Sunday Sacrilege

I love the ultra-Christian. I love them because they make it so easy for me. One of the least mentally taxing things I do around here is wake up Sunday morning and find a post for the Sunday Sacrilege segment. It literally requires almost no effort to locate something completely absurd from, say, Christian Nightmares to pop up on the main page -- and generally whatever item I grab turns out to be so hilariously surreal that I don't even have to create a punchline for it. The whole thing is one big punchline; I couldn't improve on it comedically if I were the reincarnation of Bill Hicks.

Take, for example, "Jesusween."



There are so many possible jokes about something called "Jesusween" that, again, it's probably not even worth bothering. I mean, after the initial giggles, my mind immediately went to thoughts of a particularly cruel pet name concocted by Mary Magdalene -- and that was just for starters.

But here's the thing: The fact that a group of highly devoted Christian types came up with this name, without one single person apparently shooting it down, proves just about incontrovertibly that the hyper-religious don't have a damn thing even approaching a sophisticated sense of humor, to say nothing of a lick of common sense (which I guess sort of goes without saying). If you didn't instantly grasp that the word "Jesusween" was ripe for playground taunts between fourth-graders and outright ridicule from misanthropic jerks like me, I have no idea how your doe-eyed ass walks out of his front door every morning without being eaten alive by the world.

While we're on the subject of a more "Jesus-y" Halloween, though, I figured I'd bring back a classic quickie from the DXM Vault. This one goes way back.

"And By the Way, If You See Your Mom This Weekend, Would You Be Sure and Tell Her... SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!" (Originally Published, 10.31.06)

I always found Halloween to be kind of a silly holiday. I certainly understand its pagan roots, but at this stage of civilization -- things being what they presently are and all -- I can't help but feel that the inflated emphasis on ghosts, witches, black cats and the like as objects of fear is, well, Rockwellian in its quaintness.

I mean, could any of Edgar Allen Poe's delusions -- even at its most brutally drug-induced -- have ever metastasized into something as perfectly evil as Dick Cheney?

Terrorists want to kill me; my President doesn't have a brain, yet still inexplicably walks, talks and smirks; his second in command is regularly seen growling, and shoots his elderly friends in the face; human viscera lines the streets of Iraq -- and you're telling me the ranch-style house up the street with a couple of tombstones in the front yard, a vegetable with a face carved in it, and the all-night Monsterfest on A&E is supposed to scare me?

Sure thing.

That said, I'll relay a truly terrifying tale from my short time at one of the most frightening places on Earth: Dade Christian School.

The God-fearing men and women who ran the place were -- and no doubt still are -- committed to making sure that all of their students have a Halloween that's happy, safe, and free of the torment of eternal damnation. That's why every year the school has its own Halloween party in which each child is encouraged to dress as -- wait for it -- his or her favorite Bible character. Needless to say, this typically causes some confusion, seeing as how the whole beard and robes thing was pretty much the only look going back in the day.

Upon learning the theme of the traditional Dade Christian Halloween-Without-Hell Extravaganza, I of course began peppering the teacher with question after ridiculous question about what my costume could and couldn't entail:

Could I pour salt all over myself and be Lot's wife?

What about water, would dousing myself in water help me to stand out as obviously being Noah?

Could I just come naked and be Adam?

If I dressed as Pharaoh, could I cast the entire school into bondage?

Isn't Satan technically a Bible character?

These annoyances continued until the teacher finally ended them in the usual way: by sending me to the Dean's office.

Surprisingly, he wasn't expecting to see my face again so soon -- being that a few days earlier an angry and frustrated faculty chaperone had deemed that I be exiled to his office for reading the novelization of Halloween III: Season of the Witch during the entire bus ride to and from our class trip to Disney World.

You know something? Now that I think about it -- maybe dressing as a Christian really is the scariest costume imaginable.

Hope you have a good Halloween this year, kids -- and whatever you do, stay away from Old Man Cheney's house.