Chick parody

It was only a matter of time before smartasses like me found Jack Chick and started making fun of him. After all, who could miss as big of a target as a crazy fundy conspiricy theorist/bad cartoonist? The Jack T. Chick Parody Archives
Has thoughtfully collected some of the best parodies to be found. "The Holy and the Homo" is my favorite. "Dead to Rights" (pictured) does earn best runner up; Depicting Jack Chick meeting his maker and trying to explain why he wrote all those crazy tracts...Priceless.

The site also details the nastygrams recived from Chick's lawyers. Apparently when under attack from the Forces of Darkness Driven Parody Website, Jack T. Chick doesn't turn to prayer, he turns to his lawyers. Now who's trafficking with the Devil in this picture? It's hard to answer the question of WWJS---Who Would Jesus Sue?

Another Pride for the history books

The annual Southern migration of homosexuals to Piedmont Park is a sight to behold. My friend Jennifer injected a little class into my weekend by suggesting we go to the Krog Bar on Friday night. They have an excellent wine list and tapas. A very nice evening of fun and good food.

Unfortunately the weekend was all downhill from there as I de-evolved into my more natural and primitive Pride state...Drinking whatever alcohol I could get my hands on, sweating, wandering through herds of people, and rolling around in the grass like a heathen.

The tent area had some R-rated action in the afternoon. Our tent had a strategic location just downhill from the breast-painting area so the view was pretty good. As the afternoon wore on the casual partiers packed it up and the R rating got closer and closer to XXX. Only the use of huge floodlights by the organizers and the Atlanta PD kept it from getting too out of hand. Dang.

One disappointment was the lightweight entertainment schedule. There were no big headliners like the B-52's or the Indigo Girls. Not even a Michelle Malone in sight. Instead, the lineup was dominated by the likes of Debbie (excuse me, Deborah) Gibson. Maybe that's why I was so anxious to pay $ 8 for a Hurricane with extra vodka.

Further adventures in hell---the wonderful world of Jack Chick

Feel like winning some souls for Jesus? Here's a great tool, Chick Tracts! Jack Chick was an unsuccessful comic book artist until he had a big conversion experience. He decided to serve the Lord by cranking out lovely little tracts to save the heathens of the world. As you can see, he spares no punches in his effort to scare unsaved into stampeding for the Big Net of Jesus.

Wandering through his website is like visiting a conspiracy theory convention. Mohammad was inspired to create Islam through some kind of machinations of the Catholic Church. The Catholics are headed by the Antichrist, who is plainly the Pope. Schools are full of ungodly types who invite homosexuals (with little devils on their shoulders) to recruit children, or force that crazy Theory of Evolution down their throats. And woe be unto little Suzy, who must resist her teacher's manipulations to push children to wear Halloween costumes. Because everyone knows that leads to hell. Demonically influenced record company executives, bosses, abortion counselors, condom distributers,(whatever those are) Satan is behind it all.

Many of Chicks's tracts have a recurring plot. Demons (small, dark, ethnic appearing apparitions) try to keep the righteous friend/grandma/other saved person from witnessing to the unsaved friend/granddaughter/other Godless person. They flatten tires or delay the witnesser. Angels ( big white men) counter with their own moves, like sending a helpful Samaritan to change the tire. Most of the time the unsaved get right with Jesus, and they live happily ever after. But occasionally, the errant sinner decides otherwise, and dies within 24 hours. After all, the big decision is made, why bother filling a few pages with the rest of their earthly life? Next stop: Hell! I love happy endings!

In ChickThink, the Devil has lots of time on his hands to greet his new residents personally, explaining that if they'd done things the Chick Way, they'd be hanging with the big man upstairs and the friend/grandma/other saved person. And Jack Chick, who undoubtedly pictures himself up there saying smugly "I told you so".

The kitchen from Hell

My latest reality-TV obsession: Hell's Kitchen. Think "The Apprentice", but with Chefs. It's much more entertaining to watch people compete for money by try to whip up a signature dish instead of an ad campaign.

The latest drama in Hell's Kitchen: a fainting, cramping, and sweating retirement-home chef/contestant was sent to the hospital. I knew he was going home when he had to be dressed by two of the other contestants. One contestant pulled cooked pasta out of a garbage can and attempted to serve it to unsuspecting diners. Her signature dish is now Spaghetti a la Homeless Dumpster Diver. Another dished out stinkingly rancid crab, and was only stopped by Gordon Ramsey, who is the show's equivalent to Donald Trump. He fires a chef or two at the end of every show. In between he curses a lot, smears undercooked food on contestant chefs, and generally terrorizes the lot of them. His cursing has a British flair. I had never heard the epithet "you f*cking donkey!" before watching this show.

In the category of "Gee, what a surprise": the contestant who is a Waffle House cook kicked @$$ preparing breakfast for 100 soldiers and sailors. Is there a time when you can walk into a Waffle House and not see an egg cooking? She's my favorite so far.

Water quality in the 'Hooch is down

Now if the e.coli doesn't get you, the gator will.


Wonder if he swam up here looking for a Bulldog snack?

I feel better about Izzy

As a native of the area (Decatur) I can still remember the crushing blow that was dealt to us by the unveiling of the mascot Whatizit (unaffectionately known as "Izzy") before the '96 Olympic games. The world no longer saw us as Southern-fried hayseeds, they saw us as moonshine-addled crackheads. If you need to refresh your memory, or mercifully didn't see it in the first place, here "it" is. But I wouldn't click on that link unless you are mentally able to deal with another look at the little blue sperm.

