Garage Attendant

I do hope that, when Jesus eventually makes His second coming, He won’t come back as a garage attendant. If He did, I’m sure that the temptation to change water into Five Star Unleaded would be irresistible. In addition, He’d probably integrate baptism into the drive-through car washing service. Which would be fine if everyone in the car was of the same faith. But what would happen if a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian were travelling together? Bloody religious wars might break out on garage forecourts.

Thinking about it, Jesus’ work at a garage would lead to a whole new form of ministry. Today, if people have a shunt or accidentally scrape another car, they report the fact to an insurance company and have an assessor come along. However, with a Jesus-inspired garage, customers would take their damaged cars to a confessional staffed by a mechanic in overalls and a dog-collar. He would listen to their driving peccadilloes, all told in confidence, give them an estimate on how much absolution would cost - for example, a penance consisting of the recitation of five pages from the Highway Code - and then tell them to come back in three days. When they did come back, however, they’d be told that the penance was now actually 10 pages from the Highway Code, seeing as, in the interim, the mechanic had discovered that the front bumper was having impure thoughts re: a Toyota.

I imagine the concept of Holy Motor Oil would come about, too. People would bring their clapped-out, MOT failures along, hoping for a miracle. They would line up, each partake of the Holy Motor Oil, and recite in turn, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you service me. Only say the Word, and my vehicle shall be healed.”

Actually, this sort of thing would be a boon for dodgy second-hand car dealers. If, shortly after you’d bought your car, its suspension collapsed or a wheel fell off, the dealer could claim it was due to a lack of Faith on your part rather than poor maintenance or shoddy goods on his. He’d say you had it coming because you’d fucked your best friend’s wife, or coveted his ox, or something like that.
The sales of new cars would probably suffer, too. This is because Jesus would go around to breakers’ yards, seek out the compacted lumps of metal, and resurrect them into brand new BMWs and Volvos.

What a cheating cunt.

The Face of Jesus

I see that the face of Jesus has appeared again, this time on the underside of a Marmite lid in Wales. This follows close on the heels of His appearance last month in the middle of a Kit Kat, and before then in such foodstuffs as, variously, yoghurt, pancakes, and cookie dough. Isn’t it time, then, that the confectionery manufacturers started taking advantage of this?

Consider Unilever’s current “You either love it or hate it” campaign for Marmite, for example. To me, this is rather weak and indecisive, particularly in view of the fact that their product clearly now has divine endorsement, too. It’s therefore not dissimilar to God declaring to Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, “Christianity: Take it or leave it - I couldn’t give a fuck” rather than more assertive and marketable “In hoc signo vinces: In this sign you will conquer.” If it had been the former slogan, we might all still be worshipping Jupiter and the Roman pantheon of pagan deities (unless, of course, Muhammad’s face had appeared in the middle of a pot of humous, in which case Britain might well now be an Islamic republic).

So, with this in mind, I would suggest “Eat Marmite or you’ll burn in Hell.” And rather than “Have a break, have a Kit Kat”, it should be “Have a Kit Kat or your next break will be for a fucking Eternity in the Fiery Pit.”

This, of course, assumes that God is consistent with his choice of foodstuffs. If he were to appear in, for instance, both Marmite and Bovril, it could lay the seeds for bloody religious war. And anyone who ate a Kit Kat and then started nibbling on a Twix might well have to be stoned to death for apostasy. But this is a small price to pay for Divine Truth.

Ascension Day

Two thousand years ago, what with flying angels, celestial doves, winged chariots, thunderbolts, and the like, the skies over the Holy Land must have been heavily congested. Jesus was therefore quite lucky to get away with ascending, vertically, from a mountain top like that, without getting clearance first of all. In fact, it’s probably only through sheer luck that, today, we’re not celebrating Mid-air Collision Day.

Then again, I suppose if Jesus were attempting the same thing in this day and age, He’d have even more serious problems to contend with.

For example, during His Ascension, Jesus would have to take special care to steer clear of duck hunters. Seen from a distance, an ascending Saviour looks not unlike a mallard, especially if He's wearing one of those homespun robes as featured on the statues, and He's got His arms outstretched. Consequently, members of the hunting fraternity, out to bag a brace or two, might mistakenly open up with 12-bore shotguns. And while Jesus would probably possess the necessary speed and manoeuvrability to take evasive action, there's nevertheless always the risk, however minimal, that He might get brought down.

If I, myself, were a hunter and managed to bag a Son of God instead of a duck, most likely I'd be well pleased with myself. In fact, I'd have Him stuffed and mounted alongside my moose-head. Or I’d try to flog Him to St Vincent de Paul Church, maybe. However, some people - proprietors of Chinese restaurants out to stock up their kitchens, for example - would no doubt be heavily pissed off. Somehow, the appearance of Szechuan Crispy Jesus on the menu lacks the culinary appeal of its quacking counterpart. And I can’t see Him combining too well with pancakes and hoi sin sauce, even as an experiment in so-called “fusion food.”

