Cave of Adullam - Volume 16, Issue 5

Back Issues

Mutterings on the Regnant Follies

J. Ligon Duncan XII

Believe Bowling
Not that we are against faith or anything, but an outfit called Chinaberry is marketing something called a "believe bowl." The front of the bowl has the raw exhortation to "believe" and the copy drawing our attention to these alluring wares said, "Whether it's faith in God, faeries, or St. Nick, it sure feels good to believe. This small bowl proclaims a powerfully big statement, especially when used as a reminder to believe in yourself. . . ."

On one of those hard mornings, when you find it hard to get going, just get out your luminous blue bowl, and reflect on the fact that it is just as hollow as you are.

Covenant Sanctions
In the latest version of the video game Grand Theft Auto, as in the previous one, the players work their way through an imaginary American city, and the game involves drive-by killings, picking up prostitutes and the murder of pedestrians. But all universes have a strict embedded morality, and this one is no different. The player's virtual character has to eat to get by—but if the character eats too much junk food, the character starts slowing down, becoming fat, slow and useless.

Of course, it is important to teach these impressionable young teenagers some important life lessons. And we urgently hope that these virtual characters are not permitted to buy alcohol and tobacco products.

Time to Lock up the Religion Scholars
A news report notes that an "annual convention" of "American religion scholars" from "prominent institutions" will feature sessions that approve of S & M, transvestism, and polyamory, a practice known to the less-learned as tomcatting. One paper submitted was entitled "Ecstatic Communion: The Spiritual Dimensions of Leathersexuality." Another paper, which should have been entitled "The Utter Frozen Limit," was actually titled "Trinitarian Tango: Divine Perichoretic Fecundity in Polyamorous Relations."

What kind of fertilizer do you have to use to grow people this stupid? But then these are probably organic food people, trained on previously mentioned video games and hormone-free chicken.

Would Two Cups Be Better?
A Thai academic, one Ratree Cheepudomwit, of the Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine Development Department, has said that hundreds of one-cup-a-day urine drinkers can attest to the many benefits to their overall health. Among other things, the practice "helped slow the aging process."

But if you are drinking a cup of urine a day, why would you want to slow the aging process?

Unlikely Alliances
A former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader has put together a musical stage performance designed to bring the book of Revelation to life. Called Letters to the Lord on His Revelation, the production centers around the tribulation, which "really is the meat of the book." The said lady credits her understanding of the book to the teaching of a Lutheran cleric with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

And if you haven't seen Lutheran eschatology made three-dimensional by a former Dallas Cowboy's cheerleader, you haven't lived.

Keep on Rocking in the Free World
Prior to the recent presidential election, Alice Cooper drew attention to himself by commenting on all the rockers who were trying to get Jean-Francois Kerry elected. He said, and we quote, "If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons."

But Cooper was forgetting the important constituency they were trying to get to the polls.

But of Course
Reuters lets us know that the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis issued a report that noted that a country's higher standard of living and lack of corruption can be positively correlated with widespread popular belief in Hell. The report drew on a study of 35 countries, including the United States. The U.S.A. leads the world economically, and 71% of us believe in the existence of Hell. Ireland, not far behind the U.S. in terms of per capita income, has a healthy 53% of the population thinking that bad things happen to bad people after death.

On a grammatical note, some might wonder at why we capitalize Hell. To paraphrase the late Bishop Sheen, we do so because it is a place. You know, like Scarsdale.

What Happens Here, Stays Here
The Las Vegas Hilton offers a service that you would have to be out of your mind to not take advantage of. The "Starfleet Wedding and Vow Renewal" package offers the not-to-be-missed opportunity of getting hitched on a replica of the bridge of some starship or other, and to have Klingons and Ferengi for witnesses. You can have your reception at Quark's Bar.

And we live in a country where people who do things like this can get a driver's license and own firearms. Kinda makes you proud.