Category Archives: Religion

Dubai: Land of Laughs

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I'm not an American, but from time to time I can't help but feel bad for the poor buggers, like when their president tries to sell their ports to people like this. Mind you, I like people like this, but I wouldn't be selling my ports to them; there's the ones you date, and the ones you take home to momma and sell your ports to, and these are not the latter. Wisdom and good times from a Dubai taxi driver, via Gridskipper.

Cabbie: Where are you from?
Us: Washington, D.C. in the United States.
C: You know George Bush?
U: (polite laughter) No, we’ve never met him.
C: You know Osama Bin Laden?
U: (slight discomfort) No…. We’ve never met him either.
C: Do you want to meet him?
U: (wondering where he’s going with this) Um… no. (sincerely hoping that we’re not on our way to see him right now)
C: I want to meet him very much.
U: Uhhh… Really? Why?
C: So that I could turn him in to the United States and gets lots and lots of American dollars. (hysterical guffaws)
U: (relieved smiles) Oh, okay.
C: No, I couldn’t do that. They would kill all my family. (another explosion of hilarity)
U: (polite but uncomfortable laughter)

Hitchens and Fry and Blasphemy, Oh My!

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Hitchens LetusprayChristopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, together again for the first time!!!

I love both of these tubby old coots as writers and currently loathe them both as human beings (isn't that always the way with the ones we once loved?), so I was delighted to find, on the Guardian Culture Vulture blog/dumping ground, their blasphemy debate from last year at the Hay Festival. No transcript available, of course, because that would be uncharacteristically bloggy, but here's the MP3. Right click, save, savour. If I'm being uncharacteristically ambitious, I may actually write a transcript, but at 78 minutes running time, don't be holding your breath!

One of the most talked-about events at last year's Stephen Fry, Bright Middleaged ThingGuardian Hay Festival was the Blasphemy Debate, chaired by Joan Bakewell and inspired by the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill, which had been announced in the Queen's Speech the previous month. The speakers at the debate were the actor and writer Stephen Fry and the journalist Christopher Hitchens, and their frequently heated discussion covered issues of freedom of speech, religious tolerance, multiculturalism and orthodoxy…

Book Review: Dianetics

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DianeticsI wouldn't trust myself to review this book. Like the Necronomicon, this is a book best read by those you really wouldn't miss if it came right down to it. If you heard they'd become members of a sinister cult and had taken off to Arabia to rendezvous with a malevolent and unspeakably long-lived nobleman from Eastern Europe, to search for the Nameless City in the shifting sands of the desert, and you really wouldn't mind, then that's the person you should ask to review this book.

Because that means reading it. And that means the thetans will know you're out there. To say nothing of Tom Cruise.

Dianetics, Reviewed by Fat Joe Thomas, whom I do not know and so wouldn't particularly miss and who seems to have vanished from the blogosphere on or about April 4,

THE VERY DAY AFTER POSTING THIS REVIEW!

Half-way through this book, I wanted to stop reading. But, it wouldn’t let me. It made me finish. I couldn’t return it and get my money back and I couldn’t stop reading it. If I ever have kids, the book is going to make my kids read it. The book has put my family and friends under surveillance. They don’t want to talk to me anymore. They’re worried the book will take their money, too.

Free Katie!

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Free Katie!Another from the brazilliant Defamer.

Porn Stars Discover God, Shakespeare

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Yep, as Sploid reports, Jesus does indeed love porn stars. Jesus sure does love him some porn stars, yesiree!And now, they can love him right back. And no, we're not talking about a "creative re-enactment" of passages from the Book of Matthew, you kilt-liftin', mango-slimin', spay cam porn-watchin' perv!

"spay cam porn"????? I ask you!

After another Bible publisher backed out, NavPress had agreed to publish a New Testament paraphrase on behalf of XXXchurch.com, an anti-porn ministry.

The books, whose covers will read "Jesus Loves Porn Stars," will be distributed at porn-industry conventions later this year.

Well it's high time is what I say! Everyone knows that porn stars are entirely dedicated to the pursuit of biblical knowledge, if only of each other.

Now, in addition to gaining access to the words of God, it appears that they will also be allowed access to the words of Shakespeare, whom at least a few elderly, pipe-smoking, elbow-patched professors still believe is god. It's a little like a cargo cult, but with sherry instead of coconut rum.

Shakespeare...as you've never seen him before!

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A new television reality show invites porn stars to test their serious acting abilities in London's theater district, raising the question: Debbie can do Dallas, but can she take on Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard?"

Well wasn't it Chekhov who said that if there's a gun on the wall in the first act, it must go off before the close of the third? Indeed, that's a principle that porn has taken to heart (and several other organs) far more than conventional theatre and cinema. "The money shot" indeed.

And while we wish said actresses all the luck in the world making this transition, it must be said that the material is ahead of them. Not Shakespeare: as far as I know he never even wrote a satyricon, much less a straight-up porn. Or even an at-an-awkward-angle one. But that classic of cheerleading cinema, Debbie Does Dallas has been denatured and played off-Broadway last year. And check out some cast bios. Things have cum full circle jerk.

Susan L. Schwartz (Debbie) Susan has been Debbie Does Dallas, and Off-Broadway too!preparing to play Debbie her whole life, beginning with her starring role as Molly Pitcher in her childhood performance of the WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. As a member of the Footlights while studying at Cambridge University, after two summers at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and while studying at the National Theatre in London, everything was leading up to this moment.

Tonya Canada (Roberta) NYC credits include: THE CHERRY ORCHARD

I wonder if either of them were in Godspell? In any case, we can be sure that the complete story will be told in one of the Guardian's blogs.