Surrexit Christus Hodie

Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Some two thousand years ago, His followers (accounts vary as to who was actually there, depending on whose Gospel you trust) went to Jesus' tomb in order to marinade Him in unguents, or whatever, as one apparently did with Jewish dead bodies back then. Unfortunately, it was pretty much a wasted journey, as they arrived to find that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb's entrance and Jesus had pissed off. Or, as an angel who happened to be around at the time rather unhelpfully put it, "He is not here. He has risen."

All well and good. But was He risen enough, I wonder?

The reason I ponder this question is because, when Jesus was resurrected, it was clearly something of a half-arsed job. That's to say, although He was up and about, as you'd expect of someone restored to life, He still had bloody great holes in His hands, feet, and side from the crucifixion, as later witnessed by Apostle, Thomas, who put his finger through one. So to my mind, Jesus was, to use a cookery terminology, "underdone." Perhaps, then, He ought to have been left in the tomb a bit longer. I don't think three days were enough.

The thing is, if you microwave food, it says on the back of the packet exactly how long it should be left in. Timings depend on such variables as the weight of the item and the power setting of the microwave oven itself. Presumably, resurrecting someone in a Jerusalem tomb works on much the same principle. But the problem with Jesus is that He didn't have a message tattooed on his arse to the effect, "For 750 Watt tombs, inter for 72 hours. Check Saviour is piping hot before exhuming." Or maybe He once did have one, but it had been scourged off by the Romans a few days previously. Whatever, this meant that the angels (or whoever did the job) pretty much had to guess. And the procedure was made even more problematical because, in those days, tombs had no power rating, and the stones rolled across their entrances didn't have digital LEDs on them, either, to give an accurate timing. Therefore, I imagine that the angels kept rolling the stone back and forth, having exchanges along the lines of "Is He done yet?" - "No, I'd give Him another five minutes if I were you", and so on and so forth, unto ultimate resurrection. Or, as previously stated, given that they did have to guess at it, a semi-resurrection, leastways.

That said, it's possible, I suppose, that the holes in Jesus were actually there for a good, practical reason. Going back to the microwave oven analogy again, when you use one of those, you have to prick holes in the plastic packaging of things like lasagnes and currys before they're irradiated. If you don't, they often explode mid-way through the cooking process. So perhaps Jesus might have exploded, too, if those holes hadn't been left in Him. Then the angels would have had to have scraped Him off the tomb walls before they could let Him outside. If so, He'd probably have looked like one of those chicken and prawn biriani dishes that you often see puked up on pavements after closing time on Friday evenings. Hardly the sort of image to inspire a Piero della Francesca Renaissance painting. And certainly not a new religion.

That's how I hope it all panned out, anyway. Because, if it didn't and Jesus was underdone, anyone receiving a Communion Host today at Mass - a "Body of Christ" - could well risk getting a dose of botulism or e-Coli from it, too. Then they'd be the ones hoping to be resurrected in three days' time.

Transubstantiation

As we all know, just under 2,000 years ago, Jesus, Our Saviour, transformed mere bread such that it actually became His own body.

This miraculous process, which is now repeated in churches throughout the world, is known as the Transubstantiation. How fortunate we are, though, that it doesn't work in reverse. If it did, and the Messiah were able to change His body into bread, He might be mistaken for the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Or worse, the Pillsbury Dough Boy might be mistaken for Jesus.

Some would say, of course, that such a development would be a marketing triumph for Pillsbury. The company could claim that all their dough products had divine sanction, thus boosting sales. But it's likely that if they did, rivals such as Rank-Hovis-McDougall and Homepride would convene a bakery equivalent of the Council of Nicaea. There, they would declare that in fact their bakery products, and theirs alone, were the Way, the Truth, and the Life. As a result, supermarkets would be riven by schism. Bloody religious wars would flare up, with Morrisons set against Sainsburys, Netto against Kwik Save, and Somerfield against Aldi. The loss of life would be horrendous.

Basically, then, we should be grateful that Transubstantiation is actually irreversible, like poaching an egg. On the other hand, if Jesus had transformed himself into dough, He'd have been virtually impossible to crucify. It would have been like trying to nail a blancmange to the ceiling.

Then again, when you think about it, the whole concept of Transubstantiation is a bit fucking far-fetched, isn’t it? It’s certainly nothing that you’d want to spring on your dinner party guests, unexpectedly. If you’re having one of these formal functions and, à propos of nothing at all, your host suddenly hands you a bread roll or its equivalent and says, “Take this all of you and eat it, for this is my body”, you’re going to be a bit sceptical, to say the least.

Actually, I’ll bet that the disciples must have thought, as one, “What a twat! He's claiming affinity with a piece of bread!” In the main, though, they just shuffled their feet and tried to humour Jesus, as you do on these occasions. Only Judas had the courage to say, “What the fuck? You're a stupid cunt, mate. I'm going to tell the authorities.” And indeed, off he went, returning a few hours later with a delegation from the local Sanhedrin.

