NS March 31st, 2007

Two things caught my eye in recent news and seeing as they’re related in a weird sort of twisted way, I thought it’d be fun to talk about both of them.

1.) Hoping to cash in on the new audiences reached with the success of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” 20th Century Fox has created a new brand, Fox Faith, which will produce, create and distribute “morally-driven, family-friendly” programming. As part of the home entertainment division owned by Satan Himself, Rupert Murdoch, Fox Faith will target Evangelical and traditional, conservative Christians.

Oh, the irony! Such an impressionable flock being led by a Media Conglomerate as shepherd. I wish I knew the book of Revelations better, I’m sure there’s a verse fitting for this. Something like “Follow ye men who strive to taketh over the world with faux news and mongering of the fear. Hide thine eyes from moving images and shield thy souls from those who would bare the skin of their flesh or the loins from which fruit springs. Embrace ye, O Censorship, and cast out those who dare to live in defiance of The Laws of the Kingdom. So sayeth me.” Or something like that.

2.) A North Carolina high school student has been suspended for coming to school dressed like a pirate. Why was he dressed like a pirate? He is a Pastafarian, which requires its followers to dress in pirate regalia. A Pastafarian is officially a follower of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Below are some of their key beliefs:

• An invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, including a mountain, trees and a midget (spelled “midgit”).

• All evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM tests Pastafarians’ faith by making things look older than they are (q.v. Omphalos). “For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 11,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how that can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.”

• The Pastafarian belief of heaven stresses two points. “A) It has beer volcanoes as far as the eye can see & B) It has a stripper factory.

• The religious text of the Pastafarian religion is called the Loose Canon. In place of the ten commandments, it contains eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts”, with a looser moral code.

• “RAmen” is the official conclusion to prayers, certain sections of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and so on, and is a portmanteau of the Semitic term “Amen” (used in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and Ramen, a noodle. While it is typically spelled with both a capital “R” and “A”, it is also acceptable to spell it with only a capital R.

Now, I propose this: The Pastafarians get an inside guy to get a job at Fox Faith and produce a big, epic God-fearin’, Bible-worshippin’, patriotic, Jesus-fest of a movie. They ship in arkloads of Christians for the big premiere, all over the country, and when they’re all settled down in their God Pods (cinema seats to you and me), Apostle Popcorn resting gently on their fully-clothed and modest knees, they get a big surprise. Instead of a movie about family values with a soundtrack by Amy Grant, they get a movie about His Noodly Appendage, complete with Keith Richards playing the part of the Anti-Global Warming Pirate, Paris Hilton to play the Head Stripper in the stripper factory, and David Hasselhoff to climb the Mountain and read the eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’t”s. Hoff is the anti-Christ, after all.

• Human Oddities , In The News , Miscellaneous Missives
• Comments(1)