Greatest. Headline. Ever.

Imagine my shock when I logged onto MSNBC this morning and was faced with this headline:

"Lord Jesus Christ Hit By Car"

The actual story's not as funny as the headline - Seems a lady in Massachusetts mowed down a 50 year-old man while he was crossing the street. But it just so happens that this gentleman's real name, confirmed by his driver's license, is Lord Jesus Christ. Happily, Christ only suffered minor injuries and has already been released from the hospital. Meanwhile, 20 year-old Brittany Cantarella of Pittsfield, MA will forever go down in history as the lady who squashed Jesus Christ with her Monte Carlo while he was trying to cross the street.

As a bonus, here's the original article from a local MA paper, The Republican.

Not Quite Jesus...

Here's some pareidolia I can get behind. Remember not so long ago when an..."enterprising" gentleman tried to sell a magical Jesus pancake on Ebay? Well he's beeen one-upped big time. Ebay seller Skullygirl1 is currently offering for sale a one of kind piece of iconography that has to be seen to be believed. Apparently the young lady was making a stack of pancakes when, without the use of "molds or sculpting implements", one of the tasty morsels assumed the "eerie likeness" of a revered figure. Behold:

Hmm...so what is it...?

Look closely now...if you squint you'll see it. Even better, here's a slightly cleaned up version of the image:

Holy crap! It's Godzilla! RUN!!

Better act fast folks - as of this writing the auction only has 74 hours left.

Virtually Indistinguishable from the "Real" Thing...

Hey everyone. Your ol' pal Skippy has been battling a weird combination of being simultaneously busy and lazy lately, which accounts for the paucity of entries. That being said, I ran across a hilarious spoof of Uri Geller today starring none other than House, M.D.'s Hugh Laurie that I thought was worth posting. The video is embedded below and I think you'll agree with me that Laurie's portrayal is in all important respects indistinguishable from Gellar himself. Enjoy.

Edward Current is Awesome...

Edward Current is a musician and comedian who rolls out video after hilarious video satirizing the most popular pro-God arguments on the internet. While a small part of me burns at the realization that this guy is far funnier than I am, I've decided to add a link to his Youtube channel to the sidebar. Seriously, this guy is great. Plus his delivery is so perfect that lots of folks mistake him for a real internet evangelist. Head over to his channel and watch a few of his videos - you'll be glad you did.

Jack Chick: Still Hilarious...

I saw this over on Respectful Insolence this afternoon and I just couldn't resist linking to it here. There's a delicious new Jack Chick tract out that discusses how Jesus can cure vampires. No shit. Mr. Chick is getting on in years, but as you can see he's not about to relinquish his title as the world's greatest poster boy for Poe's Law.

Enjoy.

I Love E-Mail...

Really, I do. I don't get an enormous amount of it that actually counts for squat, but e-mail has made my life a lot easier over the years - There's simply not a more convenient to stay in touch with your friends. One other thing that I like about e-mail is that you can filter it. The days of tons and tons of spam are gone thanks to high quality free filtering software that anyone can access. The account I use for my blog filters my incoming mail for junk, as does the e-mail account that it forwards everything to, as does the e-mail account that that forwards everything to. As such, there's not a whole lot of junk that gets through to old Skippy and thus I feel pretty content to leave my e-mail hanging out there for everyone to see.

Our friend Dennis Markuze of Quebec, Canada, who goes by the name David Mabus on this and every other blog he chooses to infect, likes e-mail too. I know this because he's tried to send me a bit over the last couple of days. I can only assume that this is his revenge for my calling him a ninny recently and suggesting that he might want to reconsider going off his meds. All I can say is that this isn't quite on par with his threats to crawl out of my TV and eat my soul like in that movie The Ring.

Dennis' home e-mail address and personal info have been widely disseminated online, and while I'm not quite base enough to repost them here, I'm going to note for everyone else's convenience that those of you with functional e-mail accessible through their Blogspot profiles may was to keep an eye on their in-boxes for Dennis' salty leavings. His current spamming address is davidmabus2009@gmail.com for those of you who'd like to block him in advance. I'm sure he'll have another one in the next few days.