I'm sure we’re all aware of how the tale subsequently unfolded. Neither the religious authorities nor the representatives of the Occupying Power were very pleased to have in their midst someone who identified so closely with a loaf. And is it surprising? It could, of course, have given risen to a series of copycat incidents wherein people claimed to be dates, castor oil plants, or various kinds of exotic fruit (“Leave your homes and families and follow me, for I am a kumquat sent by the Lord to bring you Salvation.”). Therefore to nip this in the bud, Jesus was executed. Various embellishments were then added to the story, but that's basically it.

Screw Jesus

Good Friday again, no less, and, to celebrate the occasion, I’ve been re-reading Christ’s Passions, Our Passions, by Margaret Bullit-Jonas, while preparing my world-beating muesli breakfast. It’s thought-provoking stuff. The book isn’t bad, either.

In my opinion, however – and this is where I take issue with many theologians, including Bullit-Jonas herself - Jesus shouldn’t have been nailed to the cross; He should have been screwed to it. Then it would have been a lot easier to get Him off afterwards. But because they used nails, the Roman soldiers most likely had to employ some sort of claw hammer to prise those nails out, no doubt with some difficulty. All of this risked damaging the wood, possibly so seriously that the cross couldn’t be used again.


If, on the other hand, Pilate had authorised the use of a Philips screwdriver and just three heavy-duty screws, Jesus could have been secured quickly and easily, with minimum risk of His coming loose and dropping off mid-way through the crucifixion. And, of course, at the end, it would have been possible to remove Him in seconds, and re-use both the cross and the screws.

Similarly, if the soldiers had made a balls-up and accidentally put Jesus on upside down, they could have simply unscrewed Him, turned Him the right way up, and re-secured Him. Likewise, if, having screwed Him on, they’d stepped back and seen that He wasn’t quite level, it would then have been a simple matter of unscrewing one arm, inching it up slightly, and then re-screwing it. Whereas, if they'd nailed Him up and He wasn’t level, there wasn’t a Hell of a lot they could do about it. Except live with the fact, I suppose, and hope that the spectators and Gospel writers didn’t laugh too much

Anyway, the Romans obviously weren’t very economy minded when it came to basic woodwork, which goes some way towards explaining the ultimate decline and fall of their empire.

Palm Sunday

Today is Palm Sunday, when we commemorate Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, mounted on a donkey that a couple of His disciples had previously nicked from some bloke living in Bethphage, just up the road from the Mount of Olives (Matthew 21:2).

According to The New Testament version of events, when Jesus went through the city gate, the population called out, as one, "Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest." And so on and so forth, as you do. Simultaneously, they threw down palm fronds on the road before Him.

What the Bible doesn't tell us, however, is if they already had the palm fronds to hand, or whether they had to cut them down especially for the occasion.

The fact of the matter is, Succot aside, palm fronds are basically fuck all use for anything else except chucking down at the feet of Messiahs. Consequently, they're not the sorts of things you're going to keep in your store cupboard just on the off-chance that one is going to turn up. Usually, therefore, they have to be cut down, fresh, as and when required. And, as it would be uneconomic to keep professional palm frond harvesters on 24-hour Messiah Watch, you'd probably need to go out and do the job yourself as soon as any sort of Lamb of God made His presence known.

I imagine that, on the day, this would have caused quite a few logistical problems. Given that His donkey was stolen, Jesus must have been travelling at a fair lick in order to put as much distance between Himself and Bethphage as possible. So, people wanting to put palm fronds down before Him wouldn't have had the time to travel very far in order to gather the things. Rather, they'd have had to go for the ones immediately to hand, most likely those right outside the Eastern gates of the city.

The thing is, though, as I recall from the time when I lived there, while Jerusalem does indeed have palm trees outside its Eastern wall, there aren't that many of them (they'd probably undermine the foundations if there were). So on the first Palm Sunday, several thousand people shinning up and plucking, at most, a dozen and a half palm trees must have done a shitload of damage. I'd think that, by the time they'd harvested sufficient fronds to cover the distance between the Golden Gate and Jesus' ultimate destination, the Temple, there'd be fuck all left of the trees except for their trunks and maybe a few withered coconuts or palm olives.

Coconuts and palm olives are inherently dangerous. I'll bet that by exposing them in this way, it encouraged Jerusalemites to chuck rocks at them in order to bring them down and then sing stupid songs about having lovely bunches of the things. Which, given the inherent sexual innuendo elements of such songs, can't have gone down too well with either the Roman or Jewish authorities. Almost as dangerous are palm olives. The oil you get from them is extremely high in saturated fats. But the Jerusalemites of the time didn't know this. Doubtless they harvested them, turned them into what they believed were healthy spreads, and then died shortly afterwards from congestive heart failure. And all because of Jesus.

It's therefore not surprising that Jesus, rather than Barabbas, got crucified, is it? What is surprising is that it took them as long as a whole fucking after Palm Sunday week to get round to doing it.

Not good for palm trees

The City of God

Many people hereabouts have their newspapers delivered by a so-called “paper boy”. I’ve never understood why. It costs you more and there’s no guarantee as to exactly when, or if at all, the bugger will turn up. Whereas if you just walk down to the newsagent (it’s only five minutes away) you only pay the cover price for the newspaper and you get it at the time that you want it.

