Get Your DeBunko On

Our pal Chris Wisnia, comic book creator and giant monster lover (Platonic), has made his skeptically hilarious Dr. DeBunko anthology available as a free download over at Wowio. Now you have no excuse not to read these daring adventures of suspense. SEE Dr. DeBunko battle the corpse-eating werewolves! FEEL Dr. DeBunko take on the mysterious cattle mutilators! MASTURBATE while Dr. DeBunko subdues a sex-starved succubus! This is all assuming Dr. DeBunko doesn't uncover the non-reality of these beings--which he does. Download away right here.

Lest Ye Diet

by Christian Walters

Hello from sunnywindyfoggyhilly San Francisco! (City Motto: LOT FULL) I'm actually out here on a business trip. Atlanta is nice in its way, with its ample parking, but there's something about a 40-degree grade that draws me back to the Bay Area whenever I get the chance.

So welcome to the inauguration of Totally Overlapping Magisteria! We're going to explore the world of nutball cults and shady pseudoscience. (Or, in other words, cults and pseudoscience.) We're going to see how unsupportable religious twaddle gets along with nonsensical technological claims. Smart money is on "darn well." I hope to give complete reviews of these things, so you will know where to spend your credibility currency.

But for now, let's start with making fun of the li'l diet plan that could!

The Remnant Fellowship came to us in 1999 from Gwen Shamblin, a bizarre experiment involving Jane Fonda and Suzanne Somers.

Gwen was visited by God, who let her in on a secret: the only way through the Gates of Heaven is to be thin enough to shimmy through the bars. You have to say those prayers, watch those portions, and keep an eye on that sodium. You might be rolling your eyes, but that's not any weirder than a bris.

It works like this. There are two types of hunger: physical and emotional. You feed the physical with food, but only when physically hungry and only until no longer hungry. You feed the emotional with prayer and Scripture, but only until you can't swallow any more.

No, I made that last part up. Emotional hunger is a bottomless pit, according to Gwen, and I think that tells you all you need to know about cult members. Overeating is another type of greed, which is, of course, one of the Seven Deadly. What a load of cra--...

Hold the phone. Overeating is a type of greed? What happened to my good buddy Gluttony? If overeating isn't a kind of gluttony, what is? Regicide?

To be fair, parts of her diet would work. When you feel a craving, picking up a Bible will help you keep the weight off more than picking up a Cheeto. (Turn to the stuff about Lot and his daughters, and it'll make you barf so much you'll get an eating disorder.) The same can be said of picking up any other book, of course. Or picking up an iPod. Or picking up a bike helmet. Or simply picking up a conversation where you left off with a loved one.

But the Bible is better. Getting people to watch their portions and read more Proust won't give you a tax break.

Ha ha! How dare me.

The Remnant Fellowship web site can give you details, including an inspirational photo album showing how some of its members have dropped 50-80 lbs of sin. You can also read more on Gwen Shamblin's Wikipedia page, although it looks like she boldly wrote it herself.

I'd give the Remnant Fellowship a grade of three shaking fists out of a possible 10. The diet plan appears to be solid: eat less and distract yourself with something else when you're feeling a craving. Equating overeating to sin is somewhat off-putting, and the religious ties are mighty thin, so to speak. If this movement ever took hold, we'd hate to see a bunch of thin zealots trying to persecute their more husky fellow citizens. And if you hear someone cry "I gained four goddamned pounds!" they may just mean it literally.

But it does seem efficient for people who want to lose weight and do more tithing. They are certainly less obnoxious than some more accepted groups out there (I'm looking at you, snake handlers). Suzanne Somers would be proud.

Christian Walters lives, loves, and drives in the Atlanta area. He's a technical writer by training, and a Rock Band Adonis by nature. He has honed his reviewing skills on bad movies, which are as rare as pollen grains these days. He has always been a fan of science, and has studied it as much as he could by flinging a Frisbee around campus while getting a liberal arts degree.

