O’Reilly and Buttars are Right

The Lord does care about Christmas retail campaigns!

Jesus Returns To Give Consumers Christmas Pep Talk

warning: contains satirical references to Christ. Do not click if you find such humor offensive

Most Boring Charity Fundraiser Ever

Found on the Yahoo! homepage.

Children’s hospitals ride shotgun on the Desert Bus.

By Ben Silverman

The thought of playing a video game for charity sounds great on paper, but spend a few hours driving the Desert Bus, and you might have second thoughts.

In an effort to raise money for charity, comedy troupe LoadingReadyRun has been playing the infamous video game ‘Desert Bus’ nonstop.

First seen in the obscure Sega CD game, Penn and Teller’s Smoke & Mirrors (yes, that Penn and Teller), the ‘Desert Bus’ tasks players with driving a bus from Tuscon, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. In real-time. The game cannot be paused and the bus won’t go faster than 45 mph. Plus, it slightly veers to the right, so you can’t just put something heavy on the controller and let the game play itself. The cruel result is considered by many to be the most boring game of all time, an 8-hour feat of gaming endurance few have had the will to outlast.

The folks at LoadingReadyRun, however, have been playing the mind-numbing game for over five days, but they do have an incentive. Donors must pay to keep the crew playing, and the longer they play, the more it costs.

It seems to be working. So far, the newly re-minted ‘Desert Bus For Hope’ has raised nearly $60,000 for the charitable organization Child’s Play, which benefits children’s hospitals across the country. You can catch more info — including a live stream of the, uh, “action” — here.

They have apparently completed the game and raised $69,476.00. Kudos to them for coming up with a…creative way to help a worthy cause at a great time of year.

A Slightly Different Take on the Election…

Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, “It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”

Gotta love The Onion. It still doesn’t beat their all-time best Obama related report, “Black Guy Asks Nation For Change.”

When is the Black Mass?

Speaking of less outrageous Conservative Advocates, lets here from a more outrageous one.

On Fox News yesterday, Bill O’Reilly let loose on “far-left websites” like DailyKos, stating, “If you read these far-left websites, you’re a devil worshipper. You are.” O’Reilly’s ombudsman responded, “As a journalist, you know better than that.” O’Reilly shot back: “Satan is running the DailyKos. Yes, he is!”

Watch the video.

Score one for the Culture Warrior. He found me out. Of course, to the Evangelicals that comprise most of the Religious Right, that’s my second strikee. A member of a cult and a far-left blog writer? I may as well go watch The Golden Compass for the trifecta.

Back in Town

My my, I leave for a few days, and I get all sorts of comment activity on my blog. I’m glad you’ve been able to keep yourselves entertained 😉

I’m almost finished with the third in my trilogy. In the meantime, check out the witty and peircing observations of Candorville, which has published a series of strips on the recent infrastructure issues and government spending, and of Doonesbury in a series on the absurd administration argument that “if we don’t fight the terrorists in Iraq, we’ll have to fight them here.”