That said, I suppose, for those who do have their papers delivered, there is a certain serendipitous element, which might appeal. This is because the gormless little cunt regularly delivers the wrong newspaper, so you often don’t know whether you’re going to get The Catholic Herald or The Sunday Sport. Consequently, for those who were expecting to follow, say, the controversy over the canonization of Josemaría Escrivá, the opportunity, instead, to have a wank over Veronica Zemanova’s decision to “lezz it up, big style” must come as quite a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, if you were expecting to have a wank over Veronica Zemanova’s decision to “lezz it up, big style”, having to read about apostolica vivendi forma might come as something of a let-down (particularly if you’re still disillusioned over the fall-out from Vatican II). For this reason, I believe The Catholic Herald ought to incorporate a “Readers’ Wives” section, just in order to placate such unfortunates.

Then again, this might, in turn, force The Sunday Sport to offer 0898 numbers devoted to discussion of Humanae Vitae in their back pages, alongside the usual “Bored Housewives” and “Lesbian Teens” ads. This brings the risk that some perve will inevitably misdial and start talking to a nun or priest about his raging hard-on and his desire to stick it any which where. Which isn't something that nuns or priests (nuns, leastwise) have much expertise in.

Pondering the matter further, though, this might actually be a good thing and turn the perve to the Way of Righteousness. Like St Augustine of Hippo, for example. We’re never actually told the exact reason why he abandoned his life of wanton profligacy and embraced the Lord. Perhaps it’s because, back then, there was a similar sort of reciprocal agreement between the publishers of The Life of St Anthony of the Desert and the Fifth Century equivalent of Razzle, where each carried ads meant for the other, and Augustine went for the wrong one. So, expecting to be brought to arousal by chatting to a 16 year old nymphomaniac, he was instead induced by a religious correspondent to follow the path of celibacy and godliness, thus enabling him, later, to develop the concept of the Church as the spiritual “City of God.”

Having a good intellect in the first place must have helped, however. I somehow doubt that any of the the Fifth Century Veronica Zemanovas were in much of a position to frame the concepts of Original Sin. Not without charging you at least the equivalent £1.50 a minute, anyway.

Ragnarok

History records that the first successful passenger lift was installed in New York’s five storey E.V. Haughwout Building by Elisha Graves Otis in 1857. Before then, however, people who worked there had apparently managed quite well without one, so it makes you wonder why Otis bothered (and it also makes you wonder what happened with all those unsuccessful passenger lifts that must have come beforehand). After all, five storeys aren’t that much of a challenge, even for K. McEgan. Besides which, I’m sure that, in the mid 1850s, the very name of the invention could have caused concern to many, encouraging them to stick with the stairs.

How so? Because Otis called it an elevator. We call it a lift. The French say ascenseur. The Spanish, ascensor. To the Israelis it’s מַעֲלִית, and to the Arabs مصعد. And so forth. In all cases, in all languages, the noun conveys the concept of “going up.”

The thing is, though, if Otis had said to me “How would you like to ride in my elevator?”, and I’d never used one before, I'd most likely have been very wary. OK, it’s probably going to perform to spec and get me up there, as implied by "elevator", "lift", ascenseur, or whatever, but what about getting down again? Nowhere in the agnomen is there any suggestion that it’s capable of making that reverse journey.

There is, of course, a long history of people going up and not coming down. One thinks, for example, of Jesus and his mother, Mary. Then again, rather than being worried, those first lift users in the 1850s might have thought of Jesus and Mary, too. They might have said to themselves, “Yes, I shall ascend! I am as God Himself! Abase yourselves before me, therefore, mere mortals, lest you feel my holy wrath!” But then if, say, half a dozen like-minded individuals had tried to use the lift at the same time, each believing himself to be the One True God, there’d have been a sort of Ragnarok once the “Up” button had been pressed and all the would-be deity passengers fought for supremacy. Even if they didn’t, it must have been a letdown arriving, not in Heaven, as they expected, but merely in the office supplies and stationery department.

Maybe that’s actually what happened to Jesus when He ascended. Instead of sitting at the Right Hand of the Father, He’s in fact sitting on an ethereal photocopier, doomed to turn out pictures of His arse for all eternity while simultaneously inhaling the fumes from an infinite number of protoplasmic Tippex bottles. Which would certainly explain the present state of the world.

أشهد أن لا إله إلاَّ الله و أشهد أن محمد رسول الله

Here in the UK, many people (usually non-Muslims) complain about the sound of muezzins calling the faithful to prayer from the minarets of mosques. For their part, the Muslims say that this a bit of a double-standard, because the sound of church bells can be equally off-pissing, too, particularly if you happen to live directly alongside an establishment that boasts an Extreme Campanlogy Unit. A big cathedral giving it large, for example, can really fuck up your morning, whether you’re Christian or Muslim.

