Corruption is Bad, or Is It? Yes it is. Really? Yes

The Pope concluded his tour of Africa this week with calls to rid the continent of corruption and poverty and many other bad things. He is pictured here winning a Chrysler convertible during the half-time show. To sum up his speech in Angola (and taking some liberties with the text, in the interest of limited space and time): ‘Bad things are bad, and should be gotten rid of. Good things are good and we should probably keep them.’

Overshadowing this whole sentiment was the controversy over statements he made earlier in the week over the use of condoms to stem the spread of HIV around the continent, and ultimately lost was the lesser known controversy over corruption.

Transparency International, an anti-corruption agency, asserts that corruption is a major hindrance to development in Africa. [Their headquarters are pictured here. Admittedly, it’s hard to photograph their headquarters.] The Puke has obtained a copy of Transparency International’s Bribe Payer’s Index and other reports -- in exchange for a small payment and mostly non-sexual favors to a low-ranking employee -- and all of the reports basically say that corruption is a major problem, and it is indeed widespread and hurtful.

But Transparency International is not without its detractors. One of these is Translucency International, which offered a murky critique by saying that there is a large shape that looks like corruption, but may just be a lady taking a shower -- it’s just too hard to tell with all that steam. Also jumping into the fray was Transparency’s fiercest critic, Opacity International -- supporter of Robert Mugabe, Dick Cheney, TARP, the former Iron Curtain, the East River, and brick walls everywhere -- which argues that nothing is wrong and everything is, in fact, just fine and always has been, so why don’t you shut up?

No Aphorisms in Pleasant Grove?

The US Supreme Court ruled today that the city of Pleasant Grove, Utah, does not have to place a monument in a park listing ‘Seven Aphorisms’ by a religious group calling itself Summum, even though there’s already a stone slab in the same public park adorned with the Ten Commandments. The Supreme Court seems to be making distinctions between different kinds of crazy. Adherents of Summum, after they take their helmets off, will tell you that Moses was given both the Commandments and the Aphorisms -- or Principles, as they are more often called -- but that he didn’t like the font in which the Principles were etched and so left them on Mt. Sinai (or he was like, Yo man, I only got two arms, tell Aaron to fetch this one).

Summum is the kind of religion whose spokesperson generally has to begin everything he says with the phrase ‘We’re not weirdos’ before he goes on and explains some customs and beliefs that can only be described as appealing to weirdos. It was founded by a guy named Corky Ra. (No, really, that’s his name. He’s pictured here with a creepy graven image.)

Here are the Seven Principles that they wanted placed in the park next to the Commandments:

I. The Principle of Psychokinesis
Move stuff with your mind. In other words, right off the bat, in our first opportunity to present ourselves to the public, we are telling you that drugs play a big part in the Principles.

II. The Principle of Correspondence
Write a letter to a jailbird or get a degree online. Convicts make surprisingly good friends over long distances, and DeVry has some great rates if you want to major in Hospitality Management. Neither of these have much to do with our religion. It’s just solid advice.

III. The Principle of Vibration
There are only obscene interpretations of this Principle, and this is a family blog.

IV. The Principle of Opposition
This principle means absolutely nothing. It was either this or just have Six Principles.

V. The Principle of Rhythm
Some people have this Principle, some people don’t. We’re looking in your direction, White People.

VI. The Principle of Cause and Effect
This is a true revolution -- in Principle form. Some stuff that happens causes other stuff that happens. For example, a guy takes LSD and then founds a religion with 7 principles.

VII. The Principle of Gender
According to Summum, this is Creation copulating with itself. That might be fine if Creation were a little younger and in slightly better shape, before the ozone layer started to sag, a few ice ages ago. As it is, I wish Creation would get a room or just stop grinning like a stupid teenager all the time and acting like it was less than 4 million years old.

2009 Puke Award for Best Retort Ever

In response to a pro-Darwin billboard in the world’s capital of ignorance –- uhh, I mean, in Rhea County, Tennessee -- where the original Scopes Monkey Trial was held, an angry group of residents with small-ish frontal lobes decided to put up a billboard of their own:


It's an especially artful billboard. Notice the way they didn't just write their message plainly and clearly, but placed it on the bulletin lightbox of a weird mountain revival church and then took a picture of the bulletin. We can only assume the shack doubles as a taxidermy depot or chewing tobacco store and has an all-Mountain Dew soda machine in the back that gets sold out by mid-morning. The whole tableau gives the impression that the billboardists just danced with some rattlesnakes to the tune of 'Shout to the Lord.'

‘Evolutionists come from monkeys,’ says the bulletin. Clever, to use a retort like that, something evolutionists wouldn’t disagree with at all. After all, evolutionists do come from monkeys. And so do US Senators and accountants and ice fisherman and slutty pseudo-celebrity hotel heiresses and short order cooks and pot-smoking Olympic swimming record breakers and Chinese villagers in the remote Yunnan province. The only exception is Rhea County Tenneseeans. They are descended from monkeys. They just have not evolved from monkeys. Not yet, anyway.

Other billboards the group is planning:

1. ‘The Special Theory of Relativity is biased against NASCAR fans.’
2. ‘Socialism is wrong. Stop taxing my welfare check.’
3. ‘Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. With guns. Especially Hatfields killing McCoys or McCluskeys killing Abernathys. Those effers deserve it.’

Another Week of Infallibility

Last week’s news of Infallibility revealed that the Vatican probably hired the services of the same team that vetted Tom Daschle and Tim Geithner before they decided to welcome a schismatic Holocaust denier back into the fold. Or, alternatively, the Vatican spends much more time asking un-excommunication candidates if they’ve raped any children lately than they do checking the lapels of those candidates for Swastika pins or Iron Crosses. Even the Infallible have priorities.

Besides, nasty schisms have to be eliminated. (Incidentally, the schismatics were originally excommunicated because they were consecrated as bishops by a guy who thought the French Revolution was wack. Seriously.) If I had to guess at what a Pope likes to do best, I’d say it’s smoothing over a nice juicy schism. Here is what a Pope’s ideal daily To Do List probably looks like:

1) Get rid of a schism.
2) Offend a bunch of people -- millions if possible -- by saying something infallibly stupid.
3) Warn people against the great looming threat of Humanism, or any other movement which has already been widely accepted as a pillar of civilization for centuries.
4) Vespers.

Well, this week the Vatican added something new: giving science its due. They admitted that Darwin probably hit pretty close to the mark with his theory of evolution and that the idea of Intelligent Design is, well, kinda stupid.

What are they going to acknowledge next, you say? That objects in motion tend to stay in motion, etc, etc, or that the shortest distance between two points is a line of the straight-ish variety? (We haven’t heard the Pope admit to those things yet, but we have hope.)

So can we add something new to that To Do List?

5) Admit to something everybody already knows.

I can’t wait for the press conference in the year 2250 when the Pope of that time finally states that steroids are a problem in baseball and that homerun records should be viewed with suspicion. I imagine reporters looking at each other and asking, ‘What’s baseball? Is it anything like soccer?’