Creamy, Chocolaty Christ Offends Catholics



Your tastebuds salivated when New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced plans to rebuild the city out of chocolate. Now, chocolate-lovers, there's a way to satisfy your sweet tooth and your need for spiritual fulfilment. That's right. Your own, personal, chocolate Jesus.

Now I'm Jewish, so I can't claim to know what the hubbub is about the guy, but clearly, he was someone special. And I know the Catholics love eating his body. But I could never understand why that body was made out of little bland wafer cookies. I always thought, hey, if this guy's so special, how come he doesn't taste more delicious??

Clearly, artist Cosimo Cavallaro feels the same way. Which is why, I assume, he re-created Jesus's body in all his chocolaty glory. He planned on putting it on display at a hotel here in New York City. Strangely, some people are offended by Cosimo's depiction. Perhaps they're diabetics.

Apparently, the main point of contention is the fact that choco-Jesus is naked. I can see why this is an issue. Who wants to be the guy stuck with.. er.. eating the messiah's you-know-what? I'm sure it's just as tasty as the rest of our savior, but so totally not worth the jokes you'll have to endure.

Still, I'm surprised at the backlash. Bill Donahue (no relation to Phil), head of the Catholic League, called it "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever." The Romans throwing them to the lions coming in a close second, of course.

"All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off," Bill said.

You said it Bill. If only Christians weren't so damn non-violent, then you could carry out the revenge you really desire!


Not As Friendly As He Looks...

Part of me thinks there might be a bit of a racial thing here. Would Bill be opposed to a Jesus made from white chocolate?? Think about it.

Or perhaps they simply wanted him covered in a candy shell. After all, you want Jesus to melt in your heart, not in your hands.

(insert boooos here)

And this is not even the first time a holy figure has been depicted in chocolate form. Just last year, God himself designed a chocolate Virgin Mary. "I have big problems right now, personally, and lately I've been saying that God doesn't exist," the woman who found the chocolate virgin said. "This has given me renewed faith."

If a three inch Virgin Mary could restore one woman's faith, think about what a 6 foot tall chocolate Jesus could do. Alas, we won't find out. After much complaining, the unveiling of the chocolate Jesus was cancelled.

The Catholic League, in the Christian spirit of forgiveness, had this to say:

“While we are delighted with the outcome, we are not pleased with the comments of the gallery’s creative director, Matt Semler. For him to say that our objection to this outrageous display constitutes hate speech and is the equivalent of a fatwa shows how deliriously irresponsible this man is.

“Because we did not like the way the Roger Smith Hotel handled the decision to drop the display, we have no intention of contacting the 500 organizations that we alerted to this assault on Christian sensibilities to inform them that the exhibition has been cancelled.”

Because, apparently, the Catholic League wants its members to waste their time traveling to the hotel, only to find out they've already succeeded. That'll show em!!?

As a Jew, I may never be able to understand why people believe Jesus is made out of crackers. But from what I've seen and read about, I don't think Jesus would be too upset about this whole chocolate thing. I mean, people nailed him to a cross... is he really gonna get in a tizzy about someone portraying him as a dessert? It seems to me that if he was a-ok with the first thing, then this whole chocolate business wouldn't really faze him.

So Cosimo, consider this an open invite to bring your sweet savior over to my place. As long as I get to choose which part to eat first.

McCain Learns Internet Manners


McCain Was No Doubt Surprised By His MySpace Page

Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain is 70 years old. When he was young, the only way to get "online" was to stand in one. So he can be excused for not knowing some of the basic rules of the internet world. But his web team should know better.

Unfortunately for McCain, the people who set up his MySpace page broke one of the cardinal rules of the internet--by committing a sin called "hotlinking." And the victim got revenge. Just see the picture above.

For those of you not up on the internet lingo. "Hotlinking" is when someone copies the location of a picture or video on someone else's site (for example: http://sokpuppet.blogspot.com/PICTURE.JPG) and then inserts that location into the html code of their own site. Lost? Well, its as simple as this: The image appears on that person's page, but it's being loaded from someone else's. Anyone visiting the hotlinker's page sees the image and has no idea its from another site.

People usually do this because they're too stupid and lazy to download the image, then reupload it onto their own web server.

But it isn't a victimless crime. Every time an image is loaded, it uses up bandwidth (space) on the host's server. Web site owners pay good money for a limited amount of bandwidth, and when someone hotlinks to an image on their page, then their bandwidth gets eaten up without anybody actually going to their page. You can see how this could be frustrating. It's even worse when that image is original and/or copyrighted.

