Christian Losers, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #223

May 23, 2011 Mike Gold 0 Comments

Take a good look at the photos. Which one provokes greater fear?

If you can read this, then the folks at Family Radio were wrong. I’ll bet most, if not all, of their 3,200 billboards worldwide are still up today. Last week, these billboards merely promoted the viewpoint of a bunch of rich nutjobs. Today, these billboards promote the existence of a bunch of losers.

Setting aside the fact that Family Radio is a Christian zealot organization that, by definition, believes if you’re not Christian you have no business thinking you’re in a family, these guys wanted to give you a head’s up so you can get right with their god. They’ve had five caravans of their devout proselytizing since October. They said earthquakes would begin everywhere at 6 PM local time, right before the Preakness race, and would last until October 21. By then, these zealots would be in heaven and the rest of us would be in hell.

Their prediction was based upon biblical interpretation and mathematics. Since math, just like evolution, is merely a theory maybe they simply screwed up a decimal point. Or, maybe, they’re wrong. As of yesterday, we’re here, we’re near, get used to it.

These folks predicted this same thing would come down on September 6, 1994. They’re hardly original: Carolina’s True Light Church gave us until January 1st, 1971. The Jehovah’s Witnesses said Earth would go Krypton on us back in 1914; instead we threw a World War and they had to reschedule their apocalypse for 1975. The Stelle group said we’d all go blooie sometime in 2001. Except them; the Stellites were going to levitate above it all. Some rabbis give us 6000 years; their calendar says we’re in year 5771, so we’ve got time to pack. All this stuff goes back to the dawn of organized religion, and some neurotics keep falling for it.

There are all types of apocalypses (apocalypsi?). The Burger King billboard, cribbed from Adbusters, is a different type of end-of-days that has actually happened. It just so happens I pass this very Michigan billboard several times a year, and it always confounds me. Not that I’m opposed to Burger King – I haven’t liked them since they phased out their real broilers in favor of pre-broiled microwaved spongeburgers – but I believe in freedom of choice. Nor am I opposed to highway fast-food as it’s saved my ass on many an occasion and the Popeye’s on I-80 in north central Ohio is a sought-after relief. Old-timers will recall the pre-Interstate places called “Mom’s,” “Lunch,” “Joe’s,” and my favorite, “Eats.” These were not chains. And most of them made Burger King seem like haute cuisine.

No, for me the apocalypse is a life without choice in culture. In a so-called free society, choice without harassment should apply to religion as well as long as we remain cognizant that it applies to all faith systems, including those who do not embrace a hoary unigod. Family Radio doesn’t get in the way of my life any more than that Burger King billboard does, and I acknowledge they knowingly subjected themselves to derisive humor in order to stand up for their belief.

However, I wonder how the Internal Revenue Service would have faired had Family Radio put up their billboards a few months earlier. Oh, well. No matter what, I’m in a no-lose position. After all, if these clowns were right this column will never see the light of day. So if there is a Monday, May 23^rd, that will be me dancing naked around the bonfire, howling with the wolves, gloating my head off.

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Deeply troubled weirdo Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants put the ether in the ethernet at the same venue.