On the plus side, without Dennis I'm not sure I'd ever have occasion to use the term "Nostradummy", which I'm quite tickled with even though no one else seems to be.

Tons More Bullshit...

Penn and Teller - Bullshit is a hell of a funny show that I regrettably don't get to see first-run because I'm too cheap to pay for Showtime. Luckily it very, very slowly comes out on DVD, and Season 5 finally made to stores last week. Now, the first couple of seasons dealt with pretty run of the mill asininity like aliens, ghosts, and ouija boards. More recent seasons have addressed somewhat more complex and controversial issues like gun control and the death penalty, which are interesting topics but don't quite as well in the rant format that the show uses. The progression of topics calls to mind my ancient post (Located here, but embarrassingly larval.) about how crazy woo-woo topics are like training for applying critical thinking skills to other areas of our lives.

The fifth season splits the difference, talking about exorcisms* and enemas in the same breath as patriotism, illegal immigration, and sweatshops. (There's also an episode solely dedicated to boobies). It's not the best season, but it's still worth having a look at, especially for the episodes on illegal immigration (thought-provoking) and exorcism (hilarious). Penn and Teller are also libertarians, which means they come down on my side of the fence as often as not, but also that they occasionally make kind of uncomfortable zero-sum arguments about corporate responsibility and the like. That being said, the show is still worth watching and, more importantly, discussing. Check it out.

Just to show you that Penn and Teller actually have something worthwhile to say, have a look at this clip:



*Look for the interview with Elizabeth Loftus in the exorcism episode. She and Katherine Ketcham wrote this awesome book that helped to turn the tide against the forces of stupidity during the height of the Satanic Panic.

Who the hell is David Mabus?

A couple of weeks ago I made a post about James Randi's presence on Youtube, which honestly is not the kind of thing that usually attracts more than a couple of comments around here. Much to my surprise, I got a comment from a user named David that was essentially an a-grammatical explosion of written diarrhea, peppered with random links in much the way a watery dump might be studded with undigested corn. He mostly seemed to want to crow about the end of the Million Dollar Challenge, but he also mentioned the departure of Ellen Johnson from American Atheists*, so I'm not all that sure what he was getting at.

I didn't think much of it at the time, and just responded by linking him back to this post in which I predicted pretty much this same sort of shenanigans in response to the impending end of Randi's Challenge. While it proved, obviously, that I am in fact magic, it got no response and really nothing came of it at all.

Then today I was perusing PZ Myers' blog and happened to note a user named David Mabus in the Dungeon, which is a rogue's gallery of banned users. Turns out its the same loon that had posted on my blog, and apparently he boldly traverses the internet pasting the exact same rant (Seriously. Verbatim.), as well as one or two other pre-prepared jobs, on skeptical blogs and forums. Apparently this David Mabus fellow and our own David here are one and the same.

And yet the plot thickens...

Turns out David Mabus is actually Dennis Markuze, a Nostradummy from Canada who's greatest "contribution" to the prophecy movement is a weird claim that Nostradamus predicted the coming of Depeche Mode and, through this, the World Trade Center attacks. Apparently we have a celebrity in our midst. I don't know if I take it as a sign of Dennis' decline or my ascension that he's left off bothering Randi and PZ and is now skulking around here.

*Believe it or not I don't pay much attention to the goings-on of atheist organizations. I had to Wiki American Atheists after reading David's post to even get any context for why he was happy about Johnson leaving.

Testing Poe's Law...

Once again from the top, Poe's Law states:

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

With that in mind, can you guess which of the following Evangelical links are actually just parodies? Here are the rules: Don't Google the names of any of these sites, just follow the link I've provided for each one and skim the article.

Rapture Ready

Kjos Ministries

Landover Baptist Church

Exodus Times

Jesus is Lord

Satan's Rapture

Heaven.net

Dinosaurs on the Ark


It's a pity everyone and their mom has already heard of Answers in Genesis. Most of their stuff could pass for parody too.

The Galaxy...

I rented Monty Python's Meaning of Life last night and rediscovered this little gem that I'd forgotten all about. Like any good bit of humor, it has a way of putting things into perspective.