Jesus is Just Alright With Me

I was once a child,
You may find that hard to believe.
Okay, you may not. Barb once described me as "a toddler with access to liquor and weapons."
Regardless, as a tyke, my well-meaning but naive mother would drag me to church.
A Baptist church, no less.

And lo, the child was well and truly bored once he realized his Sunday School teachers wouldn't answer questions like, "How did Noah fit dinosaurs onto the Ark?" and "Who did Adam and Eve's children mate with?".
-Stolinations 3:17

The people at the church, with a few exceptions, meant as well as my Mom. My mother, for example, would never picket an abortion clinic. She'd never fag-bash - she wouldn't even say the word 'fag' (she calls them 'funny'. It's kinda cute). She once tried to pass an ordinance to keeps kids from dancing in Price's Corners but quickly forgot her pet project once the cooking sherry wore off.
Like my mother, I'm sure most of these Baptists just wanted my soul saved. What kind of monster wouldn't want to make sure I didn't end up in a lake of fire where torment would be heaped upon torment and the wails of my fellow damned would echo ... blah ... blah ... blah. How very fucking quaint. Thanks for your interest. I actually mean that. Sorry it didn't work for y'all.
However, a few of these people were, for lack of a couple better words, Evil Douchebags.
Like the Sunday School teacher who said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "If you steal a cookie, don't repent and suddenly die -- you'll end up in Hell." What The Fuck? I loved stealing cookies at the age of nine. I lived to steal cookies. Cookie Theft was my raison d'etre. Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll (or at least hidden Playboys, Beer and Blondie's Greatest Hits) were still several months away!
That notion -- that I could be sent to Hell if I choked to death on a stolen cookie -- scared the fuck out of me! I had nightmares I can still vividly picture right now.
The worst of the lot, however, is whoever let the above comics get into my hot little hands.
Written, illustrated and published by Jack T. Chick, these little comic books - about the size of a pack of smokes - were SOLD to the sort of people who wanted to convert other people to Christianity. These books scared me more than any ten saggy-jowled stolen cookie ladies. I was convinced I'd end up in Hell on a technicality.
A little research about Jack Chick, sadly still living, shows he's a Fundamentalist Christian who hates the usual suspects: abortion, drugs, homosexuals, Rock 'n' Roll, Halloween, Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons ... and the Catholic Church.
Sadly, he hates the Catholic Church for all the wrong reasons. Chick believes many of the world's problems are deliberately caused by the Catholic Church. He credits the Catholic Church with founding Islam, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Also? Starting the Holocaust and founding Communism.
Myself?
On one hand, the Catholic Church shouldn't have covered up all the altar boy molestation.
On the other hand, they gave us the Catholic school girl uniform.
I'm torn.
I know it seems silly now, but it really did scare me insensible as a child.
Luckily, it also made me think God was kind of a prick.
So here I stand before you now, a liberal athiest with a penchant for celebrating Halloween with my homo friends, dressed as Harry Potter while drunk and listening to Black Sabbath. I played Dungeons and Dragons once -- but I never really took to it.
When Jack Chick dies - as he will soon (he was born in 1924), I will make it a personal life mission to urinate on his grave. I may host a bus tour to do so. Scarred me for life, that fucker did.
Thank you indulging my self indulgence. I just wanted to get that off my chest.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled smart aleckry.


P.S. New Paul Westerberg and Randy Newman albums were released today. And yes, the Paul Westerberg album is supposed to sound like that.