For my own part, I’ve never seen the point of either. Declaiming “I assert that there is no god but ‘Allah and Muhammad is ‘Allah’s prophet” is a bit redundant: If that actually isn’t your point of view, you’d presumably be a bit of dick climbing to the top of a mosque in the first place. You’d be better off in a church, synagogue, Quaker meeting, or whatever. By the same token, if you really do need a bell to get you in to prayers, surely that hints at a certain lack of commitment to the religion on your part.

I suppose a compromise could be reached. Maybe priests should be encouraged to go to the top of their steeple or church tower each Sunday morning and shout out the Nicene Creed over a loudspeaker, while minarets could be equipped with bells, with the muezzin himself acting as the clapper. This would probably produce a much duller “Bong!” than the conventional brass or iron clapper but, seeing as he’d have to do it five times a day, you’d at least be certain that the guy really was giving it his all for the faith.

The only disadvantage I can see to having Muslim bell clappers is that the tinkle of something like an ice cream van might then easily outdo a mosque in volume. So people could come to believe that ice cream vans were, in fact, closer to God. But which one? Would adherents of, say, Mr Whippy start wearing suicide vests and self-detonating amongst customers queuing up to buy a 99 from Mr Softee, and vice versa? Could an ice cream wafer accidentally transubstantiate and usurp the place of Our Lord, Jesus Christ?

I fear for our future, I really do.

Hot Cakes

You often hear the expression “They sold like hot cakes.” The clear implication of this, of course, is that hot cakes are somehow superior to cold cakes and therefore more in demand by all right-thinking people. But is this indeed true?

Yesterday, at 3.00 pm, the Vicarage was having one of its regular “Come and have tea and cakes with the Vicar and find God for only £2.50” afternoons, so I decided to go along and put it to the test. Accordingly, I baked some cakes of my own and took them there in a foil container, fresh from the oven, to see how they’d compare to the brumal competition.

You know what? Despite the fact that, aesthetically, nutritionally, and even tastewise, my hot cakes were clearly the best of the bunch, the cold cakes put out by Cate, the Vicar, outsold my hot ones by at least 10 to one. This is an iniquitous situation. And when I demanded to know of those present why they chose her cakes over mine, the majority replied that it was precisely because mine were hot - too hot, many claimed – that they went for the cold ones.

Well fuck you, parishioners of Bumbles Green. And fuck you, too, Cate. Maybe I won’t shag you, after all.

Afterwards, I tried to analyze what had gone wrong. Eventually, a search of the Internet turned up Robert Hendrickson’s "Encyclopaedia of Word and Phrase Origins", published in 1997. “Hot cakes cooked in bear grease were popular from earliest times in America,” he says. “First made of cornmeal, the griddle cakes or pancakes were of course best when served piping hot and were often sold at church benefits, fairs, and other functions. So popular were they that by the beginning of the 19th century 'to sell like hot cakes' was a familiar expression for anything that sold very quickly effortlessly, and in quantity."

Clearly, that’s where I erred. Next time, therefore, I’ll find a greasy bear (one marinaded in olive oil or coated in lard, presumably), fry him, toss the cakes into the mix, and then take the ensemble over to the vicarage. I shouldn’t imagine the bear is going to enjoy this much, and, as a consequence, might even maul people or eat them as they try to reach for the cakes. But at least this should prove a true test of faith for the parishioners: If God is with them, they’ll survive the experience. It’s a better test than, say, Communion, anyway, where there’s no risk whatsoever of being eaten by a bear (except, perhaps, in Alaskan churches where they can sneak up behind you while you’ve got your eyes closed in prayer).

Clergy on the Catwalk

I came across this disturbing report in yesterday's Daily Telegraph which describes how clergy in Devon are taking part in ecclesiastical fashion shows in order to model the latest in cassocks, wimples, and the like. This worries me, as I fear it could ultimately lead to the downfall of religion and the triumph of Evil. How so?

At the moment, admittedly, there appear to be few problems. Most of the clerics on show look fit and of average physique. How long will it be, though, before the vestment designers start clamouring for ever thinner, more sylph-like clergy to model their wares? Soon, we could start to see near-anorexic vicars parading up and down, who maintain their impossibly lean frames by constant dieting, over-exercising, and chain smoking.

Critics will quite reasonably argue that younger, more impressionable priests might look upon these people as role models and attempt to emulate them. They will do almost anything to lose weight. The weekly Mass, for example, could be subject to constant interruptions as, immediately after the Transubstantiation, the priest retreats behind the altar, puts two fingers down his throat, and pukes up the Blessed Host.

I imagine the Vatican would attempt to allay the fears of bulimic priests by introducing Lo-cal Communion wafers. But at what cost? If a conventional water is turned into a conventional Body of Christ, it follows that a Lo-cal wafer will become a Christ who looks like one of those “before” pictures in a Charles Atlas ad. He’ll be a pathetic, weedy runt of a Saviour who’s forever having sand kicked in his face by the Devil. He’ll have an extremely hard time persuading anyone at all that He’s the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Consequently, come Armageddon, it will be the forces of Darkness, not Light, that will triumph.

Erectile Dysfunction

According to a newspaper article I’ve been reading this morning, 77 per cent of men suffer from some sort of sexual dysfunction at some time during their lives. Usually it's short term. However, eight per cent of men, sadly, are permanently afflicted.

