Skip church; confess on ivescrewedup.com

Already a repository for too much information from bloggers divulging their every intimate thought, the Web recently extended its reach into territory the church once dominated.

Tens of thousands of the guilty among us are visiting confessional booths at ivescrewedup.com, mysecret.tv and dailyconfessions.com and unburdening themselves anonymously.

Ha! This makes all the sense in the world. Cheap, easy, online religion. Spanky likes it. Disposable Jesus, right in your bookmarks folder, next to the ol’ Bang Bros. links. Some Catholics are becoming faceless, opting to break out the mouse instead of driving to chizurch.

What about quality control of Confession 2.0? I couldn’t detect any QC from CNN’s story.

Among the Web site managers CNN spoke with, none has professional counselors monitoring confessions.

LifeChurch members monitor messages, deleting those that are, in their view, too graphic or fabricated. Like ivescrewedup.com, which is also run by a large church, IP addresses are not tracked. If someone posts a confession of a criminal nature — someone who says they enjoy child porn or they’ve committed murder — there’s not much the site managers can do about it.

No professional counselors? Just “site managers”? Bullshit. What do these confessors think they’re really doing? Man, just open Microsoft Word, write some shit down, click the red X in the upper-left corner, and then click “Don’t save.” Ya might as well. It’s not like you’re getting any true wisdom in exchange for your catharsis.

Oh, but wait. I know where there is some QC. Somebody still wants their cut:

But the Web does not offer a road to “true absolution,” said Father Ricardo Bailey of Holy Spirit of Atlanta, Georgia.

“I’m not in a drive-thru business,” he said. “Confessing means you’re taking accountability for the things we’ve done wrong, that you understand the impact you’ve had on other people.”

Oh, yes. Don’t be fooled by our competitors’ cheap knockoffs. We have the best baby Jesus around. “You get what you pay for.” The Church is going to fight to keep you tithing, to keep you guilty, to keep you coming back for more.

It shouldn’t be surprising to us that we are moving our spiritual lives online. We’ve already moved so many aspects of our lives on there. For religion, however, this move could be the fatal blow. As the spiritually needy gain access to new ideologies and philosophies on the Internet, their ties to their childhood religions will probably loosen, and they will become more, hmmm, cosmopolitan.

-MC Spanky McGee

Final “Harry Potter” movie split into two parts

Part one of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” will debut in late 2010 and be followed months later by part two.

Look, I don’t read Harry Potter. Once I tried to watch the first movie and fell asleep.

I can recognize marketing genius, however. JK Rowling is certainly one.

By dividing the movie into two parts, Warner Bros. will probably double their profits. But that’s obvious.

But I’m betting that so many Harry Pooter fans are so teary eyed to see the lil’ Pooter bite the dust.

Be not afraid. I’m going on record now to predict that ol’ JK will find a way to bring Harry back. I don’t know how she’ll do it, but she will.

The cash cow is too fat, and you can’t just kill her off to make one, glorious, final steak.

As George Lucas knows, you have to milk it.

As for me, I’ll have no part of it. I’ll be waiting for what the Coen bros. are going to do next.

-MC Spanky McGee

DAMMIT…they stole my thunder…

Congressional representatives from Florida rejected the idea of a hybrid primary vote today. Even Taguchi figured that out. I did a little research. For this, we need to look to Oregon. In 1981, the Oregon Legislative Assembly passed a bill allowing vote by mail (VBM) elections. It wasn’t until the scandalous resignation of Republican Senator Bob Packwood that Oregon sprung into action with VBM in 1996. Today in Oregon, a citizen has no option to vote in a booth…it’s all VBM. However, it has been a long and painstaking process. They have conducted at least two studies into their system. One of those studies has revealed that VBM is wildly popular among voters and also serves to increase turnout across almost every demographic.

