Picking a Church

I'm really trying, for the benefit of my kids, to find a church to belong to, because my wife wants them to be able to go to Sunday School and go on church retreats and whatnot, which apparently is fun, even though to me it sounds about as enjoyable as watching a clown take a dump. Anyhow, I'm seriously vascillating on what kind of church I want to be a part of. As a man who was raised under the concept that the only thing you do religiously on Sunday is watch the Vikings, this has proven difficult for me. Here's why. Based on my experience, there appear to be two distinct types of churches

1.) Really boring churches

2.) Cults masking themselves as "non-denominational" churches

The really boring churches are your traditional Catholic and Lutheran churches. People dress nicely, they shuffle in every week, there is a boring sermon that tries to relate Jesus' plight to the rising cost of fuel, nobody pays attention to it, there are some hymns, some 16 year old reads bulletin board stuff, everybody does communion which takes forever, you awkwardly shake hands with everyone around you, you say the Lord's prayer and you shuffle out. Not particularly interesting, but you might see somebody you know and maybe he'll give you Twins tickets.

Then you have the cults. In my quest to be less bored at church, I suggested going to one of the many non-denominational churches around the area. I was hoping it was less boring. I was right about that, but be careful what you hope for, because you might just get it. When we first got in we were greeted by a bunch of really friendly people. Almost too friendly. They had no idea whether or not I was a serial child murderer or a Satanist, but I was still their best friend in 30 seconds. I got the feeling that something funny was going on. No matter. We took the kids to the daycare because this church filmed it's services and they apparently don't approve of screaming children drowning out the sermon. Screaming adults are apparently OK though. More on that later. Then we went into the chapel where I got my second funny feeling, like somebody was trying to fool me. They were playing rock music. Guitars and drums and strobelites and such. People were rockin' out in the stands. What concerned me was the lyrics of this rock music. It was just "praise God" over and over. This wasn't rock music, it was chanting. Then the music would get quiet, and some lady who bore a striking resemblance to Marie Osmond would say something like, "God, you are awesome!! You rule!! We are thankful that you love us Punk Ass bitches. You rock out with your cock out God!!" I'm paraphrasing there, but she was using new age lingo to talk to God. Trying to fool me again. Then she goes back to rock/chanting music.

By now, I'm uncomfortable, especially because people around me are raising their hands and shouting praises, like "OH YES GOD!!" It sounded like Skinemax. One guy was shaking and he rolled his eyes back in his head. Yikes. Then the pastor comes out and tells us to give a big round of applause to the rock group which consisted of the band and about 10 singers, and the only thing that pops into my head is which of the singers would I hump if I absolutely had to. (I picked #7 FYI). Then something really creepy makes me look back to see if they'd locked the doors on us. This crazy person comes up to describe what a great time everybody had at the youth camping extravagaza. She says, "2 people gave their souls to God! We had kids writhing and speaking in tongues and everything. It was great!!" I want to leave right now. My fight or flight response begins to kick in so I locate my nearest exit, and begin to plot the fastest way to incapacitate the usher (hard kick to the crotch) so I can escape. I have decided that speaking in tongues would be a decidedly un-great thing to happen to me or anybody on a camping trip.

Mercifully, I began to get sleepy during the sermon, which was about how your house in heaven is 1 square mile big (how does he know that) and it has more rooms in it than you'll ever be able to visit (I just want a pool table and a big TV.)Finally, it's over, after an hour and a half. As we rush to get our children I am nearly certain that they will be wearing white robes and have new names that have numbers in them, and that they'll call me "Former Daddy" or something. Fortunately, they just went to the park.

So the conclusion I've drawn is this: Old school churches may not be exciting, but nobody is going to scream at the Lord, or spew gibberish at me, and my kids will never be renamed Zyrton-13XBL. I guess that's about all I was hoping for in the first place.

P.S. If it turns out that this non denominational crazyfest is actually the "correct" religion, then I retract this entire post.

