As much as I loathe marketing and advertising in all its forms, I must admit the folks being paid to drum up interest in the movie Hamlet 2 have done a good job — they picked one relatively small aspect of the film that was likely to really piss off the religious nuts enough to start rattling their sabers, and they highlighted that part in most of the trailers.

The “offensive bit” itself — the song Rock Me, Sexy Jesus — occupies a whopping 3 minutes of the movie’s running time, and isn’t the dirty, innuendo-laden shot across Christianity’s bow you expect given the title. In fact, within the movie, it’s more a song of praise than of insult, and I’m laughing my ass off at the folks claiming the film is blasphemous. You can immediately identify anyone who hasn’t actually seen the movie: anyone who is pissed about Rock Me, Sexy Jesus and doesn’t mention a thing about Raped in the Face is a mindless tool just parroting the criticisms s/he’s overheard from other wankers that haven’t seen the movie.

The song appears during the performance of the titular play, a sequel to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which the lead character doesn’t die, but is instead rescued by Jesus and his time machine; he then goes back in time to save everybody that would otherwise croak at the end of Hamlet. As the play’s author reckons — doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?

The play is stupid. That’s the point. It’s aiming for “so stupid it’s funny” or “so bad it’s good” territory, and it hits the mark; amidst the insanity of the show itself is a strangely impressive message about forgiveness. Yes, the movie takes some jabs at the kind of people who typically protest/boycott movies like these, and bluntly, those people deserve it. When you don’t like some performance, movie, song, or writing, that’s fine; you’re even welcome to complain about it. It’s when you try to stop it being published and distributed, though, you’ve crossed the line. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head or forcing this stuff down your throat. Switch off your television (or change channels), close that book, take out the CD, and move on. Forcing your opinions or beliefs on others is crap, and always has been, and that’s why you deserve the ridicule you get.

The rest of the movie is quirky and funny throughout; the usual dull pacing most comedies acquire in their final half hour isn’t present here. I’m not entirely able to explain exactly why this is, but for Shannon and I the single funniest moment of the movie comes from an unexpected spot in the middle of the film: the protagonist has just started trying to write his new groundbreaking play, and has just suffered his first dose of writer’s block. He’s shown trying various things to shake the block, but ultimately he ends up staring at his computer. That’s when we meet his cat — it’s just calmly sitting there watching him. Then we notice he’s staring back at the cat. Finally, he looks straight at it and asks “what is your fucking problem?” in a slow, exacerbated voice. We laughed for 2 minutes straight after that, and even now as I recall the scene I’m chuckling enough that I worry I might awaken my buddy who’s asleep on the couch next to me.

The movie gives the classic lesson that, despite being taught and demonstrated over and over, never seems to be heard by the assholes that long to censor everything they hate: the more you complain about a movie, song, book, or blog, the more attention it ultimately gets and the more widely distributed it ends up. If you morons would quit whining about blasphemous movies, they wouldn’t do as well. But thanks to dipshits actually calling for a boycott of this comedy, more people ended up in the theaters to see it this week.

I laughed my ass off as I noticed an advertisement on TV this evening for “dianetics.org,” a Church of Scientology front (the book “Dianetics” is one of the cult’s more infamous recruitment tricks, especially combined with their “free personality test” tables). The advertisement itself wasn’t the source of the laughter, though it’s a remarkably ineffective ad (it even includes the volcanoes bit that the cult’s “secret scriptures” include in the backstory).

What made me chuckle was that it was aired during a run of South Park. Yeah, the same show that lampoons the cult mercilessly (particularly in Trapped in the Closet which you can go watch by clicking “lampoons the cult”). First they threaten to sue the show’s creators and broadcasters, but now they’re paying Viacom for advertising time? Heh. Morons. I guess if you’re nuts and you’re on the losing side, doing completely bat-shit crazy things is a completely valid tactic.

Be sure to visit Operation Clambake at http://xenu.net/ to read up on all the destructive and horrid things Scientologists have been responsible for over the years they’ve existed. Then laugh next time you see that stupid volcano ad.