Given the widespread popularity of this malady, and its history, I was wondering why there are no recorded instances of Jesus ever curing it. It must, after all, have occurred in First Century Palestine. But try as I might, nowhere in the New Testament do I find anything along the lines of "Lord, I cannot get it up. If thou wilt, make me erect", or "Master, I habitually splurge just two seconds after I stick it in. Say the word, that I might acquire a respectable length of time."

After much thought, though, I realise that the explanation is in fact quite straightforward: Jesus Himself simply didn't understand the concept of impotence. This is because He'd received a somewhat imperfect account of the facts of life from His parents. When, during His early teens, He'd asked, "Mummy, how are babies made?", the Virgin Mary came out with some story about being fucked through the ear by an archangel and impregnated with the Holy Spirit (which is why, in medieval times, women kept their ears covered – they were regarded as erogenous zones). Obviously, anyone who's told this sort of thing at an impressionable age is bound to get an odd perspective on life.

So thereafter, whenever anyone approached Him with his limp dick in his hand, Jesus would pay it no heed. He thought that the only function of a penis was for pissing. Indeed, I'll bet if He ever did see anyone with a stiffy, He assumed it was some sort of disease or inflammation and tried to cure it by laying on of hands.

Perhaps he did this with Caiaphas or other members of the Sanhedrin, which might explain the real reason behind His crucifixion.

Neologism

Someone was saying the other day that 30 is the new 20. Maybe. And, according to Oprah Winfrey, who obviously knows these things because she's on television, 50 is the new 40. Extrapolating downwards in this way, therefore, we can readily deduce that birth must be the new conception. All of which clearly makes sex redundant as a means of species renewal and confirms what many have believed all along:

We are all the products either of the stork or the interior of the midwife’s bag. (Except, of course, for those fucking deviants who gestate under gooseberry bushes.)

This should be good news for Catholics, as it means that mechanical and oral contraceptive devices are now factored out of the reproductive equation entirely and can be used with impunity. If, indeed, you actually want to use them at all. After all, what’s the point of sticking a condom over your nob or popping an oestrogen/progestogen pill if the only end-result is a decrease in sensitivity and a tendency to sprout a moustache?

On the other hand, it does allow the Vatican to introduce whole new categories of sins. Fitting a lock to a midwife’s bag, for example, could easily be construed as a means of birth control. Likewise attaching a cowl to your chimney, as this will prevent the stork dropping the baby down it. In fact, I’ll bet some Godless degenerates will start bringing out ranges of fruit-flavoured and ribbed chimney cowls, just to piss off the Pope. Some may even glow in the dark.

But at least these will prevent people from catching VD when stoking their fires. And I imagine they will now pay a Hell of a lot more attention to their mantelpiece when they’re doing so.

Fimus Sanctus

You know, something’s troubling me about the Catholic Mass that I attended last Sunday.

After the congregation eat the Communion wafer, the corporeal essence of Jesus is then treated by the human digestive system like any other foodstuff, and eventually gets transformed into shit. Which means that the Holy Shit goes through the sewage system and gets mixed in with everyone else's shit. So, effectively, Jesus gets combined with the faeces of Godless unbelievers, thereby diluting the Shit's holiness.

To avert such a tragedy, in my opinion, the homes of Catholics should be plumbed separately from the homes of the heathen, and their waste outlets all directed to a special Catholic-only sewage works. This would ensure the accumulation of a holier grade of excrement. Indeed, so holy would it be that such sewage works would probably be able to serve the same function as shrines such as Lourdes and Fatima. Those afflicted in mind and body could come along, sniff of the Holy Shit, and be miraculously cured of their ailments.

Alternatively, if the Catholic Church didn't like this idea, they might arrange to bypass the digestive system entirely. This they could do by directing their Priests to offer Communicants, not an orally ingested Host, but a Body of Christ Suppository that would gradually release its pure Jesusness over a 24 hour period. Given that He's going to be in the arse region at some time, anyway, He may as well start his journey there. In order to partake of the Holy Suppository, Communicants would have to bare their arses to the Priest and, as best they could, fart an "Amen" in response to his "The body of Christ" (or corpus Christi if it’s a Latin mass).

Or perhaps a Jesus patch, like one of those nicotine patches, would be better. You'd probably have to take special care not to inadvertently swallow a Host while you're wearing one of these patches, though, or you might overdose on holiness and suddenly turn into a Pope. This isn't something that I, personally, would want to do. Not unless I urgently needed my ceiling painted, anyway.

Transubstantiation Troubles

This morning, despite the thick frost and a heavy, freezing mist in the air, I nevertheless decided to go on my usual five mile jog to help maintain myself in rude health. Although, initially, the cold was discomforting, I felt that the whole thing did me a lot of good.

Anyway, just as I was about to turn into the home stretch, I chanced upon groups of very well-dressed people on the road, impeding my forward progress. Rather than just knock them out of the way, as is my usual practice, I decided, instead, to study them. After a while, it became clear that they were Catholics. This was because each family unit had at least ten members, and most of the women looked heavily pregnant, about to pop yet another. So I slowed down and followed close behind them in order to carry out further research.

