I found this picture at the same web site as the Grant’s Pass Caveman (see next post). What sort of person would want this combination?

He should have had the images on the opposite legs. Then it would appear that Jack Nicholson is looking at Jesus and is probably responsible for his death.

Last week, the Third U.S. Circuit Court overturned the FCC’s $550,000 fine against CBS for Janet Jackson’s scandalous nipple show. We aren’t qualified to properly understand just how horrible this development is. We must turn to the fundies, who will tell us just how damaged we were by seeing said nipple. OneNewsNow has generously come to our aid with this proclamation of gloom: “FCC Feeling Muzzled by Courts”:

Penny Nance, special advisor to Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin, says the Third U.S. Circuit Court’s ruling yesterday was stunning on many levels, considering that the Super Bowl striptease incident in question spawned millions of complaints from parents and concerned citizens all over the country.

Oh, where to start? (1) It’s distressing that the FCC is run by a fundie whose primary mission in life is to fine a broadcast network for the accidental (and very brief) exposure of a non-sexual body part. (2) It wasn’t a striptease. (3) I doubt there were “millions” of complaints. But even if there were, it’s a meaningless number. 99% came directly from the Parents Television Council. They hardly represent the country as a whole.

Nance argues that it represents further legal efforts to severely hamper the FCC’s mission of protecting decency on the broadcast airwaves. She explains that the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled against the federal agency’s fining of TV broadcast networks for airing of “fleeting profanities” during awards shows in 2002 and 2003.

This is why you need the courts — to rein in an out-of-control government.

The best part of this article, though, comes from the comments! Let’s take a look, shall we?

The real problem is not that it was just a half-second episode or that it was not bleeped out. The real problem is that it is just a way to open the door for more of the same for a longer time period the next time. Ever heard the old saying “Give an inch and they will take a mile” Just like the homosexual agenda, there was a time when no one would “come out of the closet” but little by little they did and look at the mess we have now involving that issue. As for me: let morality rule.

Janet Jackson’s nipple: Marching in lockstep with the homosexual agenda!

Go FCC and do your job well! There was no need for the nudity regardless of the length of time and for the perverts that say get over it or that didn’t hurt anyone - pay for your sick porno crap because decent people don’t care for it on our television. We were not watching one of your porno channels, we are not accustomed to such trash.

Then don’t look at this, you’ll go blind:

A few of the comments supported the court’s decision. I’m surprised that OneNewsNow didn’t delete them:

Score: Victorian censors: 0
First Amendment: 2
Hurray for freedom.

and…

If your precious darlings were caused permanent harm by a 2 second flash of a woman’s anatomy, I suggest you spend more time being a parent and less time reading internet websites. Your priorities are as screwed up as the FCC’s.

also…

It was less than half a second folks!!! If that’s going to damage a child’s mind there is something wrong with the child.

I don’t think the fundies really are worried about the child. It’s the adults who are so scared of the nipple. To them, I say: Don’t look at this next picture. Don’t imagine your hand slowly caressing it. Don’t think of your tongue sliding deliciously around its perky firmness.

(Attention: If you are reading via an RSS reader, you will need to visit my web site to be able to play the MP3s. Make sure you have a recent Flash plug-in for your browser.)

Every bold pioneer and every true innovator is quickly followed by a screaming horde of cheap knockoffs. For every Xerox PARC, there’s a Microsoft. For every Charles Darwin, there’s a Michael Egnor. For every Osiris or Dionysus, there’s a Jesus. And for every Alvin and the Chipmunks, there’s Charlie the Hamster.

Newer readers to this blog may not be familiar with Charlie, the beloved hamster for Christ. If you are not yet acquainted with this rapturous rodent, I strongly urge you to read my original article where I first encountered him. You really should check out that article! It has always been one of my favorites. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Back by Popular Demand, Charlie the Hamster!

Now that you’ve had a chance to “enjoy” Charlie’s work, let’s find out a bit more about him.