If I just sighed and shook my head in disbelief, you wouldn’t be too surprised, since this kind of thing always provokes that kind of reaction out of me. Still, let’s all point and laugh at “blessed” water in a 16.9 ounce bottle, yours for just $2 (not available in stores). The folks over at FARK are giving this the once-over, too, and are probably doing a better job of it than I am, but I thought this scam needed just a bit more limelight cast upon it.

Among the many feeds I have piled into Google Reader for my amusements is PFBlogs, the “Ad-Free Personal Finance Blogs Aggegator,” which culls various personal financing blogs and smashes them all together. In turn, they provide a single feed suitable for digestion by Google Reader.

The decreasingly useful content that trickles through this thing gave me a particularly strange site to skim through this evening. I was wondering, as I scrolled through the “All Items” pile of Google Reader this evening, why the hell is “Verse of the Day” an item on my list (complete with a fucking scripture quote)? I looked below that headline for the feed responsible, and was surprised to see it coming from PFBlogs. Loading the actual “article” led to a remarkably content-free quoting of the good ol’ bible — on the all-time fiction best seller’s list (though I was pleased to hear the Ikea catalog surpassed the bible in total copies published … that’s one of the few instances I’m happy to see consumerism beat out an ideology ).

Fair warning: I’m picking on the religious loons again. If that offends you, you’d better bugger off now and go read a church bulletin or something.

A church in Florida (ugh, dammit … why the hell do people in Florida try so damned hard to earn that “Florida” tag on Fark.com?) has issued a 30-day sex challenge — if you’re married, have sex every day for 30 days; if you’re not, keep it in your pants for 30 days. They’ve included handy-dandy logbooks to help you keep track! It’s the new marriage therapy!

Ahem. Um, no. Stay the fuck out of my bedroom. Why the hell do churches give a rat’s ass what I do with my “junk?” Am I banging alter boys? Nope. Am I banging somebody’s wife? Nope. Piss off — it’s just not your business. When is the “right time” to have sex with your partner? Any damned time you both feel like it. Sex is not a function of “gosh, honey, do you think the minister approves?” Sex is a function of “hey, are you in the mood? Yeah? Excellent, let’s go!”

Churches really need to just back away from the whole “interest in sex” thing. Quit trying to control it, quit trying to pry into the sex lives of other people, and quit fucking the kids. That’ll help a lot more than what’s being done now.

Folks, if you need marriage counseling, go to a real marriage counselor. You know — the kind that had to actually go to school, read books, study things, and earn the degree they display on their wall.

I must offer a heaping helping of praise to the folks at Wikipedia, for refusing to bow to pressure from easily-offended Muslims to remove images of their religious figure “the Prophet Mohammed”. It takes a decent pair of stones to stand up to a group not exactly known for its kind and infinite patience and its strict adherence to peace and love.

A short one today, folks. Recently there’s been a whole bunch of anti-Scientology demonstrations and peaceful protests staged around the world, because of the consistently abusive behavior this so-called “church” has aimed at its detractors.

As I’ve said many times before, anybody who sues to silence a critic is a scumbag and a con artist, should be ashamed, and deserves every single ounce of public ridicule that can be mustered against them. Scientology is no different. It’s a dangerous cult that needs to go bye-bye.

It saddens me to see that even YouTube is succumbing to Scientology’s pressure in its recent decision to censor and downplay the coverage of the protests against the church and its leaders. Videos that have been linked hundreds of times and viewed by thousands (or tens of thousands) of people within a few hours are mysteriously “frozen” — they don’t get promoted to the front page (where the “most viewed” and “most popular” videos are listed), nor do their view or favorite counts get incremented during the daily updates. Very fishy, and very saddening.

YouTube apparently isn’t the great community hall of free speech we all thought it was. Oh well. Do what you can to spread information about these protests and about this dangerous cult. If you’re curious about the actual specifics of the cult itself, visit xenu.net, the clearing house of internal documents and eyewitness accounts of the church, and the evils it has perpetrated upon the world.

A post from a parent reviewing a so-called “science fair project” has me laughing my ass off, while providing an absolutely stellar example of why you should never try to legitimately mix science and religion.

This stabs right at the heart of the “creationism” movement — people so desperate to shoehorn religion into public schools as much as possible (indoctrination at young ages is still the best way to shore up the numbers for any religion) that they’re actually trying to convince the world that “God did it!” is a legitimate “scientific” principle.