Endtime Youth Corps Podcasts

by Karl Mamer

Next up fans of Podcasting Without Pity (are there any fans?) we have the Endtime Youth Corps Podcast. EYCP for short, which makes it sound like they're a Korean all boy hip hop band ("an nyong yo yo ma chingus, EYCP in da house. Word to yo halmoni!"). And sure enough their theme music sounds a lot like what Asians think American hip hop sounds like. Christian gangster hip hop banged out on a Radio Shack keyboard. Oh man. Nothing is more pathetic than when religion types try to take on the trappings of the youth culture to appear all hip 'n' cool and, like, testifying about the Lord is no big thang, yo. It's just another thing the cool kids are doing these days like under age drinking and sex on the hood of your dad's Volvo after a high school football game with a cheerleader you got drunk on half a bottle of Boone's Strawberry Hill.

I remember back in university the local head of the Campus Crusade for Christ (I'll call him "Ted") tried to convert our campus paper's outspoken atheist editor (I'll call him "Larry"). Ted had his little "playbook". Ted's playbook told him to find something the "mark" really likes and then claim Jesus was into that as well. Ted decided our editor liked to party. Par-tay. So he decided that would be the thin edge of the wedge to drive Jesus into our editor's heart.

Ted sidled up to Larry and asked "So, Larry, I hear you like to par-tay."

"Errr, sure, Ted."

"You know, Larry, Jesus liked to par-tay too."

"I was not aware."

"Sure thing. After all Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding to keep the par-tay going."

"Ted, if Jesus really liked to party he would have turned the water in to Jägermeister."

In my day (the 1970s), religion was out to convert the hippies. And nothing will turn you off organized religion quicker than hearing a priest say "hey, man, come by my pad sometime and we'll rap about Christ Jesus."


As a young boy, scenes like this were repeated daily outside my window

Right. So after about a mercifully short 30 seconds of their Christian hip hop signature tune (which seems to end on a very short sampling of the guitar in Scientologist Beck's "Loser"), the hosts Jessie and Vince intro themselves. Jessie, who uses "dude" a lot, announces it's raining and he's sad. So, a bit of funk music to get the hip hop crowd, now some emo funk to get the shoe gazers. I can't wait to hear what their hook is for the metal crowd. Lee Aaron has become born again?

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Jessie's next hook is talking about this great new thing called MySpace and how he's got to get himself an account. I'll note here the show I downloaded was from September 9, 2008. Tune back in 2012 when he discovers Facebook and SuperPoke.

Jessie then introduces the show's topic: Protestants who believe in Calvinist-type predestination are wrong. There is a rich irony about a man complaining about the error of believing in predestination when he hosts a podcast about the predestined end times. Goodness.

Jessie gets Vince, who has done about dick all so far, to read a wiki page or something on predestination. Jessie could not have gotten a worse person to do it as Vince reveals he has a hard time reading even simple words in the English language. Ah, another triumph of home schooling. Vince's jumbled, stoner-like reading prompts Jessie to rephrase by throwing out a rhetorical question about one sect's belief that an all-loving god is picking and choosing from the outset who is going to heaven and who is going to hell ("and there's nothing you can do about it!"). Jessie never bothers to question his own brand, where an-all loving god from the outset has picked which generation is going to see 1/3 of the earth's population horribly killed during the end times (and there's nothing you can do about that either!).

After about only four minutes into this podcast we go to a "commercial". I love podcasts that have commercials which are just promos for themselves. The funky theme music from the top of the show (plus the Beck guitar riff) plays us out. We then hear a promo for their magazine, which opens with the "One small step for *static* man" quote from Neil Armstrong. It's really disturbing that all this science, all this engineering, just amounts to a sound bite for a bunch of end times creationist podcasters who think the world is only 6,000 years old.

Anyway the promo is for their magazine. The hosts are doubled over with excitement about the cover for their latest End Times Magazine. The cover features, get this, a real live photo of two real live homosexualists getting married by a liberal pro-homosexualist priest! Nothing heralds the final days when two humans want to publicly declare their commitment to a monogamous loving relationship. The End Times boys are so excited about this cover photo you'd swear they thought they had a clear, well-lit photo of Bigfoot stepping off of JHVH-1's UFO. In the promo segment Jessie asks someone named Jason how a person might go about sending out copies of this issue with their exciting landmark homoerotic cover to their pastor or their church (Yeah, throw those in the pews and start a great Sunday morning convo like "Mommy, why are two bare-assed men in white leather chaps kissing in front of a priest?"). Jason breaks it down real simple like. Send us money. More money, more copies they'll send you. Jason suggests you buy them by the truckload and then, for some reason I'll never figure out, we hear a cow mooing before Jason can answer. But not one of those placid "moo, food is in my feed bucket" moos but more like one of those "moo, something fist-sized has been inserted into my rectum" moos. You know the kind of moo.