In the year since I wrote the original article, I’ve come across Charlie several more times on the web. The absolute best site about this forgotten Christian Soldier is the site Charlie The Hamster Evangelistic Ministry. It masquerades as a real ministry, but it’s clearly just a loving tribute to this hokey Alvin wannabe. From the site:

Charlie is a Christ-loving, bible-believing hamster whom God has blessed abundantly with the gift of music and song.

It’s a gift and a curse. OK, it’s just a curse.

Charlie the Hamster records are, to the ears, what Jack T. Chick tracts are to the eyes: funny, innocuous witnessing tools with an unexpectedly powerful soul-saving impact.

This is why I think this is a tribute site, having a little fun with its subject. I doubt that even Christians think Chick tracts are funny and innocuous.

While Charlie the Hamster’s songs are easily mocked and often ridiculed by smug “sophisticates” and self-impressed “hepcats,”…

Guilty as charged!

…anyone who approaches the material with child-like innocence will reap eternal rewards.

Kids are pretty sophisticated these days. I don’t think anybody finds Charlie the Hamster “rewarding”.

The Missiles of Roctober

Charlie the Hamster is the brain-fart of Floyd Robinson, a D-list country musician. One of the sites I found that tells a tiny bit about Robinson and Charlie is Roctober, a giant page that catalogs all human knowledge about Alvin and the Chipmunks and every predecessor, successor, clone, rip-off, and knockoff. Here’s what they have to say:

It seems that Floyd Robinson combined his love of country music, The Chipmunks, and Jesus Christ to make Charlie The Hamster. Charlie is less mischievous than Alvin but still jokes around. Floyd is less angry than David, he patiently chides Charlie. Charlie and Floyd seem fairly likable. They often sing together, occasionally letting Charlie’s lil’ cousins Huey and Stanley join in. Here’s some banter from the intro to “Think Jesus”: “Charlie, what do you like to think of most?” “Candy! Ice cream! Popcorn!” “Let me put it this way, Charlie: WHO do you like to think of most?” “That’s easy! Jesus!” Full band (guitar, bass, drums, organ) backs them up on these songs and the two instrumentals feature some good picking and strumming, Jew’s harp, and hiccuping. The front cover of the “Sunday School” LP shows Charlie and his lil’ cousins in their Sunday best in front of church. One cousin has a slingshot in his back pocket! The back cover has a photo of a grinning pompadoured Floyd posing with his guitar.

Charlie the Hamster Teaches Bible Stories

Now let’s get to the part that you’ve all been waiting for: More Charlie! I’ve been scouring the internet for the last few days. I’ve managed to bag a dozen or so songs, so you have lots more of this to look forward to over the next few months!

This month, we’ll listen to the first two songs from Charlie the Hamster Teaches Bible Stories. I believe this is his second album. It was inflicted upon the public published in 1974. Here’s “It’s Fun To Live For Jesus”:

It’s Fun To Live For Jesus

Oh, I’m glad I live in a Christian nation
Where I can live my salvation
‘Cause I know, yes I know
that Jesus love me so

So I live my life for Him alone
‘Cause His love for me every day is shown
And I know, yes I know
That Jesus loves me so

Oh, it’s fun to live for Jesus
Hooray, hooray
Every time I can, I’ll take my stand, I’ll live my life for Jesus
Every day, I’ll say, I live my life for Jesus
‘Cause I know, that it’s so, I live my life for Jesus

(repeat all)

It’s funny. I don’t mean the song. I mean it’s funny that I had just assumed that Charlie lived in the United States. The first line tells us that he doesn’t. As we all know, the U.S. is not a Christian nation. It wasn’t founded on the Ten Commandments, and there is no mention of God in the Constitution.

The melody provides the essential clue. The constitution of the Confederate States of America was god-based. Charlie’s a reb!

The second song on the album is “Sunday School”:

Sunday School

Sunday school, Sunday school, how I love Sunday school
Yes, I do
I study and learn, I play and have fun
Yes, I do

I learn about things that are good and true
And learn about things that I should not do

Sunday school, Sunday school, how I love Sunday school
Yes, I do
It brings such joy to girls and to boys
Yes, it’s true

All the week long, I just sing this song
How I love Sunday School

(repeat all)

I must not have attended Charlie’s Sunday school. The only joy I remember from Sunday school was the time they gave us cardboard cube banks. We were supposed to do chores to earn money to put into the bank, then bring them back the next week and donate the money to the church. That didn’t seem like such a good deal to me, so immediately after class, my brother and I used the banks as soccer balls. That was fun. The matronly Sunday school teacher had a look of pure horror and failure on her face, but she didn’t say anything. I guess she knew at that point what it would take me several more years to figure out: I didn’t belong there.

