Colin, CPR's Eric Whitney and Noel at our We Totally Love Our Advertisers and Contributors! party.
And, after a long night hittin' da clubs, Jesus wasn't doing so great. Luckily, Newspeak music columnist Jeremy Grobsmith was there to hold JC's hair back for him.
Here's more fine artwork from my new company, Pay Me And I'll Put You And Jesus Together in a Picture, Inc. The first features our good friends Klayton, Drew, Sarah and Adam with Jesus at the Newspeak War Against Christmas Holiday Jamboree.
Have you always wanted a picture of you or your children with Jesus—but the Savior has been dead for 2000 years! How can you get a fine work of art of you with someone who's been dead for so long? THERE'S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY!
Lucky for you, Kay Paintings can make this happen. They'll totally Photoshop your children with a guy who sort of looks like Jesus/Return of the King Aragorn/philosophy major in front of a vague screensaver background. Here's what the website says:
Hi, I'm Amanda Kay, the artist for Kay Paintings and Photography. I love creating unique fine artwork for families to enjoy for years to come. I especially love to see the faces of the children when they first see themselves with Christ. With my husband's support, we created Kay Paintings and Photography, a way for virtually everyone to be able to see themselves with The Savior. I want everyone to feel the joy of seeing their family with Christ. I thank my Father in Heaven for giving me the opportunity of not only enjoying every second of what I am doing, but also to be able to share it with others and add joy to their lives. I look forward to hearing from you!
And here's another picture. One set of footprints, indeed! Looks like the Son of Man is on his way back to the cabana for some Caribbean Spring Break lovin.
UPDATE!
I'm very pleased to announce that we will now be providing the same service as Kay and will be happy to Photoshop you with your favorite Savior for the low price of only $299.99. Enjoy this piece of fine art that we just did, entitled Aaron, Noel and Jesus in Cozumel.
UPDATE 2
I just received my first commission! Below is the piece of fine art I produced for it, called Me & JC At Six Flags.
Behold, the Jesus Sex Doll:
And just in case you didn't notice in the ad, you can fuck his stigmata.
At yesterday's jittery New Life service, Good Ol Pastor Brady Boyd had this to say according to the G:
“It is OK if you’re not doing well,” Boyd said. “I don’t want any of us to walk around with a mask or facade of strength when inside our hearts are not doing well.”
However, this statement didn't seem to apply to Larry Bourbonnais, one of the guy's who'd been shot by Matthew Murray, who was quite agitated and had to be 86ed:
The day’s events included a brief, strange moment when one of those wounded last week was escorted from the church campus by the police, who asked him not to return.Larry Bourbonnais, 59, left church grounds peacefully at the request of church officials, who called in Colorado Springs police for extra support.
“He cooperated, and we told him that he wasn’t welcome back on the property,” police Sgt. Lonnie Spanswick said.
Church officials told police they plan to file a restraining order against Bourbonnais, Spanswick said.
In a news conference after church, Boyd said of Bourbonnais, “We felt he was a bit volatile this morning, and we did not want any disruption to our service.” Boyd said officials will be reaching out to Bourbonnais this week to ensure an “amicable” resolution. Boyd didn’t elaborate.
Wounded slightly in the arm during the shooting, Bourbonnais has shared his story with a number of media outlets during the past week, claiming that he tried without success to persuade an armed security guard to confront the gunman, Matthew Murray; pleaded with the guard to give him a gun; then yelled at Murray to distract him before another security guard, Jeanne Assam, opened fire, wounding Murray. An autopsy concluded that Murray then shot himself.
Contacted Sunday afternoon by The Gazette, Bourbonnais declined to comment. But while leaving the parking lot Sunday morning, he told KRDO television that New Life officials don’t like his criticism of the security guard who wouldn’t confront the gunman.
Sheesh, as long as "not doing well in your heart" doesn't include questioning the narrative I guess it's all OK. But when cracks in the facade of God's awesomeness as Channelled through Jeanne Assam start to appear, I guess they suddenly want to you to walk around with a facade of strength and wish that you would not do well in your heart.