After a while, we all came upon a rather imposing looking church and entered en masse, filing into the pews, genuflecting, and generally crossing ourselves, as one apparently does on these occasions. Then I settled down to see what would unfold.

As far as I could tell, the Service itself acts as a sort of warm-up event: the Sam the Harmonica Man, if you will, to the Chas & Dave in Concert which is the main attraction - the so called “Transubstantiation”. If I understood correctly, what happens here is that, when the priest intones the blessing before the congregation, the Eucharist is transformed into the physical body of Jesus Christ. Once it has been, you’re supposed to go up to the front and eat it. (It’s only one serving per person – seconds are discouraged.) So I did and, to tell the truth, it tasted OK, if a bit bland, though nothing that a touch of mustard or ketchup couldn’t have put right.

Following consumption (which wasn't helped by the house wine - a rather sickly, sweet number), I went back to my pew and carried on observing. But what followed disturbed me greatly. There were so many Catholics in there that, after a while, the priest ran out of bready Jesuses. Therefore, rather than risk a riot, he had to send a choirboy round the back to bring in a new batch. A new batch which he didn't bless.

Now here’s my problem.

Clearly, this new lot must have been pre-blessed beforehand in some sort of assembly-line process. So where is the quality control? Obviously, the simple flour and water composition of a communion host renders it susceptible to degradation, like any other bread product. Consequently, a wafer blessed the previous day and stored incorrectly risks becoming progressively less divine as the hours pass. Indeed, if it's left to fester for too long, there is the danger that an unwary communicant could receive, not the Body of Christ, but just a leg or a toe. Indeed, he might even end up with a plain, unholy wafer.

To eliminate such hazards, I call upon the Catholic Church to stamp a “bless by” date on every wafer. Or maybe a “Holy until 28/01/09” sticker. I also demand that pre-blessed hosts be individually sealed in plastic bags to keep in the holiness. Then, and only then, will faith endure.

The Nativity

When you think the matter through, a stable was actually a very dangerous place for the Virgin Mary to give birth in. As for laying Baby Jesus in a manger, that was bordering on the irresponsible. How so?

A manger is basically a cow-feed receptacle, and cows aren’t particularly “with it” when it comes to intelligence, hence the term “bovine stupidity.” It would therefore have been just like a dumb cow to mistake the manger’s divine contents for some sort of high-protein, animal-based grass replacement, along the lines of that mulched up sheep carcass that gives everyone BSE. As a result, our Lord and Saviour could easily have got himself eaten by accident.

If this had happened, Joseph and Mary would probably have used their combined ingenuity to try to get Baby Jesus out of the cow, resulting in a very different Nativity scene to the traditional one. The shepherds and the magi would now have been confronted by the sight of Mary forcing some sort of plunger down the cow’s mouth, while, from the other end, Joseph stuck his hand up the cow’s arse and groped around inside, James Herriot style.

The success of this extraction operation would have depended on exactly how far into the cow’s digestive system the Light of the World had travelled. If He’d only been eaten an hour or so previously, then it might have been just possible to get the cow to puke Him up using some sort of emetic. On the other hand, had several hours elapsed, then Jesus would by now have been inside one of the cow’s many stomachs, gradually being converted into milk and, ultimately, cow shit.

Whatever, it’s hardly the sort of stuff to inspire many Christmas carols or cards. And in a worst-case scenario, the whole basis of Christian civilization might now centre around the worship of a divine cow-pat. Consequently, the term “Holy Shit” would no longer just be one of Batman’s expletives, but an infallible article of Faith, expressed ex cathedra by the Pope himself.

Moving Lips

This morning I have been reading the holy Qur'an and various hadeeths (or ahdithah, if you want to be overly pedantic). The reason that I've been doing this is because I'm a bit confused by a few aspects of the conversion-to-Islam process and how they might apply in certain atypical circumstances.

As you're probably aware, conversion is, on the face of it, at least, quite straightforward. All you have to do is recite the shahadah in Arabic ("I attest that there is no god but 'Allah ….", etc. etc) three times and you're in. You can then start doing a Cat Stevens and dress like a Slough minicab driver, or wear a burqah and get yourself honour-killed for not marrying some 80 year old Pakistani, or whatever else takes your fancy.

But (and this is where my extensive research has failed me) what happens if you're a professional ventriloquist who hears a sudden call to 'Allah, mid-act? If you recite the shahadah while you've got the dummy on your knee and your hand up its arse, operating its mouth, does the dummy get converted simultaneously? Or, since you're not actually visibly moving your lips (leastways, you shouldn't be if you're any sort of half decent ventriloquist) is it only the dummy that ends up a Muslim, leaving you as a vile kafir?

I imagine an Islamic ventriloquist's dummy poses quite a few theological problems, too. At least, someone like Ray Alan's Lord Charles would. This is because he's a fairly lifelike figurine, and might therefore go against Islamic teaching which forbids figurative and pictorial representation of the human form. So how would the Muslim faithful regard the newly Islamicised mannequin? As a fellow believer or a blasphemous abomination that needed a good stoning? Unfortunately, it's not something that the Qur'an or any of my Islamic sources can make clear.