But apparently Charlie does. Or at least he thinks he does. Sorry, Charlie! God doesn’t want souls with good taste. God wants souls that taste good! And to him, only human souls taste good!

Yes, in addition to the regular lie that Charlie is being told (i.e., “God exists”), they’ve also neglected to tell him that animals don’t have souls! Charlie’s not going anywhere when he dies, except into a shoebox that Floyd will bury in the backyard.

Back by Unpopular Demand, Squirrely!

I know this violates the Geneva Convention, but George Bush pulled us out of that. I am reposting here that horrible cut from All Ears, the Radio Shack CB radio album. Yes, I give to you: Squirrely!

(Warning! Those of you who are still pissed off about my little “It’s a Small World” prank a few posts back should definitely not play this song! You have been warned!)

The reason I’ve reposted this is because I stumbled across some information about it. Who would have thought that anybody knew anything about this vile turd? But on that same Roctober page that tells us about Charlie, I found a description of three albums starring “Shirley, Squirrely, and Melvin” in 1981 and 1982. Roctober tells us:

And so without missing a beat this trio debuted featuring a couple of Blues Brothers type boy-squirrels (Melvin played sax and guitar, Squirrely picked up percussion and laid some guitar licks in as well) and a hot diva frontwoman with a huge tail.

OK, but those albums were five and six years after the Radio Shack album. Well, just read a little farther up the page, and you’ll see the story of “Hey Shirley (This Is Squirrely)”:

Apparently two-thirds of Shirley, Squirrely & Melvin had a prehistory. Before Excelsior Records resurrected them as the successors to the departed Chipmunks, they made an icky-cute country & western novelty single cashing in on the CB radio craze. For a group of rodents (in this case, squirrels), they have a lot of vocal range. While Squirrely gets his mack on with Shirley, there’s probably about umpteen different voices breaking in on the line (including a proper British accent and a stuttering Porky Pig knockoff). And you can tell each and every one apart. Can’t do that with the Chipmunks (especially after the Chipettes moved in). The other side is the instrumental backing track. Radio Shack carried a comp LP featuring this track to help advertise the various CB radios they sold at the time.

So you see, every torture device has its story!

I keep this blog focussed primarily on U.S.-based fundies. Despite this, I have a disproportionately large percentage of Australian readers. Maybe it’s from their collective guilt for sending us Ken Ham and Mel Gibson.

Speaking of Australia…

I’m sure you’ve had a song stuck in your head from time to time. It’s usually a tolerable condition. My most recent case of this affliction was the song “Waltzing Matilda”. I’m not sure how that happened; I don’t remember hearing it anywhere lately. It got me thinking that I’ve never understood what the song was about. It has too many Australian words in it. The easiest thing to do in cases like this is to turn to Wikipedia.

It says the song is about a hobo who steals a feral sheep. Then a guy claiming to be the owner shows up with three police officers. The hobo cries “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!” and drowns himself. That’s probably not completely accurate, but you try to describe it in 37 words or fewer.

OK. That settles that problem, but I found a couple of other interesting things in that article.

For starters, Australia didn’t have a national anthem (“Advance Australia Fair”) until 1984. The Waltzing Matilda article says:

The song was one of four included in a national plebiscite to choose Australia’s national song held on 21 May 1977 by the Fraser Government to determine which song was preferred as Australia’s national anthem. “Waltzing Matilda” received 28% of the vote compared with 43% for “Advance Australia Fair”, 19% for “God Save the Queen” and 10% for “Song of Australia”.

So “Waltzing Matilda” seems to be their second choice for national anthem. But 1977 wasn’t the first time someone tried to give the song official status. Back in 1961…

…Australian songwriter Jack O’Hagan provided lyrics to the traditional tune of the song to be called God Bless Australia that he hoped would become the Australian national anthem.