After the promo we're treated to a reprise of the Christian hip hop intro tune. Oh joy. The hosts remind us of the topic: why another Christian sect's ideas about predestination are all wrong 'n' shit. Jessie gets all logical, asking Vince what kind of god would condemn you to hell despite a lifetime of good works? Yeah. And what kind of god lets 10-year olds get bone cancer? Vince manages a "not really" before Jessie cuts him off. I'm noticing a trend in these woo podcasts. With the exception so far of the Paracast, there's always a dom and a sub. One guy does most of the talking and the other guy just says "pie" a lot.

Anyway, Jessie rambles on about the illogic of predestination, still oblivious to the theme of his own podcast. Jessie notes that god wants all men to be saved. He doesn't actually want to send people to hell. Now you would think what god wants, god can get. I want the cute short-haired redhead working behind the counter at the Starbucks where I'm currently banging this Podcasting Without Pity into my laptop. But I lack the power and ability. Guys who spend Saturday nights alone in Starbucks with a laptop oddly lack the magical power of getting any mega cute short-haired redhead of their choosing. However, I want a sip of the Gold Coast tall drip I ordered and I have the amazing, awesome power to make that happen. I can take firm, decisive hold of the pansy sleeve wrapping my Starbucks paper cup with some pithy "The Way I See It" saying and raise it to my lips and drink. But I mean god, the omnipotent ruler of heaven and earth, could have any Starbucks barista of his choosing. If true, then it's not an unreasonable jump in logic to believe god could certainly make it so even men with free will could make it to heaven. While I'm sure there are ways a mere mortal couldn't even contemplate, I can think of one easy way: just let humans live to be nearly immortal. Once they accept god and Jesus as their personal savior there's the quickening, Christopher Lambert appears out of the clouds, and cuts their head off. But those that don't manage this just keep on plugging along until they figure it out. You know?

Jessie calls upon Calvinists to call in and explain their stupid ideas to him. He notes Calvinist predestination and evangelizing are logically incompatible. Why preach to people who might be destined to go to hell? Seems to me the simple answer to Jessie's question is this: that's why you don't get a lot of Calvinists banging on your door 9am on a Sunday. I'll take those assholes over an asshole that can't leave you in peace on your day off.

Jessie calls on Vince to read something about St. Augustine and John Calvin. Vince again blows his lines. Jessie then goes on a long diatribe about the biblical passages Calvinists use to support their whacked idea of predestination. Jessie smugly notes Calvinist are really just a cult, doing what cults do best, cherry picking biblical passages and then twisting them to say whatever the hell you want them to say. Again, rich irony from a guy who cherry picks the Book of Revelation to determine they're living in the end times.

Hmmm. Oddly, no Calvinist has called in yet.

Jessie notes if you're a Calvinist you could just walk away from god, being you're already one of the elect. He seems to have missed the fact Calvinists don't know who is elect until they die. I believe that's why they work so hard and follow such a strict moral code: it's the only way they can get a hint whether or not they're elect. If they're elect they'll be financially successful and lead a moral life. If they're not elect they'll fuck up sometime before they kick the bucket.

Vince then helpfully notes this whole thing is just like the terrorists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. Does Vince think Calvinists were at the sticks of those planes?

Jessie then pulls the "some of my best friends are black" routine. Don't get him wrong, eh. He says he knows a lot of Calvinists and they're a very kind people. A very musical people.

Jessie sums up that he just doesn't think god operates in the way Calvinists think god operates. After all, he argues, Hitler could get into heaven under a Calvinist system. Errr. But couldn't Hitler also get into heaven if he accepted Jesus as his personal savior two seconds before the end? Couldn't Hilter get into heaven if he confessed the sin of genocide to his local Catholic priest? Geez. At least a Calvinist would argue there's no way in hell Hitler was one of the elect based on his track record of death and destruction. I'll take a religion that says Hitler is doomed no matter how much he tries to make up for it after the fact over a religion that's going to give him a get out jail free card if he just intones some magic words.

Jessie closes out by reading a passage from Ezekiel. He's the guy who saw the UFO, eh? The relevance of the passage to the episode's topic escapes me.

Update on my prediction of an impending Nov 1, 2008 attack on New York by a giant lobster

If you will recall, in my September 3, 2008 installment of Podcasting Without Pity I made this
bold prediction:

People, unless you change your ways [in some nebulous, ill-defined fashion], New York is oing to be devastated by a giant marauding lobster on November 1, 2008! Mark my words! Act now!

I'm quite happy to say I predicted accurately people were going to change their ways and head off (for now) a merciless attack by a giant lobster on the good and fair people of New York.

Clearly the death of Studs Terkel on October 31, 2008 and the many, many warm
tributes from all across America convinced the giant lobster to suspend his rampage through the streets of New York.

But I warn you, the giant lobster has only suspended his plan to smite New York. To find out how to delay future retribution, consider buying my soon-to-be-released book How to Avoid the Total Devastation of Your City by Giant Lobster Attack and Related Calamities. Makes a great Christmas or Festivus gift.

Karl Mamer is host of The Conspiracy Skeptic podcast, a 12 part look at conspiracies of today and the not too distant past. Karl is also the world's greatest living proponent of Franglais. He also likes to bait Nigerian Bank Scammers and hosted his own podcast about teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. Karl lives in Toronto, Canada and works as a senior technical writer to pay the bills.