(Or maybe The Incredible Shrinking Genitalia?)

Sometimes a story I would save for my weekly roundup of crazy things done by crazy folks who are crazy about their irrational beliefs merits a separate blog entry all its own… and this is one of those times. This one doesn’t stand out because it’s tragic (though it is, as most such stories are), or because it relates to believers in sorcerous magic and no connection to one of the big religions is mentioned (though it’s certainly possible). No, this one gets a solo entry because it’s inherently funny all by itself and I have to do absolutely no work to inject the warped blend of sarcasm and attempted humor I usually use as a coping mechanism when faced with monumental stupidity.

When any article on Yahoo news starts with this headline, you know it’s going to be something special:

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

Yes. Penis theft.

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Did I mention: Penis theft?

Not just any penis theft… magical penis theft.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

But wait! This alleged sorcery has eyewitness confirmation, so it must be true!

“It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny,” said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station

Perhaps protective athletic cups should be issued to the male employees of our embassy in Congo. Consecrated athletic cups, dipped in holy water.

Last year I complained about people who drove their kids around in a suburban neighborhood to trick-or-treat – chauffeur-driven candy gathering. I saw more of it this year, including several trucks and a Mercedes. I’ve also gotten used to kids from other neighborhoods coming into ours, sometimes driven there by parents or in some cases even driving themselves (and if you’re old enough to drive, you’re old enough to buy your own damned candy!)

They’ve gotten more brazen this year. One guy pulled a truck up in front of my house, offloaded his kids to hit a few houses on my street, and when they finally came up to my door, he walked up with them and revealed that he had no reason to be in this neighborhood by actually asking me for instructions on how to get back out to the highway!

A trio of news items this week lend support to my theory that the folks screaming the loudest about other people’s morals or lack thereof are the ones with closets full of skeletons.. usually skeletons dressed in leather and handcuffs.

Exhibit A, and the mildest of the bunch: James Oddo, New York City Councilman, whose participation in a Norwegian “Daily Show” style fake news interview came rather abruptly to a halt:

Now, to be fair, I couldn’t find many specifics about this guy’s politics. But he’s a Republican, the party of the Christian Right and “family values”. Are threats of physical violence and shouts of “get the fuck out of my office!” acceptable to this crowd? All he had to do was say, “I’m sorry, this interview is over. Please leave.” Better yet, he could have just played along.

Exhibit B: Gary Aldridge, Liberty “University” graduate and cohort of the late and unlamented Jerry Falwell, was found dead in his Alabama home back in June. It’s not his death that lands him on this list, though, it’s the circumstances surrounding it, as revealed by the autopsy report released this week:

The decedent is clothed in a diving wet suit, a face mask which has a single vent for breathing, a rubberized face mask having an opening for the mouth and eyes, a second rubberized suit with suspenders, rubberized male underwear, hands and feet have diving gloves and slippers. There are numerous straps and cords restraining the decedent. There is a leather belt around the midriff. There is a series of ligatures extending from the hands to the feet. The hands are bound behind the back. The feet are tied to the hands. There are nylon ligatures holding these in place with leather straps about the wrists and ankles. There are plastic cords tied about the hands and feet with a single plastic cord extending up to the head and surrounding the lower neck. There is a dildo in the anus covered with a condom.

Apparently God hates gays, nudity, and premarital sex, but I suppose the Bible doesn’t specifically rule out rubber-leather-bondage-asphyxiation fetishes, so those are okay.

(But honestly, if a scuba suit and a rectal dildo or two among consenting adults is what you’re into, then go for it – but please spare me the details. The breathing thing, though? Kind of important. Try to remember that good respiration trumps a good orgasm every time.)

Exhibit C: Now we turn to a man whose hypocrisy is just the filler in a big ol’ casserole of evil: Christian Von Wernich, a Roman Catholic priest who used his position to support a brutal Argentine military dictatorship in the 70s and 80s. Convicted of complicity in 7 murders, 31 torture cases, and 42 abductions, Christian says his efforts were justified because those people were all possessed by the devil.

The “how could [fill in deity name here] let bad things happen to good people?” debate has been raging ever since the first time the Spirit in the Funny Shaped Dead Tree Over There failed to protect Og from a serious woolly-mammoth goring. It’s not a debate likely to be settled in my lifetime, and my little read-by-nobody blog isn’t likely to add anything significant to the conversation.

Still, I feel compelled to share some details of an exchange I had this weekend because it illustrates why I often am dumbfounded at the way people use their belief systems to rationalize anything.

I was at a party this weekend where someone opined, “Boy, God sure was watching over those people on that bridge in Minnesota.”

Excuse me? “Watching over which ones, the five or more who died, or the dozens who were injured?”

“No,” she said, “those kids on that school bus – they all survived. God protected them.”

“If he’d really been watching over them,” I said, “That bridge wouldn’t have collapsed.”

This is where it became disturbing:

“But it’s a good thing that bridge collapsed! Now we’ll fix all the other ones.”

Okay, first of all: No, we won’t. We’ll make a lot of noise about it for a while, but in the end, nobody will want to pay for it.

Secondly. and more relevant to my current tirade: You’re telling me that this all-seeing, all-knowing, wise, omnipotent God of yours needed to think of a way to say “fix your bridges” and the best he could come up with is, “Hmm, maybe I should let some people die. Yeah, that’ll work! Especially if I put a busload of kids in harm’s way!”

He works in mysterious ways, indeed. If all such tragedy can be ascribed to him, then the real mystery is whether he’s one cruel, twisted bastard or just hopelessly inept.

Kudos to the 23 year old man who today cut off his own hand as a sacrifice to the Hindu goddess Kali. Yes, that’s right, kudos: you’re to be commended for maiming only yourself in your zealous pursuit of holiness in the eyes of your imaginary friend. In these days when sacrifice in the name of religion is so often accompanied by a BOOM, it’s refreshing to hear about a fanatic who doesn’t try to share his love of Holy Mutilation with others.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s been a while.)

“Family-values” crusader congressman David Vitter is a hot news topic this week over his alleged solicitation of prostitutes and alleged wearing of diapers during the resulting encounters. He’s admitted to using the DC Madam’s “escort service” but has denied frequenting the establishment in his home state of Louisiana. He says that his wife knew of his admitted-to transgressions.

I’m wondering what the conversation between them was like after his admission. I’ll bet it went something like this:

Her: “I’m glad you’re finally being honest with me. Is there anything else you’d like to confess?”

Him: “I dunno… Depends.”

… that letter about daylight savings time causing global warming was… not a fake, really, because it was in fact printed in that paper, but one of a number of satirical editorials written by an Arkansas lawyer with the kind of sense of humor I can appreciate. It’s still not clear if the newspaper in question ran the letter because they took it seriously, or because someone there found it funny enough that they couldn’t pass it up.

A friend who fled the Arkansas of his birth years ago had this to say about the issue: “Considering the audience, the paper should have printed a disclaimer.”

I come across a fair amount of evidence of sheer, unbridled stupidity during my internet wanderings, and most of the time I just shake my head in astonished disgust and then move on. But this little gem was just too good/bad not to pass on. From an editorial in an Arkansas paper:

Yes, a conservative who actually believes man is the cause of global warming, but it’s not the fault of industry, autos, deforestation, or any of the usual suspects. No, it’s that damned “liberal congress” who, by moving daylight savings time forward a month (wait, wasn’t that “liberal congress” dominated by conservative republicans at the time?)… because by doing so, the writer argues, those liberals actually created more daylight.