So in order to gain support for turning it into the national anthem, O’Hagen loads it up with God! Here are two of the stanzas:

Here in this God given land of ours, Australia
This proud possession, our own piece of earth
That was built by our fathers, who pioneered our heritage,
Here is Australia, the land of our birth.

God bless Australia, Our land Australia,
Home of the Anzac, the strong and the free
It’s our homeland, our own land,
To cherish for eternity,
God bless Australia, The land of the free.

This crass pandering apparently didn’t work, but it still points out a shameful tendency of the patriotic.

The American Obsession

Most people are only vaguely aware that “The Star-Spangled Banner” has four stanzas. After getting through all of the first three stanzas and most of the fourth, we hit this line:

And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’

D’oh! Ruined a perfectly good song.

So what is it about national anthems that they have to invoke God?

The other song that has to be mentioned in this context is “America the Beautiful”. Every so often, there’s a push by various folks to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “America the Beautiful” as national anthem. Those efforts have not been successful, so somehow “America the Beautiful” became our national hymn. To refresh your memory, here are just a few of its lines:

…God shed His grace on thee…
…God mend thine ev’ry flaw…
…May God thy gold refine…

Foreign Correspondence

A few other countries seem to have the same problem. A Google search on “god in national anthems” turned up god-contaminated anthems in:

• Canada (“O Canada”)
• Fiji (“God Bless Fiji”)
• Iceland (“O, God of Our Land”)
• The Netherlands (“The William”)
• New Zealand (“God Defend New Zealand”)
• Russia, 1833–1917 (“God Save the Tsar”)
• Serbia (“God of Justice”)
• Solomon Islands (“God Save Our Solomon Islands”)
• South Africa (“God Bless Africa” and “The Call of South Africa”)
• Sudan (“We Are the Army of God and of Our Land”)
• Suriname (“God Be With Our Suriname”)
• Swaziland (“O Lord our God of the Swazi”)
• Tanzania (“God Bless Africa”)
• United Kingdom (“God Save the King/Queen”)

I’m sure there are others.

Why this compulsive need to validate the ethnocentric belief of those people that they live in God’s chosen country and are God’s chosen people?

Cleansing Ritual

(For those of you reading this via RSS, you’ll need to visit my web site to see the Flash player.)

I wouldn’t feel right if I left you with “Waltzing Matilda” running through your head for the rest of the day. That is easily remedied with this calming tone:

You’re welcome!

While I was in Las Vegas last weekend, I snapped a few pictures of odd things I saw. The above photo is of the toilet in my room. Just keep away from the holy water.

For many months, I wasn’t sure whether I’d even be able to go to TAM 6 this year, because of job conflicts. I wasn’t able to make the commitment until just a few weeks before TAM. By that time, the convention rate on the official hotel (the Flamingo) had expired. Now they wanted over $200 per night. Holy crapper! (see above) I can’t justify that. I looked around for someplace cheaper. I found the Super 8 Koval just one (very long) block off of the Strip. It was something like $70 per night, so that’s where I ended up. It’s a tolerable place, and it appeared clean. Much to my amazement, the walk between the S8 and the Flamingo was not packed with crack whores, drug dealers, and Elvis impersonators. It was, however, a very long walk in the extreme Vegas summer heat.

But imagine my surprise when I checked into my room and found this:

I saw this sign in the lobby of the hotel. I didn’t eat there. If it really is the best, they wouldn’t need to use irony quotes.

(Still at TAM 6, so here’s some more FC.)

Today, let’s look at a few highlights from that other parody site, The Dysfunctional Family Circus.

(I’m at TAM 6 right now and can’t post, so I scheduled this to run as cheap filler.)

Here are a few more re-captioned Family Circus panels from The Other Family.

An Article by Guest-Writer ParrotLover77

[Note: My life is momentarily complicated by a Michelle Duggar paternity suit. It’s going to take me a few days to settle up (ever wonder how they make ends meet?), so I won’t be able to blog. ParrotLover has graciously volunteered to help out. With his DNA, I should be able to get off the hook. In the meantime, please enjoy this article that he has written for us. Thank you, ParrotLover! You can also visit his own website. Buy some music. Look at parrots.

