Is Religulous Sacriliculous?

Bill Maher is a brilliant person, which is why I’m scared of him getting killed by religious fanatics, but that’s a risk he’s willing to take with his movie Religulous, that certainly tickles people’s sensibilities the wrong way… even, god-forbid, liberals. Bill, like Michael Moore, editorializes with comedy to communicate his point. And I must say, satire is one of the most effective ways of doing this. Getting a political joke implies a level of literacy that, unfortunately, many people cannot achieve. It is not easy though, to fit actual facts and historical context inside your brain when you are too busy watching Entertainment Tonight, while playing with your friends your favorite phone game, “Who’s my baby daddy.”

First off, I understand people getting offended, the same way parents of retarded children hate it when their kids are called… well, retarded. But something very important is the power of context. I think we all agree we don’t call real retards, retards. We only say it to people who aren’t really retards. Like Kathy Griffin, we must say it to people’s backs (it is the polite thing to do). And although, it is true we cannot use words like fag or nigger, it is only a matter of time until it is OK to use them again in a funny context. I predict that after we have our first black, invalid AND lesbian president, we’ll be able to call each other “niggers,” the same way we already call each other “bitch,” “whore,” and “cracker” without getting offended. It is all about reclaiming things… and religion is one of those things we need to reclaim. Yes, it will be a long bumpy road… but we need to learn to roll our eyes at people who depict “the prophet” in comic strips without setting them on fire. Same way liberals roll their eyes at religious zealots who come to Gay Pride in San Francisco to make a scene. I just cannot imagine gay people doing the opposite, storming into a Christian town, wearing angel wings, and glittered short-shorts carrying torches, hungry to kill all of those who think opposite to them. In fact, people who disagree with conservatives try to stay away from their towns as much as possible…. unless they are recruiting them for blowjobs, of course.

The film touches religion in many different contexts. My favorite being the historical one. It talks about some of America’s founding fathers being outspoken advocates against religion, in specific, Christianity. They were cosmopolitan people who promoted change, the same way the world’s greatest people have brought progress by adopting revolutionary thoughts that are often in direct opposition of what is previously established as the norm. Again, I’m not saying they were atheists, but they were certainly not part of the United States current evangelical revival.

Bill Maher interviews all sorts of people, from crazy anti-zionist Jews, to secular Catholic priests, from Muslims in denial, to scientific folks. Doing a good job at trying to get as varied and outrageous a pool of thought as he could find. Well, he left out all the New Age / Zen type of folks. He said he wanted to argue with religions that we can identify with, but I bet the main reason is because people with yoga mats are not the fish he’s after. Contrary to what some might think, he was quite respectful of people, specially the ones who were relatively regular folks, or the people who were in the smarter end of the religious pool. It definitely is not like Borat, that goes for the kill with complete ball-baring disrespect. Bill teases, but quite often even without the person noticing.

A very memorable moment is when they interview Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, the Hispanic guy in Florida who claims he’s Jesus. The guy says he got the “call” when two angels spoke to him and told him he was the Messiah. Bill notes how interesting it is how every religious revelation seems to come to people in secret and it involves making someone your indisputable leader, no questions asked.

The bottom line of Religulous could be that, for us, our religion makes sense because of context. We grew up listening to specific mythic stories that are so familiar to us, making our bodies feel warm and fuzzy inside. And as absurd as Mormon and Scientology beliefs might sound to you and me, the same goes for outsiders who hear about Christianity for the first time. When we understand that things have a meaning in context, we’ll be able to stop treating religion as taboo and, not only add it to our list of things to joke about, but add it to that part of us that can evolve and improve throughout time.

It is true that religion is inspiring for many folks, but it is also a mechanism many people use to justify their wrong actions and imperialistic tendencies in front of the masses. It is as if religion (along with science when it claims to know it all) would be one of the answers to the multiple choice test of life that people use when they don’t know the solution to a specific problem they are faced with. But if instead of answering that question wrongly, we leave it blank, or treat the answer as a placeholder, maybe, perhaps just maybe, someday we’ll be able to pass that test.