People are funny looking

You ever notice how many weird looking people there are out there? Hollywood has us bamboozled. They take they best looking people and put them on camera and leave the rest of us odd looking people, and I count myself in the population, to wonder why we're so funny looking. It's bad for ya.

Everywhere I go I see:

People whose asses are 10 sizes too big in proportion to their bodies
People missing fingers (Did you ever notice how many people are missing fingers? A lot)
People with gigantic noses
People with a bunch of fetuses in their stomachs
People whose stomachs stick out like 3 feet but they look normal from the back
People with Alien-shaped heads
People with really stupid clothes
People with gross toes
People with super fat elbows
People with big weird divet-like things in their fat
People who are obviously bald but try to cover it up by being really tall or by wearing a hat.
People who look skinny but when they take off their shirt are very flabby.
People with horrible teeth.
People whose nipples poke out even when it's hot
People who have strange tanlines, like they wore a venetian blind to the beach.
People whose boners poke out always
People who look dead but aren't.
People who look like fat, ugly versions of celebrities
People with too much body hair

This is just a sampling of the weird looking people that I've seen this week, and I include myself in this mix. By just a haircut or not shaving I can look like

-A bouncer at The Lounge
-Somebody who gets caught on "To Catch a Predator"
-A Mexican Dude
-A fatter version of Shaggy from Scooby Doo (Side note: I never saw the resemblance, but a drunk chick in Vegas said that's what I looked like. I took it as a compliment.)

So anyway, we all look weird. Even the super hot girls have weird veins or eczema or crooked boobs or something. So let's embrace it. Also, have you ever noticed how many people look a little bit like horses. It's like 65% of the population. You just want to put a saddle on them. So cheers to all you weird looking people, I hope you get together and have kids that come out looking like Pug Dogs.

GC

He was the best. Leave it at that. You all know who he is. What am I going to watch on HBO now? I saw him 5 times and I was lucky. Thanks for everything you said, even if I thought it was dumb or weird for an old guy. I'll miss you.

Brian

Who to vote for???

I haven't decided who to vote for yet. I don't usually vote along party lines, (unless I'm in a big hurry like I have to get home for the baseball playoffs or if my voting booth is on fire or something), and I'm normally woefully uninformed on the most important issues (once I voted yes on a referendum to euthanize all funny looking people. At least I thought that's what I was voting for.) I usually just vote on stuff based on the mood I'm in that day. But I figure I gotta get serious here and vote for the best presidential candidate since this is the most pivotal election ever, at least that's what I've been told. So I'm starting a list of pros and cons for each candidate that I figure will eventually morph into a blueprint for who I should vote for, and who you should vote for too, considering this list will be filled with brilliant insight and always flawless logic.

Barack Obama:

Pros:
- He seems very smart, much smarter than me. This is always a good thing. I want the people in charge of the really important decisions to be well informed super smart people. It would seem that they'd have a better chance of getting things right than people of average intelligence.
-He turned down public financing. Not only is he smarter than me, he's my moral superior as well. I would be expecting public financing for everything. I'd have a harem of interns someplace on the beach and I'd expect public financing for that too.
-He could beat every other president ever at 1-on-1 basketball, with the possible exception of the tall and lanky Abraham Lincoln. That means a lot to me.

Cons:
-He's either too black or not black enough to be president depending on which roving pack of morons you talk to. And you know that some gang of inbred, moonshine addled hillbillies is going to eventually stop eating possum long enough to try to take him out. We might find out how inherently racist our society still is. I don't know if that's a good thing.
-His name sounds like a terrorist name. I have this very irrational fear that when he gets elected, at his first state of the union address, Osama Bin Laden and John Walker Lindh are going to pop out of a coat closet and the three of them are going to sit there for an hour and laugh at us and I'll have to miss a good portion of Monday Night Football.