Probably not many, particularly not up at New Life. And why would they? He killed two people and wanted to kill more. But reading some of the things he wrote, ... fuck. I certainly feel for the guy. Though anyone who goes on a killing spree is obviously suffering from deep mental trauma, he also obviously suffered from sensitivity, intelligence and thoughtfulness. Not good qualities for cult think of Bill Gothard (who, not surprisingly, had his own little sex scandals despite his rigid moral teachings) to which he was subjected and probably made his suffering worse. Here's some instensely rational and emotionally painful insights of Murray's peeled from where they were posted by "lucyfurr" in the G comments:
I remember as a child laying awake at night, terrified that I was going to "get left behind" for some childish bad thing I'd done or thought or some mistake I'd done. That was around age 8-12 and I would continue to have similar fear through my teenage years. I remember being terrified around year 2000 and always worried about this..."antichrist" who was going to somehow do all these terrible things to people who weren't "born again" AND had not lost their salvation/committed some sin. I'd lay awake at night and be terrified during the day asking over and over "what if I commit a sin, and don't have time to confess and ask God forgiveness and repent and get...left behind?!" "what if I'm in some sin that I don't even recognize and I get......left behind?" "what if I'm watching something on TV that's somehow a "sin" and Jesus returns and I get......left behind?" "what if I commit the unpardonable sin and get....left behind?"Some days I'd even lay awake worrying that I had dropped a few cents while placing my 10% tithes into the offering plate or that I had miscalculated my tithes and....something bad would happen........
Then there was all the Eph 6:1-3 teachings which caused me to worry since no one could answer the question "what if a child rebels against a parent or pastor who is being abusive?"(no, not just a little strict or "setting some standards".........) and "why don't all these rules of non-violence and other rules apply to church leaders and parents?"Another issue was the issue of music. Many of the christians and some of the church leaders and my parents said that ANY music "with a beat"(including Christian Contemporary and Christian Rock) was "of Satan and had backmasking" yet OTHER CHRISTIANS said that was nonsense and....BOTH SIDES used the BIBLE to back their side up...so........how the f*** am I supposed to even know what to do when no one could even figure out what is actually a sin in the "eyes of God" according to that infallible book....the bible.
End times? I so badly wanted to understand what it all meant...so I looked into it as a teenager and found out that there are at least 7 different views of "the end times" and....they all had....the infallible bible to support their contradictory beliefs of the "end times."
Just like Marilyn Manson, I'd often have nightmares about all this armaggedon mark of the beast antichrist "left behind" bulls***.
They considered me their "chosen prophet."(who was to become some international leader for their stupid dominionist charismatic Peter Wagner Bill Gothard pentecostal cult.)
All that insanity along with some other pentecostal/Bill Gothard doctrines at one point made me to want to die since......"there's no point in living anyways since I'm going to be left behind or end up in hell no matter what I do"....there might have also been some....uh...self-mutilation in all that too.
Obviously, no one's really gonna point the finger at Gothard or Murray's parents for inflicting unbearable strain on his psyche. He must've been predisposed and then attacked by evil as Brady Boyd was quoted saying in the G:
The senior pastor of New Life, Brady Boyd, said he believes his church might have been an “ignition point” for a man with long-standing emotional problems. While Boyd said it was sad that the gunman was raised in the Christian faith and turned against it, he believes the rampage had less to do with faith than with Murray’s “organic makeup.”As a charismatic pastor, Boyd also believes a supernatural battle between good and evil is at work.
“If you read the Bible, there are angelic and demonic forces at work on the earth today,” he said. “But I also think that many times, those evil forces take advantage of people who already have existing conditions.”
Quick, don't look at your own batshit beliefs! ... What do you even say to that?
KRCC posted a statement from Matthew Murray's parents, available on the KRCC homepage on the World Wide Web of the Internet.
I don't how to embed this brightcove video from HuffPo, but if you want to see how completely insane the so-called "Values Voters" are and what a total queen James Dobson is, watch THIS VIDEO all the way through.
it should be over for Colorado Springs' too. Consider:
-THIS ARTICLE by Eric Gorsky about the diminishing returns on Dobson's message even within Focus itself.