-Alex

St. Sebastian’s Fried Chicken

Saint Sebastian of the Fried Chickens,

Bring us the feathered peace we seek. Protect us from the plague. Don’t let our chickens be stained by Ebola, Influenza, E. Coli, or Muslims. Let us enjoy the beautiful taste of your dead muscles and skin. Like a cyclops that turns a blind eye to the moon’s obesity, we’ll cut off the babies’ beaks.

We’ll be with you in holy solemnity even after you’re gone. Thank you for sacrificing your tasty eggs in the altar of my kitchen, they make for great post-one-night-stand breakfast. Grant us wisdom! Give us Freedom! Deliver us from being literal, and bring from heavens the Kingdom of the Cock. Give us Love… and take away both the nightmares and the daymares. Where is your feast taking place? Your Holy Communion, your Eucharist? We’ll literally eat your flesh in remembrance of you.

All hail the Techno Chicken!

Sponsored by:
The What Would Techno Chicken Do Foundation

The bird and the heartless

As with everything, people got used to the invasion. Now no one even flinchess as a skulk politely sits by the balcony. I wonder if they ever flinched to begin with.

NikeID launches, and takes the lead in customization trends.

Years have passed since tools that allow users to customize their products began popping online. The most visible one being footwear, now this customization process is extending into virtually every other product out there.

NikeID has recently launched their redesign of the NikeID experience. An experience that comes with improved speed and easier choices (like clicking on specific parts of a shoe and having the available color palette pop up). This makes good use of the concept of information “on-demand,” meaning, you do not need to have all information exposed on a website layout at once. You can design websites that intuitively allow the customer to find the information as soon as he’s interested. This helps move design from a newspaper format, to an actual environment-driven format… which not only is fun, but filled with possibilities to evolve. Another sweet feature NikeID has is their wallpaper selections that automatically generate a high res image of your customized shoe with a cool background also of your choice. Their already established colors can be seen by a few as limiting, but in reality, people who aren’t that color savvy need to enjoy of the design experience too. Or do they? Is the design process cheapened by current trends that leave you with no real choice, but a celebration to the concept of choice? Either way, for better or for worst, online tools have developed to the point that it becomes more enticing to shop from home, than to visit the store.

Things to be improved from the overall experience? Rotation not intuitive enough. Also, there’s no intuitive way for communities to communicate with each other.

I’m including a little application taken from the NikeID site that allows users to take their experience “home” with a little code you can post on your blog. You and your friends can create a team, and store designs in virtual lockers. Pretty creative terminology. Reminds me a bit of the Puma Mongolian BBQ experience. What does a BBQ have to do with Puma? Not much, but who cares?

Also worth mentioning is the website Zazzle.com that truly allows users to upload ANY picture, word, or pattern, without censorship. Zazzle is not limited to shoes, but people can customize skateboards, t-shirts; you name it, they have it. Hopefully, sites like Zazzle that really let you explore with the freedom of the DIY movement (without restricting you by sticking a giant “swoosh” on the side of the shoe) will become more popular as time goes by.

Last, but not least, I decided to keep consistency, and name my NikeID group The Trannys. If you want to join, feel free to check the site out, and once you save your shoe, save it under the Tranny group. That simple.

—————Edited on October 18th, 2008—————–

I was reading recently, and I thought of adding it to this piece, about a guy who tried to add the word “sweatshop” to his Nike shoes using the customization tools in the NikeID site, and then getting a letter from the company canceling his order due to the use of “inappropriate” slang. The problem is, sweatshop is not a slang. Is a real word in the English dictionary, and doesn’t offend anyone but the people who don’t have transparent business practices. If you want to read the email thread between the customer and company, you can check it out out here.

Lost Me To Meth

“I lost me teeth to meth…and then I lost a million dollars to the orthodontist.”

We are a collective collage of dirty thoughts inserted into our brains through meth advertising. Oops, I meant “anti-meth” campaigning. Oh, wait. I live in San Francisco, so I guess these ads could just be local, targeting only the city’s gay males (and blacks)… oh, yes. That “me” cavemen thing is surely the white copywriters recreating ebonics. Totally no discrimination here. Not at all.

-Alex