All of the artwork in this article is from the brilliant Heathen World. Visit them too.

—Ron Britton, editor-in-grief]

Ron has been very busy and asked me to submit a guest article on BoF to keep the content fresh.  I was honored that he would think a mere tech blogger could write for his amazing blog!  Then I was slammed with some of the worst writer’s block I’ve had in ages.  What the heck do I blog about?  Well, I had a few ideas about politics and religion, but nothing came to fruition.  The fingers just didn’t want to strike the keys.  So I decided to visit our old friends at the Answers in Genesis website for inspiration, and boy did I find some!  So today I will discuss an article written by Ken Ham (founder and president of Answers in Genesis–USA) called, Do I Believe in UFOs? Absolutely!

In his article, Ken is trying to convince the reader that life simply cannot exist elsewhere in the universe, because the bible says so.  Is there ANYTHING the bible cannot do?  It slices, it dices, it turns your brain to mush!

Let’s dig into his article and get snarky. *rubs hands*

Occasionally at conferences, someone will ask, “Do you believe in UFOs?”

What conferences would AiG attend where attendees ask that sort of question?  Maybe the alien abductee and literal creation kooks are cut from the same mold…

I usually answer, “Absolutely! Any flying object that can’t be identified is a UFO.”

Wow, that’s actually very intelligent… and almost snarky (me like)!  I almost didn’t expect Mr. Ham to start out so sensible.  Indeed, the word UFO has been, for quite some time, used in contexts it wasn’t meant to be used.  Unidentified Flying Object means just that: it’s flying, it’s an object, and it’s unidentified.  That doesn’t mean it’s from outer space carrying little gray men with big black eyes equipped with a variety of anal probes.

I then continue, “But do I believe in UFOs piloted by Vulcans, Klingons, or Cardassians? The answer is a definite no.” Sorry, Star Trek fans!

Why is he apologizing?  Are there Trek fans that would actually be offended by that statement?  I’m a fan of the Trek, but I certainly don’t believe the aliens made up on that show are real nor have any possibility of being close to real extra-terrestrial life.  After all, Trek’s bastardization of the concept of evolution really doesn’t fit into reality (every planet has a humanoid—what are the odds!).  But I understand that it’s a lot of work just to get a different looking humanoid alien.  One that is TRULY alien would be well over budget and difficult to script.  But I digress… Skipping a little…

A good friend of mine, Dr. Clifford Wilson, author of the million-copy bestseller Crash Go the Chariots, did a lot of research on UFOs. He once told me that he concluded that by far the majority were either misunderstood natural phenomena or misinterpreted manmade objects.

That’s a very reasonable conclusion.

However, he did conclude there was a very small percentage that couldn’t be explained, and he allowed the possibility of some supernatural origin—albeit evil. But regardless, he, like me, does not believe in intelligent physical beings on planets other than our earth.

Fascinating.  So, intelligent life originating on planets other than Earth is far-fetched, but evil supernatural spirits—why, that’s completely plausible!  Very Chick.   So, Mr. Ham has some amazing evidence to back up this very broad conclusion he has come to, right?

A number of leading evolutionists, like the late Dr. Carl Sagan, have popularized the idea that there must be intelligent life in outer space. From an evolutionary perspective, it would make sense to suggest such a possibility. People who believe this possibility contend that, if life evolved on earth by natural processes, intelligent life must exist somewhere else in the far reaches of space, given the size of the universe and the millions of possible planets.

Okay, first of all, Carl Sagan was an astronomer, not an evolutionist (whatever that is; I guess I’m a “gravitist” since I believe in gravity).  Also, evolution has nothing to do with whether or not a planet can support life and whether life can begin to exist out of the biochemical building block precursors to life (as is speculated to have happened on earth billions of years ago).  That process of the origins of life is known as “abiogenesis,” NOT evolution.

