Look Out, Those Religious Types Are Everywhere

Well, this is interesting: a big, color-coded map of the biggest Christian denomination in every county in the U.S. This gives rise to all kinds of questions in my mind, the first one being, What’s up with that pocket of Baptists in southwest Nevada? Are they hanging out near Las Vegas, waiting for happy hour, … Read more

People Who Will Never, Ever, Ever Be President of the United States [The Best of jaceonline]

Author’s note: I used to blog at jaceonline.com, and in an effort to introduce myself to new readers and hopefully wring a little more entertainment value out of those old posts, I’m going to be dipping into the old site and re-posting some of my favorite entries. Hey, if Leo Sayer can have a “best … Read more

Tom Cruise, Scientology Evangelist

Well, here’s that Tom Cruise Scientology promotional video you’ve been hearing so much about. It’s professionally done, well lit, crisply edited… and he still looks as crazy as an outhouse rat. I’ve heard Christians say that they wish their fellow believers showed the same kind of fervor as adherents of other religions (Jehovah’s Witnesses, libertarians, … Read more

Dog Pile on Mel Gibson [The Best of jaceonline]

Author’s note: I used to blog at jaceonline.com, and in an effort to introduce myself to new readers and hopefully wring a little more entertainment value out of those old posts, I’m going to be dipping into the old site and re-posting some of my favorite entries. Hey, if Leo Sayer can have a “best … Read more

The Death of Old Media is a Suicide

Steve Boriss writes on how the media establishment planted the seeds of their own demise during Lewinskygate: Unlike Watergate, journalists failed to do something that may now prove fatal to the Old Media. They never clearly condemned the president’s sexual relations as “wrong.” Nor that Clinton lied to them about it. Nor the credible allegations … Read more

Chaos!

Well, this is great; yet another different winner of a Republican primary. If there’s anything I enjoy in politics, it’s chaos. Seriously. If you think political uncertainty is bad, just compare it to the forgone conclusions that were elections in the old Soviet Union. Here’s hoping that Thompson wins in South Carolina and really makes … Read more

Models for Christ

As in, fashion models. For Christ. I kid you not. I’d cut and paste some of the text from their website, except it’s one of those excruciating flash-only sites (good pictures, though). Instead, I’ll quote from an article I found on belief.net: Since its 1984 founding in New York, Models for Christ has sought to … Read more

Making an Ass out of U and Me

Over at Transterrestrial Musings, Rand Simberg makes an excellent point bouncing off my earlier post about Mike Huckabee and his conservatism, or lack thereof. Regarding a Huckabee quote in which he said that it was disgusting for corporations to give their executives bonuses while workers are taking pay cuts, Simberg said: The assumption is that … Read more

Fred Thompson (R – Middle Earth)

Does Fred Thompson resemble a big, ol’, magical, Hobbit-carrying tree? A correspondent to NRO’s The Corner thinks so: Didn’t Fred remind you of an Ent (from Lord of the Rings) last night? He’s been brooding over this campaign for months and last night he finally woke up, saw the orcs at the gate and proclaimed, … Read more

What I Did Right In 2007

I’m a little late on this, but over on “Et Tu?” Jen encouraged people to stop dwelling on their failures of the past year by asking the question, “What did you do right in 2007?” Obviously, I didn’t stop procrastinating, because the post is about three weeks old. But I wanted to get in on … Read more

Warning: Do Not Read the Following If You’re Worried about the Future of Our Civilization

Alright, don’t anybody panic. I’m going to say this nice and slow: You can now buy wigs… for your cat. Aaiiieeeee!!! Sorry, sorry… Just had a little freak out for a second there. But no joke, Kitty Wigs really does offer a full selection of cuts and styles. Yes, if you’ve got 50 (Fifty!) dollars, … Read more

Huckappeal

Thanks to an entry on the evangelical outpost I’m beginning to understand the phenomenal appeal of one Mike Huckabee. The post doesn’t address the Huckabee phenomenon per se; it’s a refutation of the commentariat’s conventional wisdom that the Republican base is made up of three separate, non-overlapping groups: social conservatives, economic conservatives, and defense conservatives. … Read more

Just When I Thought I Was Out…

Before The Cynical Christian I wrote another blog pretty regularly. It was just a grab-bag of topics that interested me, but more often than not I would end up talking about politics in one way or another. I fell out of the habit of writing for that blog, and one of the main reasons was … Read more

The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters

Someone who is way more thorough than I am has compiled this exhaustive catalog of the religion of scads of comic book characters. It covers characters major (Superman – Methodist), minor (Jimmy Olsen – Lutheran), and ridiculous (J. Jonah Jameson – hates Spider-Man). I think I already knew that the Thing was Jewish, and I … Read more

Just in Case You Forgot: The Simpsons Was the Greatest

Yet another example of why Simpsons, in its prime, was the greatest tv show that has ever been: it’s crammed full of pop culture references and side jokes, most of which you don’t catch until somebody makes a list like this one. It’s not what it used to be — watching the Simpsons Movie that … Read more

How to be Disappointed

It’s always difficult to cope when a person you respect and admire turns out to be less than you hoped he was. We’ve been seeing a lot of that in the public sphere lately, even more than usual — Michael Vick number 7 jerseys and “Vote Larry Craig for Senate” yard signs are being thrown … Read more

Out from the Shadows

I have long been downloading music through the dubiously legal (by which I mean, probably illegal) mechanism known as “file sharing.” I thought it was justified by the actions of the record companies. First, they refused to digitally distribute music at all, clinging jealously to outdated model of distributing music on physical media. When it … Read more

Is There Anything They Can’t Do?

Here’s the strange and confusing headline of the day:American Gay grabs gold in 100 meters at worlds