Snake Handlin' Sunday

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei

Since Friday is devoted to menu suggestions to the peaceful, tolerant, civilized and sophisticated religion of Islam, and I pride myself in being an equal opportunity offender, Sunday is going to be the special day that I give much desired attention to a crowd of lunatics who think they are the only "true" Christians. Not only are they confident in their own salvation, they are pretty damned sure the rest of us will burn eternal. The fundies are not completely sure that we are all going to hell, so friendly folks like Dr. Dobson, Donald E. Wildmon (who, in case you are interested, has discovered the homosexual agenda), and Jonathan Falwell would like to use the police power of government, our judicial and penal systems to either correct our errant behavior or punish us and punish us good. This must be some sort of a stop-gap measure just in the event God is not as pissed off at us heathens as they are. A redundancy of sorts, I guess.

Here is a lovely lady in a coffee house. Now, if this were your only encounter with Christianity, I bet you couldn't wait to sign up. I guess they call this "witnessing." She does at least have some umbrage with Mexican immigrants, hopefully the illegal variety. See, I can say something positive in almost any situation!

Now, down to some grabbing snakes. As if my home state cannot embarass itself enough, this from North Alabama (where else?). I gotta respect these folks, inasmuch as they capture their own snakes. Call it stupidity, call it courage - I call it bizarre. Now, for the more timid snake catcher (although they pretend to be tough guys), there is the Rattlesnake Rodeo, in, you guessed it, Alabama (good grief, do we ever get a break?). Notice the date - April. It is still fairly cool in early April, and the snakes are still half asleep. A motivated anorexic could hogtie the entire New England Patriot's defensive line as long as they were half asleep. Now, if they held it in mid-August, about the only people ballsy enough to go grab snakes are Navy SEALS and Airborne Rangers. Even they might question their superior officers as to the motives ond objectives behind such an operation. But there are two upshots to this: They have a beauty pageant (Miss Rattlesnake Rodeo), and the event (harassing sleepy snakes - not the pageant; the feminazis get worked up over that) makes PETA's tofu curdle. The PETA nuts protest until somebody throws a live rattlesnake at them, then they go bother some local cattle farmer or chicken coop.

Next week: Epilepsy or Speaking in Tongues?

Blog note: I have revised the hyperlinks that were inaccessible in previous posts. They should now be fully functional.