All that said, evolutionary theory does seem to postulate that if life arises, it will eventually become clever if given the correct external pressures (at least if it is similar to life on Earth).  As for intelligent life capable of using radio communication (as per SETI)—that’s just mathematics (again, not evolution).  There seems to be a pretty good probability of there being intelligent life out there somewhere.  Whether or not we will ever communicate with them, nobody really knows because we don’t have enough information.  We listen for them because we don’t think they’ll land here like Stan Romanek’s aliens.

One can postulate endlessly about possibilities of intelligent life in outer space, but I believe a Christian worldview, built on the Bible, rejects such a possibility. Here is why.

Remember that amazing evidence I wanted?  Yes.  I was let down.

During the six days of creation in Genesis, we learn that God created the earth first. On Day 4 He made the sun and the moon for the earth, and then “he made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16).

Far be it from me to criticize a deity, but why did it take three days to make the earth when it only took one day to make all the other matter in the entire universe?  Talk about a learning curve!  I guess when you begin by making “day and night” before you make the planet you are making the day and night for; you are starting out on the wrong foot.

From these passages of Scripture it would seem that the earth is very special—it is center stage. Everything else was made for purposes relating to the earth. For instance, the sun, moon, and stars were made “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14).

It seems a little bit inefficient to make the great majority of the universe (which is unimaginably vast) just as sign posts and time keeping devices for the inhabitants of this little blue planet.  But this is what one truly believes when one’s reason hitchhikes its way to a dive bar, drinks too much, and drives its car into the river.

Okay, so Mr. Ham goes on and on about how the bible clearly says that the Earth is very very VERY special because the bible says so.  Let’s skip down to the part about aliens.

Now here is the problem. If there are intelligent beings on other planets, then they would have been affected by the fall of Adam because the whole creation was affected. So these beings would have to die because death was the penalty for sin. One day their planet will be destroyed by fire during God’s final judgment, but they cannot have salvation because that blessing is given only to humans.

Screw you, aliens!  You didn’t know about a religion on a planet billions of light years from you, so you are screwed for eternity!  No matter that you didn’t have anything to do with “the fall.”  The deity of the cosmos is going to create you, throw a temper tantrum, and punish you, because of what the first human did.  And there is NOTHING you can do!

When Jesus Christ stepped into history, He became the God-man. The Bible calls Him “the last Adam” and the “second man” (1 Corinthians 15:45, 47). He became the second perfect man (Adam was perfect before he sinned)…

Hold on here, Hammy.  Isn’t that basically saying Adam was perfect until he wasn’t?  If Adam was perfect, he would never have sinned!  Oh wait, I forgot.  It’s all womankind’s fault for tempting poor innocent Adam.  And as a result, we’re all paying for it (even those innocent space aliens).  Talk about a bad temper!

…and He took the place of the first Adam by dying for the human race. As the first Adam was the representative head of the human race, so Jesus became the new head, the last Adam. So there can be no other Savior, only Christ. Jesus now sits in the heavens, still in human form, sitting on His throne next to the Father. If Jesus stepped out of His human form, we would no longer have a Savior. He remains the God-man forever.

Okay, that last bit of babbling made no sense, but I wanted to include it just for its laughableness.

But note, Jesus didn’t become a “God-Klingon,” a “God-Vulcan,” or a “God-Cardassian”—He became the God-man. It wouldn’t make sense theologically for there to be other intelligent, physical beings who suffer because of Adam’s sin but cannot be saved.

You are correct; theologically it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Now, regarding animal life and plants, we cannot be so dogmatic because the Bible does not state whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. Based on the passages about the heavens and earth, however, I strongly suspect that life does not exist elsewhere.

Okay, so let me get this straight… Animals and plants (wait—aren’t humans animals?) can exist elsewhere in the universe, because, heck, the bible is mute on that issue.  But intelligent life certainly cannot exist because that would mean God would have to punish them for eternity for not being around when Jayzus came to save us all from the first human’s mistake.  This is draining the batteries on my logic-meter. 

So the next time you hear someone talking about UFOs, think on the Scripture passages quoted above, and use them to segue into a presentation of the gospel: “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).

Remember, UFO abductee loons are just confusing alien anal probes with the pleasure that is the holy spirit.