-THIS NYT Mag Article by David Kirkpatrick on the demise of evangelical unity. It's long, but thorough and talks about the recent Values Voter conference in Washington, which proved of how out of touch the homophobic message of Dobson and Co. is with the mindset of their so-called constituency, half of whom support Giuliani despite Dobson's rabid insistence that he'll back a third-party candidate if Giuliani gets the Republican nomination.
-The always astute Frank Rich as he calls it a spade:
These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream. They don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time. Should Rudy Giuliani end up doing a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their graves.Part of their demise, of course, can be attributed to the pileup of personal hypocrisies that have always undone Elmer Gantrys in America, from Jimmy Swaggart to Jim Bakker. The Ted Haggard revelations were in that tawdry tradition, and so was the news that the Christian Coalition’s front man, Ralph Reed, looked forward, as he put it, to “humping in corporate accounts” in collaboration with the now-jailed K Street lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Their fall from grace was synergistically augmented by their scandal-prone family-values allies on Capitol Hill. Even now, the virulent marriage defender David Vitter retains his Senate seat despite having confessed to unspecified sins after his name surfaced in bordello scandals in both Washington and New Orleans.
Also staying put in the Senate is Larry Craig, who, consciously or not, is calling the whole moral brigade’s bluff. After he was busted in the Minneapolis airport, Republicans insisted he undergo an ethics committee investigation on the assumption that he’d disappear before they could conduct it. Now they will have to make good on their word ...
But the most significant — and happiest — explanation for the values czars’ demise as a political force is that white evangelical Christians and a new generation of evangelical leaders have themselves steadily tacked a different course from the Dobson crowd. A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals for today’s Times Magazine. Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues.
Now, Colorado Springs:
-WAKE THE FUCK UP from your own "values"-induced torpor/liberal Stockholm Symdrome and take your city back! Recognize Focus on the Family for the sham that it is and the crappy employer that it is and start charging them property tax! Send a message to other phony non-profits that their free breakfasts, lunches and dinners are done.
-Continue the momentum created in the arts community with the slew of young curators, the new FAC and the Modern and the coming Cornerstone Arts building. Start marketing Colorado Springs to itself and further abroad (Experience Colorado Springs should be paying attention here!) as an arts, culture and outdoors destination again. We used to be an arts and tourism MECCA in the early half of the 20th Century.
-Start marketing the Broadmoor Academy/early Fine Arts Center Legacy. The FAC and Colorado College should think about partnering to make the Van Briggle building a Broadmoor Academy Museum!
-Get a Master of Fine Arts Program going at CC, UCCS or both. We'll never keep young talent here or develop anything other than a cursory arts scene here without one.
-Create a residency program for artists, musicians, writers etc. on par with Anderson Ranch, Breadloaf, etc. CC does a great job of brininging great cultural figures here, but they're too often isolated on the campus or here for only a night.
-Devote the resources to making our hiking and biking trails the best in the world. I heard Terry Sullivan of Experience Colorado Springs say he wanted COS to be known as one of the best Cycling cities in the country. In order to become that, we need to complete a trails system that goes all the way from Cheyenne Mtn State park, around Pikes Peak and back down. Make a hut system available for hikers, cross-country skiers and bikers. Most importantly, make the in-town bike trail system and bike path system truly world-class and start thinking about the kinds of share-a-bike rental systems that cities like Paris and Portland use to encourage daily bike riding and the use of the downtown core as the most environmentally friendly and economically vital part of the city.
-Give city employees same-sex partner benefits once again and pass local anti-discrimination legislation to let the world know that Colorado Springs is safe for all people.
This town will probably always be fairly conservative on some level. Even before all the military installations became firmly established here in the 1950s it was a teetotaling burg, but it can still be a place with a sound and renewable cultural and outdoors tourism economy that will attract huge amounts of clean industry (including keeping the USOC) that will want the quality of life that comes from a city with rich culture and outdoor living. If we continue to sit on our asses we'll miss this opportunity as the sea change that's happening nation-wide washes over us.
I fell asleep in front of the TV with my rain soaked and trembling dogs last night and had this really weird dream that Tammy Faye was dying of cancer while on the Larry King Show. I just came across this on msnbc: Yikes.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19876741/
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