Now the Brits have outdone us! Their new Olympic logo (I'm putting in all these links so I'm not struck down by the Olympic mafia, plus, you gotta see the various color presentations) is....well, unusual. A post on the BBC's Sports Editors blog summed it up: "I have vomited better logos". Other witticisms from the posters: "reminds me of a bad migraine attack", " a prehistoric earth...land mass", and "a drunk sitting on a toilet, sticking his finger down his throat". And those with dirty minds see...uh, never mind. The overall effect is very '80's, prompting the comment "I keep expecting Simon Le Bon to jump out of it." One pronounced it "codswollop". I think that translates into American as "bullsh*t."

In the spirit of the 21st century, the Olympic organizers have designed an animated version for digital platforms. One concerned poster hoped it wouldn't trigger epileptics to have seizures. Those Limeys are nice people, underneath their bad teeth and all.

UPDATE: oh, you just knew that the outcry would prompt Patriotic U.K. 'ers to design their own logos. Good thing there is a morning radio show to help them rectify the assault on their nation's honour.

The Scribbler

This link should lower the productivity of you artistic types.

Have at it.

Wayyyy too much time and technology on my hands

Since I'm not in school right now, I volunteered to take my friend Jamie to the airport this morning. Everyone should have a friend who's a bum if they need a lift at 5am. She's taking a flight to Taipei, 19 hours of flying with a short layover in San Francisco. After I dropped her off, she called me on my cellphone since there was no one else to talk to at that hour of the morning, and she was unable to read, physically move or otherwise entertain herself, due to getting up early enough to be at Hartsfield at 5:30am. Unlike me, Jamie has a job, and can't just sleep whenever she wants. So via the internet, computer, and cellphone I managed to:

• Keep her updated on her flight status. At one point I told her her flight would be landing 10 minutes later than scheduled in San Francisco, even before that information was posted at the gate. I am such a smartypants!
  
• Give her directions to a spa located in the San Francisco airport. (Not that she asked. Just more smartypants behavior on my part.) I also informed her that only the Christian Scientists have their own space in the airport, everyone else (including Jewish folk like her tribe) have to get along and share the same room which is supposed to be for "quiet reflection and meditation". By the way, the map icon--a little kneeling person--- for the "reflection and meditation" room cracked me up. Maybe it was the fact that I'd gotten up too early. Come to think of it the icon for the shower room was funny too. I must get Photoshop and start making my own icons. Places like Fark.com are just screaming my name.
  
• Find the flight numbers and numerous details on her other flights, like what type of aircraft, the inflight movies, what meals to be served, where the video screens were located, if the plane would be crowded, and if her seat was over a wing.
• Play a clip over the cellphone of "Airplane", the Indigo Girls song about white-knuckle flying. I don't think Jamie found it as funny as I did. At least it kept her awake so she wouldn't be snoozing in the gate area as her plane departed.
• Find out how to literally track the plane in flight, via google earth and fboweb. I can now see why air traffic controllers eat a lot of Rolaids. There are dozens of little airplane markers around every major city, all of them representing flights taking off and landing. My most likely reaction to directing all those damn things would be to s&%t my pants. I may do so next time I'm flying in or out of a major airport, and recall those airplane markers that could collide at any moment if the air traffic controller is thinking about his fishing trip or unpaidVisa bill.
  
• Completely blow off breakfast and my morning hike in favor of all this cyberspace stuff.

It amazes me what information we have at our fingertips, and how we can communicate it so easily, compared to even twenty years ago. The downside is that we spend (okay, I spend) more time with our gadgets, to the detriment of things like nutrition and exercise. The upside is that we are more connected and informed in some ways. It's hard to remember that when I want to smack the dude in the grocery store who is talking loudly about his ingrown toenail on a cellphone. And holding up the checkout line while he does so.

Well, at least I have a post for my blog. Now I'm going to go follow random flights out of Hartsfield International until I get bored enough to go hiking. The thought of being trapped on a plane for 14 hours makes me want to get up and move around. Violently.

What I will NOT be blogging about today

1. How Paris Hilton is doing in jail.
2. Anything to do with sports, including meaningless playoffs with teams named "The Ducks", which stars are now cheating on their wives, or coaches switching teams. Unless Michael Vick gets nailed with the dogfighting thing, then I'll be all over that like white on rice.
3. Who Rosie O'Donnell is currently fighting with/trashing/talking about.
   
4. The "faith-off" between Democratic Presidential candidates who are trying to court evangelicals.
   

Carry on.

The $1 a day food plan

This guy blogged about his experience of spending $1 a day on food for a month. I hope he's young enough to repair the damage to his body.

They're off!

I rarely think about having access to fresh, clean water. It's only a few steps away, all I have to do is go to the sink and turn a tap. Even with our drought here in Georgia the biggest consequence on most people's mind is their landscaping. We take it for granted. About a billion people can't. They have to drink what they can find, where they can find it. If it's contaminated with sewage, microorganisms, or whatever, they just have to hope it doesn't kill them or their family.

To draw attention to the problem, beginning today, a team from the Blue Planet Foundation will be runninga kind of relay around the clock for 15,200 miles. They've been running for about two hours so far, and they plan to be running nonstop for the next 2278. The team only consists of 20 people, all of them in much better shape than I am.