The other study, chaired by President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, is of much more significance here. In short (since they stole my damn thunder), it says:

• Hybrid voting systems (where the voter has the option of voting in person or by mail) are problematic because they force voting officials to actually conduct two elections at once. To that end, one county official said, “under the (hybrid) system we weer putting out fires all over the county on election day.” The difficulties of running both kinds of elections simultaneously increased the likelihood of confusion and of mistakes.
• One of the primary VBM security measures in Oregon is the signature verification process, wherein election workers compare the signature on every return identification envelope with the signature scanned from the voter’s registration card.
• Finally, there is concern over the potential for voting fraud and coercion in any system that lacks the fundamental privacy of the voting booth. In many respects, these conclusions remain vali, at least when examined in the context of Oregon’s all-mail balloting system. However, the study cited that Oregon has had a historically clean, open and permeable election system, with no history of machine politics or election fraud. The implication is that while voting by mail has worked well in Oregon, it may not work as well in regions, states or localities with a more contentious political culture.

HERRRR-O-OOOOOOOOO! Remember this?

Sorry, Florida. You get no leeway. If the Bush camp can rig Florida, then I’m fully confident that the Clinton camp can do the same. I realize these are strong allegations, and we’ll never know if they are substantiated…but the allegations are enough to sack your attempt to conduct a makeshift primary using the most difficult-to-manage voting system possible. Whatever you want to call it, Florida 2000 was probably the greatest election fiasco in American history…or at least of our time. Now Florida wants to hold it’s primary on the fly (after making their bed already)? As our buddy The Shire would say, “I f***ing doubt it.”

Ironically, the Carter-Baker study contains this golden nugget:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has even referred to absentee ballots as the tool of choice for those inclined to commit voter fraud.

NEXT? (sorry Spanks…I stole your thunder)

Carter-Baker study:

http://www.sos.state.or.us/executive/votebymail/pdf_files/CarterBaker.pdf

From funnyordie.com

Kevorkian to run for office

According to the Oakland Press, Kevorkian is planning to mount an independent bid in Michigan’s 9th District seat currently occupied by Republican Joe Knollenberg.

“We need some honesty and sincerity instead of corrupt government in Washington,” Kevorkian told the paper. He also said his plans are in the “formative stage” and he would make a formal announcement next week.

This is awesome. I hear that Kevorkian has the Grim Reaper’s endorsement, and I hear Eliot Spitzer’s on board, well, ya know, because he’s “ready” for the changes that Kevorkian will, uh, bring about.

-MC Spanky McGee

Woman stuck on toilet for two years, police say

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

I think Grown Pumpkin was on the toilet for an hour and a half once. He barely survived. It was quite the struggle, from what I hear.

It’s my theory that nearly anything humans can do or say has been done, is being done, or will be done in the future. Let’s see if people start bombarding Guinness with claims that they lived on a toilet for 10 years, 15 years, etc.

Didn’t her boyfriend think to tell her to pinch it off? Sheesh.

-MC Spanky McGee

Yesterday I commented on how the media is taking the opportunity to use the Eliot Spitzer scandal to plaster the airwaves with “news” about prostitution…because it sells. Today they took it to a whole new level.

CNN.com has placed a photo of Ashley Alexandra Dupre aka “Kristen,” Spitzer’s mistress, on the front page. MSN.com has also run the story ID-ing the call girl. Other responsible news sources have fallen in line: FOXNEWS.com (front page photo), MSNBC.com and all the rest, basically. Bravo, you’ve proven that you’re all much bigger whores than Kristen…or perhaps we the public are the whores…or better yet, maybe this whole thing is a giant whore-gy.

One day they’ve got a photo of his crestfallen wife at the presser, and the next day they’ve run with the photo of this sexy vixen. “Oh, his poor family…somebody write a story on that angle. GET ME A PIC OF THE HOOKER, NOW!” Apparently, Kristen is now the story.

Again, I defer to the legendary Bill Hicks:

I’m tired of this back-slapping ‘Isn’t humanity neat?’ bullshit. We’re a virus with shoes, okay? That’s all we are.

The media outlets have plenty of time to detail Kristen + Eliot sitting in a tree, and I’ve got volumes of Bill Hicks quotes. Watch the virus grow…this should be fun.