No Web for China

One of the primary arguments against boycotting the upcoming Beijing Olympics is the idea that by flooding China with the kind of worldwide attention and scrutiny that comes with such an event, its oppressive and anti-human policies will be flushed out. But the problem here is that the world already knows about these policies. And China knows we know. They really don't care. Case in point: their recent backpedaling on whether they'll allow full access to the Internet during the games. Of course, China bans anti-communist and religious websites--even censoring Google search results within its borders. But in order to accommodate its international visitors during the Olympics, they supposedly considered temporarily lifting restrictions. This would allow international journalists free access to cover the games (assuming they don't all choke to death on Beijing's noxious pollution before then), but would also open up a flood of information for the Chinese populace. Turns out, that's not going to happen after all. You know how you wear that horrible sweater your grandmother knitted you only when she comes over, and the rest of the year you keep it under your bed with all the soiled underpants? Well, that horrible sweater is China's willingness to play-act like a civilized country. And we're your senile lump of a grandma. More details here.

Seal on Penguin

Is this post just an excuse to run a picture of a seal trying to have sex with a penguin? Of course not. I don't need an excuse. But you're probably asking yourself why such an act of beastial beastiality would occur in nature. Luckily, the voyeuristic scientists who took 45 minutes of erotic video on the sub-Antarctic Marion Island have a few hypotheses. It may be the last ditch attempt of a sexually frustrated adolescent penguin. It could be some kind of kinky domination act. Or (my personal favorite) it could have been a playful romp that suddenly took a sexy turn. Lord knows I had a few of those the night I rented an inflatable ball pit for Cinco de Mayo. All of these speculations may be scientifically valid, but not one of them accounts for the raw sexuality that emanates from anyone wearing a tux. More details here.

YouTube Banned (Again)

This on-again/off-again relationship between Muslim countries and YouTube has grown more tiresome than the sexual tension between Mulder and Scully (just do it already, and as graphically as possible). Now Turkey has banned YouTube over videos insulting Turkish national leader Kemal Ataturk, who's been dead for seventy years. I'd say the guy was thin skinned, but there's not any left. Bam! This assault on freedom of information is almost as silly as Ataturk's hats. Zing! That's right. I won't stop until this website is banned by the Turkish government for being the world's largest repository of Kemal Ataturk jokes. Your country's name sounds like a delicious deli meat! Ba-dum ching! More details here.

Jack Thompson: MILF Hunter

Florida may not be known for its fertile soil, but it sure it good at growing a few things. Namely, theme parks, discontent, and crazy sons of bitches like religious advocate and anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson (pictured here holding what looks like a fun game). Thompson has long been an insignificant tick on the back of the money-bloated monsters behind the Grand Theft Auto games, and he recently wrote a letter to the mother of Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take-Two Interactive, GTA's publisher. In the letter, he spouts off a few Bible quotes (always classy), compares himself to John the Baptist (though admittedly less headless), and blames recent cop killings in Alabama on Grand Theft Auto IV. Apparently Mr. Thompson is unaware that cop killings occurred long before the advent of video games, as the police often place themselves in dangerous situations involving criminals with guns. But that kind of logic won't stop Thompson, who goes on to describe GTA as a murder simulator. While it's true that casual murder is quite enjoyable in any GTA game, I'd hasten to add that it can also be appreciated as a driving simulator, a swimming simulator, a prostitution simulator, and a blowing up helicopters with a rocket launcher simulator--only a few of which have occurred in reality since the launch of GTA IV last week. And if Mr. Zelnick's mother is reading this, please tell your son to release a patch so I can finally play my copy of his sinful simulator without paralyzing my Xbox 360 every five minutes. More details here.

Substitute Wizard

UPDATE: Turns out this guy was really fired more for being a terrible substitute than a suspected sorceror. He's also kind of a dick.

I once had a sub in third grade who threw a pair of scissors at a kid's head, and she still kept her job. But, of course, I didn't grow up in the increasingly insane state of Florida, where substitute teacher Jim Piculas has been fired for wizardry. Turns out Piculas liked to entertain his classes with a little disappearing toothpick trick (I know the one he does, and it's a fairly impressive use of tape) from time to time. Instead of groaning ironically like any typical youngster, one of them must have taken this as proof that Piculas is a servant of the lords of darkness, since a supervisor at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Florida (I didn't make that up) canned him due to complaints about his sorcery. Now the school district is claiming some nonsense about Piculas not following lesson plans, but since when does a substitute have to follow a lesson plan? More details here.