Some of the worst...

Yes, today is Halloween and much like it brings out the worst of the world's darkside, it's one of those holidays that brings the worst of Christendom to the top of pot. We often are subjected to baseless urban legends about satanic ritual abuse, razorblades in apples and poisoned candy - all of which have a lot of hype and little substance. Discredited kooks like Jack Chick and Bob Larson make their rounds telling outright crap - and then people buy it and feel obligated to spread the silliness around church.

Anyway, in the spirit of the holiday, I offer two of the worst offenders on the nutcase list:

First, Carmen's "Witches Invitation" video. It is 1980s-era tacky and carries a hint of the Satanism urban legends that were rampant at that time. Plus, it also features Carmen - who probably ranks as one of the least talented and cliche musicians of the era. He was to Christian music what David Hasselhoff was to television. The "witch" is hilarious too in this video, looks like such an Anton LeVay clone...and gotta have the Dungeons and Dragons games thrown in there too.




Next, my friends, you probably have seen this at least once in your life. Some people like to give it out to trick or treaters and its distributed far and wide around this time of the year. I have to bring up Halloween comics by the one and only Jack Chick!

Jack is famous for his factually-challenged scare-me-into-salvation comics, that come really close to being offensive - such as his one that claims that the Holocaust was a Jesuit conspiracy. An early edition of his comic "Dark Dungeons" claimed that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien wrote occult books, ROFL!



Anyway, here's the link: "http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0058/0058_01.asp"

The "Satanist" killing the cat is a hoot.

While I'm ranting, please let me recommend Snopes to you. Before you ever repeat a story or forward an email with juicy gossip, like "Hotel California" is a Satanic song, KISS stands for "Kids/Knights in Satanic Service," Proctor and Gamble is ran by the Satanic Church, xxxxx Christian singer/celebrity is really a Satanist....and blah, blah, blah...please visit Snopes. You'll find about 90% of the stuff is a load o'crap.

I'm done now. There's a neighborhood of cats waiting for me ;).

In the shadow of the moon.....

Ron Howard's new documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon" has just been released in limited theaters, thankfully one of them was in Tampa. Unfortunately, as there were no takers to go along...I went by myself, but it was a great film.

The best way I can describe it would be that it was like having a cup of coffee with those men who went to the moon. Since it happened recently, I think many of us miss the gravity of that event: the landing on the moon was one of the most historically significantly moments in human history. To put this film in perspective, it's like having a conversation with Magellan, Columbus, Marco Polo or da Gama.

I really enjoyed how the film captured the astronaut's personalities so well. You see a side of them that you don't get just watching mission footage. It was also interesting to see Charlie Duke, I had the chance to hear him speak when I was in Junior High.

The entire documentary was taken from real footage, too. No CGI, animation or artists impressions. All footage was from the real missions.

A quite memorable part was discussing Apollo 8, the first flight around the moon. As the astronauts were orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve, they read Genesis chapter 1. If you look at my blog's main page, you'll see the stamp that commemorated that event.

Visit the Film's website at: http://www.intheshadowofthemoon.com/ to see if it is showing at a theater near you. If not, be sure to rent the DVD.

Hopefully we go back to the moon, and beyond in my lifetime. I missed Apollo by a few years and hope that Constellation can get us there again.