Tuesday, November 15, 2005

What Are These People Running From?

Oh they're not. They're running to the worldest most toughest competition in town. It's MXC. MOST EXTREME ELIMINATION CHALLENGE.
If you have not yet seen this show, I implore to stop whatever it is you're doing right now and tune into Spike TV every Thursday night from 9 to 11 (Well, at least finish reading this first). This particular show is the best in brainless entertainment. If you ever have a splitting headache, MXC works much faster and far better than any other pain reliever on the market. I guarantee you will not need another thought for the next thirty minutes once an episode starts.
For the unprivledged who have not yet heard of this program, MXC shows clips from the Japanese show entitled "Takeshi's Castle" in which hundreds of contestants attempt to complete nearly impossible challenges like traversing ten giant toilet paper rolls that are at least ten feet in diameter. Even though these obstacles are absurbly difficult to finish, they are not dangerous by any means, ensuring that no one is hurt and that everyone can share in a guilt-free laugh. However, the relative difficulty of these challenges assures that these people will fail in an embarassing and hilarious fashion.
If the concept isn't enough to make your sides split, then the commentary on the show will. "Takeshi's Castle" features a whole host of characters that have been undignified and marginalized by the Americans to add to MXC's greatness. The voiceover actors create great foil characters in commentators Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship, who combine professionalism and immaturity to make some irreverant masturbation jokes. The show also includes safari-man Guy LeDouche, a crazed bisexual, and Captain Tenneal, whose commentary at the beginning of every episode reinforces my belief that the writing on this show is absolutely brilliant. If the writers for MXC do not win an Emmy every year from now on, my eyes will never view another television for as long as I live (Fat chance. I wonder what's less likely to happen: MXC winning an Emmy or me never watching TV again).
Of course, "smart" people out there will undoubtably criticize the show and its viewers for deriving entertainment out of people's humiliation. Guess what? The show is supposed to be funny. Why else would Japan call it a comedic game show. The contestants know that they will fail miserably in a futile attempt to complete these impossible challenges, so why not do it on the show that's aired across two countries. Actually, the fact that people humiliate themselves on this show shouldn't deter people from watching it. Everyone, from the show's creators to its participants, went through a great deal of trouble in both setting up these challenges and taking a risk by embarassingly competing in them, so we might as well reward their efforts by giving them the attention they deserve. Watching it would be the very least you could do.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

God FAQs

I'm beginning to question whether or not everyone in my school really wants to question Christianity or they're just being morons. Anyway, here's some simple questions that my simple-minded colleagues might ask with regards to God:
  • If God is all powerful and loves us, why do bad things happen?
First of all, answering this question requires getting out of the LiveJournal-state understanding of love in which middle and high schoolers use to attain popularity, for instance "Oh I'm going to shower to with compliments. You're my best friend and you make me happy. Will you be nice to me?" Just imagine God acting like a parent. If a son or daughter struggles with something, will the parent always be their to do it for them? No, the parent may help, but he or she cannot be easing the child through life. Or if that son or daughter screws up badly like drinking too much at a party, getting behind the wheel and inadvertantly killing someone by getting into an accident, will the parent subsequently be saying "Oh that's okay. Here's another car"? No, the child requires punishment and the parent should take accountablity and deliver it. Now God is not being malevolent in anyway by not performing miracles to make a person's life easier or punishing others when they deserve it (let's face it, we all do). Those are signs of His love and ultimate desire to help people on Earth. In these situations, God is expressing his love through help, and taking the easy way out does not help.
  • Are all Christians these extreme, southern Republicans that I see on Fox News and the 700 Club?
Hell No. These people might as well be butts for cows because they are so filled with crap. First, they assume that they are evangelizing because they stand at a podium in front of thousands of other Christians. Well, it's not really evangelism if every member of the audience already accepts God. It's real easy preaching to the choir. Then they have the audacity to think that electing officials like George W. Bush will spread God's word into politics. Unfortunately our government has a little clause known as a seperation of church and state, and since politics is a function of the state, the church will always be seperate. So incorporating Christianity in politics not only degrades God, but it degrades government (if that's even possible) if it can't even follow its own laws towards seperating church and state. The truly good Christians are working abroad in impoverished countries to spread God's love through providing services like water, food, and shelter. Don't let these blowhards in the United States shape your view of typical Christians.
  • Do all Christians believe in Creationism?
No, no, no, no, no. Most of these extreme evangelists only preach this theory because they feel obligated to support the infallability and truth behind the Bible. The game "telephone" proves how much a statement can be skewed by ten to twenty people in fifteen minutes. Imagine how skewed the creation story can become by a few million people over a million years. In fact, the issue shouldn't even matter since most Christians don't care. What does it matter where we came from if it doesn't affect how we live right now? The point of the story is to show how sin came into the world and it expresses that message adequately.
Please keep sending me questions about God, and hopefully I'll give you a satisfactory answer.