The Unitarians are buying “advertorials” in Time magazine as a way to increase membership, part of a $425,000 national ad campaign to tell people what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist, which is a great plan because I’ve never quite understood what it does mean. According to the Rev. Tracey Robinson-Harris, in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, “We are speaking up on behalf of a more tolerant, more affirming approach to the diversity of religious perspective in the world.” This includes a big hug for Wahhabi fundamentalists from the Nejd whose advocacy of Christian and Jewish beheadings would evaporate given a few wine-spritzer socials.

Dead Soldiers Revive, Become Ravenous Zombies, Kill Fred Phelps

Just wishful thinking.

Yeah, and I’ll Bet She Sings About S-E-X Too

The Catholic League has its cassock in a bunch over some pictures of a scantily-clad Britney Spears (and let’s face it, what type of clad do you expect?) sitting on a priest’s lap and leaning against a confessional as part of her new “Blackout” album. Just insert Britney’s name in the last news release sent out about Madonna. Ho hum. When you have nineteen hundred and seventy jillion sex abuse cases out there, doesn’t it ever occur to someone that maybe somebody might make fun of you, and you’d better shut up if they do?

Nanookie of the North

In fact, there have been so many Roman Catholic sex abuse cases that our eyes glaze over when we see a new one, but this Jesuit settlement in Alaska still boggles. The Jesuits were sexually abusing all the Eskimos. No exaggeration—virtually all the Eskimos. According to the Associated Press, in some Alaskan villages “it is difficult to find an adult who was not sexually abused as a child by the priests, who used religion and their power to silence hundreds of children” between 1961 and 1987. The $50 million the Jesuits are paying to a hundred victims is the largest settlement ever against a Catholic order, and that still doesn’t include 10 more lawsuits against the Diocese of Fairbanks which have to be mediated in December.

Intercollegiate Sports Will Include Extreme Frisbee

Donovan, the sixties pop singer, and David Lynch, auteur of the cinematic bizarre, who are both visiting professors at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa—yes, that’s what we said,

and no, we will not be repeating it—have decided to found a university of their own in Scotland that would feature twice-daily transcendental meditation for all students. “I know it sounds like an airy-fairy hippy dream to go on about sixties peace and love,” Donovan told the Sydney Morning Herald, “but the world is ready for this now. It is clear this is the time.” The reason it won’t sound airy-fairy at all, and will resound with academic solidity, is the name they have planned for the institution, to be based in either Donovan’s hometown of Glasgow or in Edinburgh: The Invincible Donovan University.

Students in Illinois Required to Shut Up One Minute Per Day

The Illinois legislature overrode a veto by Governor Rod Blagojevich and passed a law requiring a “moment of silence” at the beginning of every school day. Blagojevich said the measure might not be constitutional because he thought it was a form of school prayer. Take it from me, though, the son of two teachers. Anything that requires a student by law to shut up ... is a blessed thing.

For People of Itty Bitty Faith

The Itty Bitty Bible fits on a credit card and requires an electron microscope to actually read, but no matter—this is for Bible-worshippers, not Bible readers. The Catholic version comes in convenient Latin, making it impossible for any actual Biblical ideas ever to infect your life, even through calfskin osmosis.