

Coke C2 and Pepsi Edge: Ingenious marketing. You get half the sugar of the regular drink with all of the sickening, chemical taste you’ve come to expect from diet sodas that have no sugar at all. I wonder how many people on “low carb” diets will quit drinking Diet Pepsi and switch to Pepsi Edge just because it says it’s low in carbs? They should have just changed Diet Pepsi to “Carbless Pepsi.” But then I guess people would have complained that "Diet Pepsi just doesn't taste the same now that they take out the carbs and the sugar."

The definition of "Anime"

Type the following words into dictionary.com and you'll get these definitions:

an·i·me: n. A style of animation developed in Japan, characterized by stylized colorful art, futuristic settings, violence, and sex.

Japanimation: n. A style of cartoon or animation made in Japan that focuses on futuristic themes and robotlike characters; also called anime.

What the heck? “Characterized by futuristic settings, violence, and sex!?!” Who came up with those definitions? The last time I checked, Hello Kitty always kept her clothes on, did not live in the future, and refrained from murdering Keroppi the frog.

Talk about stereotypes! That’s like defining the word “movie” as “characterized by famous actors making smart remarks before blowing up evil scientists who are always from the future and are generally portrayed by Christopher Walken.”

Here is my definition:
an·i·me: n. An animation created in the country of Japan.

Short, simple, and 100% accurate. Put that in your pidgeon-holeing pipe and smoke it, Webster!

The Garfield Movie

This is not a review of the Garfield movie. Make no mistake: I will not go see this movie. Every time I see an ad for it I throw up a little bit in my mouth. This movie disgusts me in the same way the Scooby Doo, Cat in the Hat, and The Grinch movies do (the live-action Grinch movie or as I like to call it, “Hypocrisy Incarnate”).

No, I just wanted to point out something amusing about the casting in this movie. Bill Murray is the voice of Garfield. So let’s think about this:

Bill Murray is the voice of Garfield in the movie based on a comic that was made into a cartoon in the 1980s. In that cartoon, an actor named Lorenzo Music performed the voice of Garfield. Lorenzo Music was also the voice of Peter Venkman in the Real Ghostbusters cartoon, which was based on the movie in which Bill Murray played the same part.

I realized these facts on my own. Does it mean that people think the two men sound alike? I don’t. And at any rate, who cares? Bill Murray is hilarious, and Garfield quit being funny about 20 years ago. Hey, maybe Garfield was never funny and I just thought so when I was in elementary school. That would make sense.

Gatorade “Science”

Remember the old Gatorade commercials where they’d say it was “scientifically formulated to taste best when you need it most”? How dumb was that? Guess what: Humans are scientifically formulated to think drinks taste best when they need them most. If the people who invented Gatorade had the power to decide when the stuff would taste good, wouldn’t they make it taste as good as it possibly could all the time?

Wal-Mart’s “Self Checkout”

At Wal-Mart they’ve now got these aisles labeled “Self-Checkout”.

“Cool,” I thought to myself. “This is all, like, space-age and stuff. Now I can save myself a little time and not have to interact with another human being.”

Wrong.

I started scanning groceries. After scanning an item, I stopped to move my son away from the scanner before dropping the item in my bag. Since I delayed about 5 seconds, the loud innocuous female voice announced that I was trying to steal merchandise, and that I needed to take the item back out of the bag. Then I scanned a Gatorade bottle and quickly put it in the sack. I was then informed that I needed to remove the item from the weigh station to prevent damage to the scales. After being accused of stealing a couple more times my wife tried to pay, but accidentally leaned on the scanner at the last second, which caused a weight malfunction and turned the register’s flashing light on and wouldn’t let her do anything else until an employee came over to see what we “criminals” were up to.

So…what’s the point of this “Self Checkout” again? How does it make my life easier and save me hassle and money? Oh, I see. It doesn’t. It just allows Wal-Mart to hire fewer employees, which in turn hurts the local economy, and to lower their prices even more, which drives more Mom-n-Pop stores out of business, hurting the economy even further.

Lengthy Conversations

Maybe I’m overly critical. Okay, I know I’m overly critical, but this is sort of a pet peeve of mine. Do you know anybody who always says a lot more than they need to say?

Take a look at this example. We’ll call the players Bob and Sue.

Bob: Sue?
Sue: Yeah?
Bob: You busy?
Sue: No.
Bob: Mind if I ask you something?
Sue: Sure.
Bob: Can you do me a favor?
Sue: What do you need?
Bob: Could you come over here for a sec?
Sue: Okay.
(Sue walks over)
Sue: What’s up?
Bob: Could you go buy me a Dr. Pepper?

Of course I’m exaggerating, but including even one or two of these steps in a conversation is superfluous. Bob could have just said, “Hey, Sue. Would you mind buying me a Dr. Pepper?” End of conversation. If you're really that concerned that you're wasting my time, stop wasting my time by asking me if you're wasting it. Just present your petition and move on.

CD copy protection

Every PC game these days gives you the option of completely installing it on your hard drive. However, games still won't start up unless you have the CD in your drive. What's the point? All this form of copy protection does is annoy honest consumers. It takes a software pirate about two seconds to bypass this kind of thing. In fact, the first thing I do when I buy a new PC game is search for a "No-CD Patch" for it on the web. I'm not afraid to admit it. You know why? Because I bought the game. Its too bad hackers aren't interested in pirating "Bob the Builder: Bob Builds a Park". Sid would have an easier time getting the game started.