How to Tell If Yours Is Not the One True Religion

• No one ever photographs you silhouetted against a backdrop of streaming, radiant light.

• You actually get to see the zombie apocalypse, but your neighbor disappeared in a blinding flash of light.

• The last time you skipped church, booming, ominous choruses of trumpets didn't signal your soul's eternal damnation.

• Your religion encourages you to murder anyone for any reason.

• You are required to convert others just to be considered a good person.

• The first time you made love, the crucifix nailed to your wall fell down and hit you on the head.

• You have to pull into a gas station because your car lit up a "check soul" light.

• You had gay sex outside the missionary position while using birth control with an atheist member of another skin tone after getting drunk on stolen sacramental wine on the Sabbath, and baby Jesus still didn't cry.

•  You are Tom Cruise.

Happy Eastover!

Or Passeaster, as with which your preference may lie.

Last evening my family celebrated both, as the lapsed Jews gathered with the lapsed gentiles and the never-were, and faked a quick seder under my direction to tell the story of passover and then eat a meal before digressing into drunken therapy complaining about how awful the people we didn't invite are and always have been.

This is that story:

"Okay, so Moses is a Jew, but he's adopted by the queen. He's basically the pharaoh's little brother. Until one day God's like, "You're Jewish," and he's like, "Damn." So he goes out and sees what it's like to be Jewish, except he's still rich and powerful and not a slave. So God says, "No, you gotta free them now," which he's cool about, figuring his brother will be down ince their dad was about to do that anyway. But it turns out since Moses left to learn about being Jewish his brother became kind of a dick and didn't free the slaves at his dad's death like he was supposed to. It's a free laboring class. Come on.

"So Moses is all "Dude," and his brother is like, "Yeah, I know," but God 'turns his heart' so he'll refuse to let the Jewish slaves go, so effectively nothing from this point out is really his fault and God's a huge dick.

"So Moses performs some miracles, which also happen to be horrible, horrible plagues upon the Egyptian people for something their king did because he was being Jedi Mind Tricked.

"Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader.
"Your sad devotion to this contemporary religion hasn't given you
clairvoyance enough to- wait, yeah, actually no. Go ahead."

"First Moses made his staff into a cobra, which killed and ate the cobra-staff of an Egyptian magician, just to prove out God was stronger than his god. The the real plagues started: the Nile turned to blood, frogs rained from the sky–which is pretty cool, actually–lice, "wild beasts"–so, like Egyptian antelope or whatever were running through the streets, so that was cool–pestilence–which destroyed the entirety of the nation's crops and food stores–boils on the face and all over, giants, painful hail hitting people in their heads, locusts–eating what little of the crops remained–darkness just blotting out the sky–which should have been the end of it, but the Lord still kept Pharaoh from letting the Jews go–and finally the killing of all first-born Egyptian children, essentially committing genocide against an entire people for the fun of it.

"Dude, I am way too high for this right now."
"Shut up, Ezakiah! My mom'll totally hear you!"

"Finally, God let Pharaoh let the Jews go, but they had to get out quickly, so they baked their bread before it had risen, so it was all chewy and gross–basically a Cliff Bar. Then for some reason Pharaoh changed his mind again and some generals chased after them, but the Jews walked through the Red Sea in that really cool animated scene that's all anyone remembers from Disney's The Prince of Egypt. Then all the Egyptians chasing them died, and the Jews wandered in circles for 40 years until Moses died to punish him for breaking some tablets when we got bored and started worshiping a golden cow statue while waiting for God to finish dictating some laws.

"And somewhere in there, God also "passed judgement" on the Egyptian gods, apparently, so they were real but pussies."


Luckily, I'll be spending all day today working, despite it being Sunday and Easter, so I won't have to deal with the Jews telling me I'm a bad Jew (Passover is officially over), or the Christians telling m I'm going to hell (they're all fighting with their own families over plastic eggs).

But God willing we'll all meet again in Exodus II: The Search For More Money.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, Which is Next to Pompousness

This note was left for a manager where I work yesterday. Since one was not available to speak to immediately.

Dear Manager,

Please forward this to the CEO:
I can tell by your lack of Godly cards that this company in not long for this world. When you try (as our whole nation is trying) to take God out of the picture, He eventually takes you out, instead. Turn back to God, and it will go well for you.

Prayerfully,
Joe [something I can't make out]"

 Alright, some commentary:

First, "Godly cards" refers to greeting cards. We apparently do not stock enough religious Christian greeting cards.

Secondly, I would point out that we have a reasonably large Baptist population in the tri-town area. This also explains the frequency with which I have to explain to church returnees that "All Christian bibles contain both Old and New Testaments."

Now, this person actually is not included in this bunch. If I may be a little Sherlockian for a moment:

The missive itself is properly formatted, addressed, signed, and grammatically accurate down to superfluous serial commas, implying both a secondary education and practice, as well as a relative lack of experience with text messaging and email. The mostly cursive text seconds this, but the printed acronym tells us the writer worked in relation to business enough to make logos important, graphically, even when personal handwriting is less than ideal. The idea that a major chain store manager could forward a message through any proper channel to the CEO of the entire company reflects a dearth of any knowledge of big business and corporate environments, and a implies a significantly sheltered world view. These two factors in tandem would indicate a older gentleman remembering small-town economies and conservative values including education and a predominately Christian-led society where religion was a fact of life and not an option with a plethora of possible answers. The vague connotations and threats of failed business, death, and judgement imply a righteousness likely acquired early in life but a willingness to be politically outspoken likely acquired later, this is cemented by the use of the "prayerfully" sign-off, which is bordering on the archaic. "Our nation" shows a sense of ownership, of which the directed are either not a part of or may not necessarily consider themselves to be so. The only trusted men placating religious and racial fears in media while encouraging their followers to be outspoken are preachers and forcefully FOX News. Handwriting says Joe is right-handed and meticulous. His confidence in his identity and validity are expressed through large, swooping, letters and commas and strong strokes, but not rushed.

Thus we can surmise that Joe is likely white, between the ages of 55 and 70 and worked in small-business for his entire career, possibly self-employed but has been retired for more than 6 years. He was probably the patriarch of his family, though he bares weight from his own father's dominance before him. He watches Bill O'Reilly and has at least one televangelist he openly finds appealing.

He also has nothing better to do with his day,  and makes the poor decision to shop for greeting cards in a book store.