I suppose Roger de Courcey has it easier with Nookie Bear. At least he clearly is a bear and so people can't bitch about him being blasphemous if he converts (unless he subsequently comes on with a turban with a bomb in it and does some sort of Prophet Muhammad skit). But the one who has it easiest, of course, is Shari Lewis. Her "Lamb Chop" is quite clearly just a sock. So if she converts to Islam mid-act, she'll end up with a perfectly acceptable Muslim sock. No-one can object to that.

Then again, you might want to have to have a separate sock draw for Muslim socks. If you didn't, and you put the wrong one on a Christian or a Zoroastrian sock, say - and you then did your two rakaat, your sock (or you) might go to Hell. And if you washed your sock, which you'd probably have to do five times a day (and in a separate washing machine from everyone else's socks), you probably wouldn't be able to use any sort of washing powder that claimed to wash "whiter than white." This is because, being a Muslim sock, it would arguably already be in the highest state of purity. So even if it honked a bit, you'd have to leave it be.

There must be an Imam somewhere round here who can put me right on all of this.

Ashadu an La illaha ill Allah, ashadu ana Muhammadan Rasul-lu-lah

My Visit to Santa Claus

Today I went to visit Santa Claus in his Christmas grotto in Port Charlotte shopping mall and took the opportunity to present a lengthy list of demands. These included an i-Pod, a new food processor, and an Acer Netbook with integral webcam.

Santa asked me if I'd been good this year, basically implying that delivery of the items was contingent upon an answer in the affirmative. Unfortunately, I had to confess that there have been a few lapses. In particular, the fact that I lust after our local vicar, Cate, and that I recently shagged a PR woman, told her that I'd call her again the next day, but never did. I've therefore probably blown it (as regards receipt of the Netbook, anyway).

What I'd like to know is why Santa can't be more like Jesus, given that they're both representatives of the same holiday. If Jesus multi-tasked as an airborne present deliverer as well as a Son of Man, I could have confessed my peccadilloes to Him, said I was sorry, and then been granted absolution. Consequently, I'd have been guaranteed my Christmas presents (after the requisite number of Hail Marys, anyway). But, for whatever reason, Santa Claus doesn't function like this, so I'm fucked.

I suppose one very good reason why Santa doesn't is that, to qualify as a sin forgiver, he'd first have to be crucified. Then again, inconvenient though this is at the time, you only have to do it for the weekend and are thereafter guaranteed to rise again on the third day with all the advantages that this conveys. And as Santa always wears a thick, red jacket and big, red woolly hat with a bobble on the end, the associated scourging and crowing with thorns wouldn't be overly uncomfortable. So why doesn't he go for it?

Possibly because, if Santa did start absolving all sins, his workload would be vastly increased. This is because he'd now have to deliver presents to all those people (possibly an extra billion or so) who'd been bad from January through mid-December, but had suddenly repented at the last moment. His team of flying reindeer wouldn't be able to cope with the extra payload. And, of course, with Santa now preoccupied being a Light of the World, Jesus would no doubt start nipping into shopping malls and asking children what they wanted for Christmas.

I don't know about you, but I find the thought of a 30something bachelor cuddling little boys and girls on His knee highly suspicious, if not actually repugnant.

Blessed Eggs

There is a definite hierarchical structure to eggs. At the very bottom of the rung is the Economy or Value egg - the "trailer trash" of the egg world. At the top is the free-range variety, laid in straw. Indeed, unscrupulous egg counterfeiters will often take lesser eggs and mix straw in with them in an attempt to persuade gullible bunny-huggers that they're "the real thing." Being produced in a barn is therefore clearly seen as a mark of superiority.

I suppose this accounts for Jesus' status. Unlike other, inferior religious figures, He, too, was produced in a barn. Not only that, but He was laid in a straw-filled receptacle as well. Consequently Jesus has much in common with a free-range egg. Except, of course, no-one prays to free-range eggs very much or expects them to forgive many sins.

I imagine this must have really pissed off First Century hens who lived in the same barn as the Holy Family. Especially when they, themselves, could easily produce three or four in a single go (on a daily basis, too) whereas Mary only managed the one yield, and that took all of nine months to appear. Yet, ultimately, it was Mary's output that got adored by the Magi, ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, and so on.

The hens must have asked themselves, cluckingly, "What the fuck has Her's got that mine haven't?" (Particularly if they were those high-pedigree Colombian black fantail breed whose eggs, these days, sell for a fortune in Waitrose.) Perhaps this explains the Holy Ghost. Maybe members of the Council of Nicea kept getting attacked by chickens, angry at being excluded from the pantheon. So in order to keep from having their arses pecked every morning and boiled eggs exploding in their faces, these early Church elders invented the concept of the Holy Ghost, depicting Him as a dove. In this way, the hens' grievances were assuaged in that, thereafter, they could plausibly claim, "That lad's really one of ours - a fellow bird."