In this case, McCain's MySpace page "hotlinked" to this image:



When the original owner of that "contact me box" found out he was being hotlinked, it was very simple to get revenge. He simply replaced that image, hosted on his server, with a different one, but kept the name the same.

The Result: McCain suddenly supported hot lesbian marriage.

McCain should consider himself lucky. Other "hotlinkers" have suffered far worse retribution. Think about all the images someone less mature could have replaced that image with. We could have seen McCain's smiling face right above some farm animal in a compromising position...

I use Photobucket or TinyPic to host my images. McCain should look into it.

The Feel-Good Movie Of The Year

If Kubrick and Stephen King had gone in a different direction...



These spoof trailers are all the rage now on YouTube. Just type "spoof trailer" into the search box and see what you find. I found this "Home Alone" trailer about a homocidal little boy and the undercover detective trying to bring him to justice.

Also on youtube, MC Sickabod Sane's performance from last week's Training Camp-- a New York City showcase of upcoming rappers. Check it out...

Part 1:


Part 2:


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PLUS: Little-Known Artists Rock Out In Iraq

and...

Sorry Jewish Hippies... No Pot For Passover

All Aboard The Matzah Bus


Note: Not Used To Cook Children

School Bus Serves Up Flat, Unleavened Bread

Gotta applaud this guy on his creativity. It's hard to find an oven capable of baking tons of matzah that also serves as a form of public transportation. When the matzah is ready, do the red lights flash? That would be sooo cool.

Luckily, the police did not visit the house next door, where a minivan has been converted into a latke* fryer.

In other news, I got a Nintendo Wii. My roommate and I were terribly bored on Saturday, and stopped into a GameStop to see if there was any interesting game we could buy for our Gamecube. There wasn't. I decided, hey, lets get the Wii! I asked the lady behind the counter if they had them in.

"Oh no," she laughed. "We won't have those until April, maybe even May."

I was devastated. But just then, out of nowhere, a creepy guy vaguely resembling a mix of Rob Corddry and Rainn Wilson sidled up next to me.

"Tomorrow. 10 am. Circuit City in Union Square. Arrive promptly at a quarter till. That's all I'm at liberty to say."

I turned to ask him how he knew this information, but he was already gone. Like he had never been there at all...

So the next day I woke up early, despite the fact that it was a Sunday, and my typical Sunday wake up time is 1 pm. I went over to Circuit City. There were about 15 people when I got there, waiting for the store to open. One guy was there with his kid. "I got the XBox 360 and the PS3 for me. I'm getting the Nintendo Wii for him," he said. One woman, there with her husband, was really excited about the Wii, even though she said she never played video games. More than a few people made jokes to the effect of "Oh, they're out of Wii's already, you other guys should just go home." I was one of those jokers.

Finally, the store opened, we were led in, five at a time. And I got my Wii. All the way home I clutched it tightly to my chest, fearing that every person I passed might snatch it away from me.

When I got home, I set it up immediately. For such a seemingly sophisticated device, it was pretty quick and easy to get started.

First, I created my Wii character, called a Mii. I think it's possible to download your Mii and post it on web pages such as this, but until I figure it out, you'll have to make do with my bad drawing...



My roommate and I played for hours straight. We just couldn't stop. After every Wii sports game, they give you the option "Play Again?" And it was irresistable. Wii Bowling was especially addictive. What was amazing about it, to me, was that I bowled exactly how I bowl in real life. Horribly.


Your Mii's Hands Are Detatched Floating Orbs.. Just Like In Real Life!!

What also amazed me was how active you can get. When I first heard about people accidently throwing their Wii controllers through their TV sets, or injuring themselves and others, I thought they had to be complete spazoids. But playing Wii Tennis, I totally understood how that stuff can happen. My roommate and I were both sweating as we volleyed back and forth. The controllers get slippery. Thank God for that wrist strap.



And then there was Wii Baseball, where in order to throw a faster pitch, you need to "throw" the controller faster. I may need Tommy John surgery in a few weeks if I keep this up.

I thought Wii sounded cool before. Now that I've actually experienced it, I'm convinced this is the future of gaming. I can't wait to get home and try Wii Boxing and Wii Golf.

To tie this whole entry together... It's all about human creativity, my friends. The same kind of imagination that can turn a bus into an oven can also create something as magical as the Nintendo Wii. All this has inspired me to start my own creative project. You heard it here first people... I'm turning my parents' Toyota Avalon into a Panini press.

Patent pending.

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* the goyim** call them "potato pancakes"

** "goyim" meaning anyone who read this "**" to find out what "goyim" means