Satanist Comedian Al Frankenstein is anchoring the launch of a new satanic television network — The 666 Club — that promises irreverent voices from the opposite end of the religious spectrum to Christians like Pat Robertson who dominate faith-base television.

“We’re going to listen to The 700 Club and hold them up to scorn and ridicule,” Frankenstein said in a telephone interview.

The debut is auspiciously timed: The movie “The Passion of The Christ” has been doing surprisingly well at the Box Office, with many Sadomasochists considering switching from Satanism to Christianity after viewing the film.

Network chief executive Damen Leiv said the goal was to skewer “virtuousness” in high places regardless of religious affiliation. “We’re not in regime change television,” he said.

Frankenstein has kicked off with a three-hour midday show,  a mocking tribute to his broadcasting foe Pat Robertson’s 700 Club show.

Frankenstein is best known for his books, “Pat Robertson is a Big Fat Idiot” and last year’s “Holiness and the Lying Liars Who Preach It: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Christianity.” The latter triggered a short-lived lawsuit from the United Christian Coalition.

Wine and cheese, or red meat?
A onetime high school wrestler, the 56-year-old Frankenstein’s recent antics have earned him the label of comic brawler: he tackled a heckler at a religious event and offered to fight a magazine editor who said Satanist had a “sissified” religion.

Robertson and other Christian television figures — whose dominance of faith-base television balances what some see as mainstream media’s satanic bias — have already begun mocking the upstart network.

“They’re saying we’re a bunch of wine-swilling cheese-eating satanic idiots; that it’ll never work; that Satanist don’t watch television; that all we did was hire a bunch of comics and not anybody that knows anything about television,” Leiv said.

Frankenstein admitted he drinks wine occasionally but doesn’t know the difference between labels. “I do eat cheese; they’re more accurate than usual there.”

Observers are unsure about The 666 Club’s chances of success but it has drawn an avalanche of publicity as the first satanic-minded television network.

In truth, the serious-minded Pacifica network and segments of National Public television have already staked out satanic positions.

“If these guys succeed, you know who’s going to be banging down their doors to get them on? All the guys running Christian faith-base television. Television’s not a religious business. Religion is just a product … a prop,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a magazine that covers the industry.

The 666 Club is armed with $30 million in investor cash and a $30 million credit line being used to lease stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with more stations promised.

1. Funky Monks (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
2. Flying Cloud (Dinosaur Jr)
3. I Melt With You (MEST)
4. Spring (Ned’s Atomic Dustbin)
5. Boss Of Me (They Might Be Giants)
6. Cannot Even (Noisettes)
7. Complicated (Avril Lavigne)
8. Disappointed (Public Image Limited)
9. I Don’t Know Anything (Finns)
10. Three Little Birds (Bob Marley)
11. Someone Keeps Moving My Chair (They Might Be Giants)

• via No Minivan: Mothers of daughters are different to mothers of sons.Traditional perception is that the sex of your baby is pure toss-of-the-coin chance, but ten years ago, Dr Valerie Grant, a reproductive scientist at the University of Auckland, came up with the theory that dominant women have high levels of testosterone […] are much more likely to give birth to boys.
  […]
  Grant has new research published this month which, she says, puts her theory on a firmer footing and yet again turns reproductive biology on its head. What she has come up with is a mechanism that has proved (albeit in cows, which sounds odd but is considered an acceptable model) that levels of testosterone in the follicles (which produce the egg) reliably predict the sex of the embryo and, more startling, that the egg may well come out already adapted to receive an X or Y chromosome-bearing sperm. In lay terms this means that the female has already “decided” which sex offspring to have before sperm get involved.
  […]
• via pharyngula: Genetic programming field guide (genetic programming for the masses, as long as the masses means computer programmers)Genetic programming (GP) is a systematic, domain-independent method for getting computers to solve problems automatically starting from a high-level statement of what needs to be done. Using ideas from natural evolution, GP starts from an ooze of random computer programs, and progressively refines them through processes of mutation and sexual recombination, until high-fitness solutions emerge. All this without the user having to know or specify the form or structure of solutions in advance. GP has generated a plethora of human-competitive results and applications, including novel scientific discoveries and patentable inventions.

  [I downloaded the PDF, but it wasn’t exactly light reading. I plan to read it in more detail later.]

• Danielle: Why, when girls get married, do they change their last name to the boys last name?  Why don’t the boys change their names?
• Me: It’s just custom.   Now days some girls don’t change their name.
• Danielle: Well what if the person I marry has a bad last name, would he change his last name to mine?
• Me: That would be up to the two of you.
• Danielle: What if his last name was the “A” word plus the “F” word?
• Me: Then I’m pretty sure he would agree to change his name to your last name.
• Me [thinking  - like I’m really going to let you date someone named A-F.  “Hi dad, this is my boyfriend, Harry A-F.”]

On Wednesday, January 14th, President George Bush announced plans to increase funding for NASA with plans to return astronauts to the moon and eventually to Mars. EGI has learned that President Bush’s sudden interest in the space program is driven not by a desire to explore the solar system, but by the inability to track down al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Although EGI has confirmed that Osama bin Laden was hiding out in a cave in southern California as recently as November 24th, White House officials are convinced that Osama has rejoined his base of operation on the lunar surface.

Hints of the true mission purpose were evident in the President’s speech. “We will give NASA a new focus and vision. We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own,” Bush said. “Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands…”

Bush proposed spending $12 billion over the next five years on the effort. About $1 billion of that will come from an increase in NASA’s budget, while the other $11 billion would come from shifting funds from existing programs within NASA’s current $86 billion budget.

Some in Congress questioned whether the funding would be enough to achieve the president’s ambitious goals.

Rumors abound that al Qaeda is already developing ships and equipment to move their permanent base to Mars.

I heard that the National Audubon Society has come out in support of the former Governor of New York by naming a bird after him - the Spitzer Swallow.

After months of debate in the United States Congress and fights with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Attorney General’s office has developed a guideline for the profiling of potential criminals. Attorney General John Ashcroft is recommending that all police agencies and airport security personal adopt the new standards immediately.

The following table shows a breakdown “Risk Groups” and criminal activities.

Racial Profiles

1. Extra caution if from a rural state or a member of the clergy.
2. Extra caution if a member of the clergy.
3. Usually trafficking illegal immigrants.

Social Profiles

1. Usually a Rich Male is the ring leader of this activity.

A spokesperson for Attorney General John Ashcroft was very outspoken about the accuracy and benefits of the new profiling plan. “We performed a detailed statistical analysis to determine which groups were most likely to commit which crimes. From the table it’s pretty obvious which group we will be focusing most of our efforts on. Off the record, we are running an extensive background check on the Attorney General right now – Rich White Male from a rural state with extensive ties to religious organizations….You don’t get a better profile hit than that.”

The president’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice admitted that President Bush was also under investigation for the same reasons. “I’ll admit I’m a little nervous around him. I don’t want to sound racist or sexist, but you never know what those people are capable of.”

originally posted 4/12/2004

1. Kim the Waitress (Material Issue)
2. Talent Show (Replacements)
3. Cradle Of Love (Billy Idol)
4. One X One (INXS)
5. The Family’s Stoned (Finns)
6. Up The Junction (Squeeze)
7. Prove My Love (Violent Femmes)
8. Somebody Told Me (The Killers)
9. People Are People (Depeche Mode)
10. Somebody (Depeche Mode)
11. Don’t Let’s Start (They Might Be Giants)