Altar Ego

Purgatory. The Phantom Zone.

Water => Wine. Coal => Diamonds.

The Anti-Christ. Bizarro.

The list continues at Jesus Vs. Superman by Rantz. It'll take you about 20 seconds to read, and there are some pretty good ones.

Meanwhile, Superman As Jesus Christ chatters on and on about The Eight Christic Traits of Superman and Twenty Superman-Jesus Parallels:

8.0 Divine Testiness: The Darker Side of Light: Gentle Jesus could turn into a holy vandal and violently drive out moneychangers from God’s house (John 2:15). He also used holy invectives like: “O generation of vipers” (Matt. 3:7), “ye serpents, ye generation of vipers” (Matt. 23:33) and “hypocrites!” (Matt. 23:13). Similarly, Clark Kent could turn into Superman and battle all manner of evil with as much brutish force as needed. While disrespectfully manhandling the greedy Lex Luthor and violently throwing him around his subterranean lair, he called him a “warped brain,” a “sick twisted

Oh, never mind. Better you should read the shorter and crazier Is Jesus An Alien? Here's a taste:

No-one knows what happened when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by the Devil upon being baptised. But we know that Clarke Kent went to the arctic to discover his destiny and his powers and his duty to truth, Justice, and the American Way. And just as the combination of the Earth's atmosphere and Superman's genes gave him superhuman strength, the same could be true with regards to Jesus' healing powers.

Of course, the connection was made a long time ago in Godspell. I was delighted to learn that some fundamentalist is still pissed about its "blasphemy":

Godspell blasphemously portrayed "Jesus" as a "afro-haired, face-painted-clown", clad in a Superman shirt!

Godspell-haters might be happier with songwriters outside musical theater who have tackled the mind-blowing Superman/Jesus concept. They do exist, and they seem to side with the Son of Man against the Man of Steel. Here's a lyric by BJ Sintay:

Superman seems like a really cool guy
But he couldn’t save the world in just one night
Jesus seemed liked an insignificant guy
But he went and died to save everyone in a single night

Now put your hands together for Pillar:

It's time for you to understand
Jesus Christ the Original Superman
up up and away He's saving souls in a new way
Just like Superman was there He's always there to save the day

Of course, none of this Jesus/Superman talk would add up to anything unless money changed hands. Here's a Jesus, The Original Superman T-Shirt for only $16.99!

POPE CONDEMNS AIRLINE FOOD Calls For 'Whole Plane' To Be 'Made Out Of Black Box'

"Is this a Papal audience or an oil painting?"

But for Matt Drudge's "outrage" (and link!), I never would have seen Matt Taibbi's
The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of The Pope from this week's New York Press. You either take stuff like this seriously, or you don't, or you pretend to me mad while you pass it around it to as many people as you can. I think I'll pretend to be mad. GRRRR!

[Update: maybe Drudge knew what he was doing. He apparently sent the papal poo-pooers so much traffic that their site has gone down.] [Double-Update: It's back.]

Here are a few of the funnier Funniest Things:

45.Pope departs Earth at a time when Hitch is top-grossing movie in the world.

32.Priest who administers last rites to Pope excitedly calls mother afterward to tell her how well it went.

30.Michael Jackson too broke to buy Pope's bones.

28.Bears everywhere shitting in woods.

27.We'll never get to hear his hilarious post-tracheotomy rendition of "Come on Eileen."

24.Pope spends last hours surrounded by cardinals who stand glaring at him with folded arms, silently reminding him of the political necessity of clinging to life.

22.Mankind scrambles to choose new leader of inflexible, sexually morbid institutional anachronism; heretofore anonymous bureaucrat will instantly be celebrated as world's holiest man as he travels to AIDS-stricken Africa to denounce the use of condoms.

20.Hall and Oates mulling comeback.

16.NBC Nightly News intern pulls wrong tape from drawer full of long-ago archived video obits; world thinks Boris Yeltsin has died, wonders why Brian Williams is calling him an "inspirational spiritual leader."

15.Williams, after broadcast: "Who's Boris Yeltsin?"

14.Matt Lauer to Williams: "He wrote the Contract for America."

9.Bush on the tragic event: "Our thoughts and prayers go out to this great man and all of his many children."

8.Bush continued: "He touched all of us in places no one else could reach."