John McCain:

Pros:
-Also seems very smart. Disagrees with his party at times. Thinks on his own. Good for him.
-Was a POW for 6 years but still opposes waterboarding. Again, this makes him a better person than me. If I had been a POW for 6 years, forget waterboarding, I'd probably be flat out drowning people for fun.
-Doesn't take any guff from people who make fun of him because he is old. I saw him choke out this college kid once because the kid tried to open a door for him

Cons:
-Is awfully old. It might be a blow to the country's self-esteem if the President's inaugural meal was steak (cut into 4000 tiny pieces) and corn on the cob (cut off the cob and mushed into a fine paste). It's also bad for your country if your President dies of old age on the job.
-Cheated on his wife. Isn't that more of a Democrat thing?
-Can't raise his arms above his head. Harrison Ford would have never defeated the terrorists in Air Force One if he hadn't been able to raise his arms above his head. Stephen Hawking isn't going to become President. I rest my case.

Anybody Else:

Pros:
-You can smugly show your friends how well informed you are because you voted for the best candidate out there. Or you can be one of the average 25,000 weirdos who vote for Mickey Mouse each election. Or you can vote for your stoner buddy Charlie and then go tell him and he might, like, give you some pot.

Cons:
-Your candidate is not going to win.

Wow, what a great list.

The Deer Humper (not featuring Tommy Lee Jones)

I happened to read a while ago about a guy from Superior, WI who got arrested for having sex with a dead deer that he found by the side of the road. It became a fairly big story. His lawyer unsuccessfully argued that it was OK to have sex with a dead deer by the side of the road because since it was dead, it had ceased being an "animal", and was now akin to a gumball machine, or a bowl of mashed potatoes, both of which are perfectly legal to bone. The judge sentenced this person to community service, therapy, and presumably told him to stay away from the side of the road.

What I wonder is, did this guy wake up in the morning and think, "Today I'm gonna hump me a deer," or was it more of a spur of the moment thing like, "Well sir, think I'll get some coffee, then maybe donate some plasma. Perhaps a new plant would brighten my... Hey look, a deer, I'm gonna hump it."

Did he go looking for a live deer at first but got discouraged, saw the dead one, and thought, "Well sir, beggars cain't be choosers." Or maybe he was chasing the deer and hit it with his car, and thought, "It ain't real dead yet." Or MAYBE he was chasing a deer on foot, and tripped over the dead one and thought, "Eh, close enough."

I probably shouldn't wonder about things like that. I bet Warren Buffett doesn't.

I'd make a bad criminal

Here's something I bet most of you don't do. When I'm driving around, especially to someplace I'm not very familiar with, I always check around to see if there would be any really good places to dump a corpse. I say to myself, "Hmmm, now that area looks kind of woodsy and untraveled. I bet nobody goes hunting around there. That would be a pretty good place to hide a person."

Why do I do this? I haven't quite figured it out yet, since I don't have a "People to Kill" list or anything like that. Quite frankly, it's way more likely that I'll fall in a big hole, or off the Empire State Building and accidentally kill myself. Also, my criteria that makes a spot a primo body dumping location is so simplistic that it can only be from watching the A&E channel or The Simpsons or something. All it has to be is a woods that hunters won't go into and trip over the body. I would have to guess that actual killers have a more thorough list of requirements.

I suppose I'm always sort of subconsciously plotting the perfect crime. Whenever I see an armored car, parked at some non-threatening location like Cub Foods, the back door is always a little bit open, and part of me is always slightly tempted to reach in really quick like, and grab a big bag of money with a dollar sign on it. And my bravery units increase proportionately with how dorky the guy driving the armored car looks. If he looks like the PC guy from the Mac and PC commercials, I am very brave, relatively speaking. If he looks like Kimbo Slice, however, I am much less brave. When it comes down to it, however, I doubt seriously that even if the driver happened to be a dead tortoise, that I would ever go through with my criminal mastermindish plan. This is probably a good thing.