A lot of the rest of them fall along the lines of "52.Pope pisses himself just before the end; gets all over nurse."

-------------------------

Move over, Drudge: New York Daily News gossip hound Lloyd Grove is boarding the Outrage Express. An old fashioned journalist, Grove can't posts links to the Pope joke, but he can get what Drudge's ancestors used to call "quotes."

• Sen. Chuck Schumer: "This is the most disgusting thing I've seen in 30 years of public life."

• Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: "Pope John Paul is one of the world's strongest forces for peace and understanding at a time when discord and rancor threaten every nation. It is outrageously offensive to make light of his physical suffering, which he has borne with such strength, dignity and grace."

• A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg: "As disgusting as this is, it's sadly par for the course for this publication."

• Rep. Anthony Weiner: "All I can tell you is that this is outrageous and the New York Press is way overpriced. Everyone has a right to free speech, but I hope New Yorkers exercise their right to take as many of these rags as they can and put them in the trash."

• Former Bronx Borough President Freddy Ferrer: "It's juvenile and not funny. For a lot of New Yorkers, the Pope embodies beliefs that are important to us, and we all wish him a speedy recovery."

• Anti-Defamation League President Abraham Foxman: "It crosses the line of decency. This is a man who has devoted his life to love and compassion and reconciliation. To treat him in such gross manner is so ugly."

• Polish-American Congress official Frank Milewski: "I would say it's hate speech - a most extreme example of hate speech."

Tell you what... until the New York Press site comes back [and stays back], I'll paste the whole thing into the Comments, just so we can all pretend to be angry.

GRRRR!

THEY HAD COLORS?

Color photos from World War I
More color photos from World War I
Color photos of the Russian Empire, 1907-1915
[First link Via]

The universally beloved Superman is A Dick has added a stupid panels section.

[Thanks to Julia Stiles' Bitch's Roommate.]

[Disclaimer: Nothing will ever convince me that Superman is a dick.]

Bad Day Studio answers (above) those emetic Marvel Motivational Posters (below). [Thanks to Julia Stiles' Bitch.]

HILLBILLIES CROAK CUPCAKE

"THE TELEVISION KILL," a complete vintage tale of murder, television, hillbillies, rotten dames and leftist newspapers, at What's This Comic? [Via the perspicacious Scott Saavedra!]

HELLBLAZER'S HOT PARTS

The wait is over. God's Guide To The Hot Parts--the web ministry that fights Hollywood indecency by describing it and describing it until you have to rub up against something--finally reviewed Constantine. If The Hot Parts Guy sounded like a beat poet last week, now he's hammering the keys like the chaplain of a meth lab:

The Truth is that once one is condemned to Hell there is no escape. The chances of returning from Hell are infinitely less than the chances of a frozen orb of hand-packed crystalline dihydrogen monoxide surviving unscathed, entry through exit, an excursion through the subterranean location of exceeding exo-energetic electromagnetic radiation in the thermal band.

His long list of the film's offenses does not include "turning Hellblazer into a Yank," but here's a fraction of what does bother him:

• extremely graphic pedestrian hit by a car
• tale of multiple police action killings
• graphic impalement painting
• grotesque fragmentation of flesh
• woman in underwear in bed
• camera angle to force viewer on private parts, repeatedly
• rude gaze
• use of drink to ease fears
• crawling on ceiling
• Angel Gabriel as a woman
• woman changing water into wine
• spiritual use of lukewarm in clear defiance of God's admonition against being lukewarm
• portrayal of Satan as a man
• insult of God
• false bible
• portrayal of Satan, complete with burned feet and pant cuffs

Hey! If "use of drink to ease fears" is a sin, then burn my pant cuffs and call me lukewarm!

Consume. Reproduce. Obey. The International Database Of Corporate Commands. [Via]

THE BOOK OF SPIDEY

HAVE YOU EVER STOPPED TO THINK HOW LUCKY GOD WAS TO HAVE THE HELP OF SPIDER-MAN?

Spider-Man's Greatest Bible Stories. [Thanks to Julia Stiles' Bitch.]

DRAW AS YOU'RE TOLD

Eighth graders' abstinence posters. More here. And don't look, but I think it's Captain Abstinence. I SAID DON'T LOOK!