Prophecy wrongly predicts own fallibility

Frodologist scholars were flabbergasted yesterday, when, during a routine reexamination of a religious text for clues as to Frodo’s opinion on winter shorts, they happened upon a hidden prophetic warning. It appears that the Frodological prophecy foresees its own fallibility:

“And it shall come to pass that none of it shall come to pass.”

The discovery is alarming in that all of the text’s other predictions have so far panned out. For example, it predicted that when the sins of hobbits angered Frodo, a terrible storm should fall upon the land. And it did last summer, when seasonal rains flooded a few fields and delayed the corn harvest by several days. While no one is sure which sin in particular attracted the wrath of Frodo, whatever it was must have been bad, because the storm came. That kind of thing doesn’t just happen.

Prophecy also proclaims that the River Anduin shall dry up when Frodo’s return is imminent. And the great river did exactly that when a group of local hobbits dammed the Upper Anduin in order to fulfill the prophecy.


That's dam fine prophecy fulfillment, boys!

Yet another example is the widely recognized claim that Frodo will not return until His Hobbit Hole is rebuilt for the third time. It hasn’t, and he hasn’t.

I could give more examples, but I won’t, because prophecy predicts that I won’t. The problem provided by the erroneous passage is of course obvious, but in case it isn’t I’ll explain it for the sake of padding out this article.

Prophecy has so far been infallible, meaning that the prediction of its fallibility is wrong and renders it fallible. But when prophecy is wrong, the prophecy that it will be wrong will be vindicated and it will be proof that the Second Coming of Frodo is imminent. But how will scholars know when the prophecy is wrong, thereby proving that prophecy was right in predicting that it would be wrong? Most predictions are so widely worded that we could attribute anything to them, and the others we just ignore.

If prophecy is to be proved correct by it being wrong, Frodologist scholars will have to be more cautious in proclaiming fulfillment. Theologians are expected to start consulting religious skeptics to judge more accurately whether any given prophecy has been fulfilled, since after so many years of sycophantic agreement with scripture, they have apparently lost the ability to think critically.

Will atheists be the ones to save the Faith? That seems like an attention-seekingly implausible conclusion…

Is our galaxy really a giant waffle?

It is no secret that Frodo was fond of food. Hobbits were known to eat several meals a day, including two breakfasts. They were champions of cooking, when the men of the world were content simply to gnaw on dirty root vegetables. Some Frodologists even suggested that Frodo was named after a dish which was a particular favorite of hobbits, just as Jesus was named after a type of sand found on the shores of Galilee.

As such, much of a Frodologist’s worldview is shaped by foods. In biology, we shirk kingdoms animal and plant, and embrace the kingdom edible. In art, we focus on those dishes most aesthetically appealing. In mathematics, we forego calculations in favor of a meal. Indeed, the single reason we don’t brand followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as heretics is because they worship a pasta dish. Why bicker about scripture when you can identify with a similarly enlightened soul?

However, recently our innocuous opinions have come under fire. In particular, the Frodologist belief that our galaxy is actually a giant waffle has attracted a trifle of criticism. Mindful of conciliating with places of learning, we agreed that our position was a little untenable, and were willing to change it such that we accepted it could also be an enormous waffle. Oddly, this didn’t placate the Royal Academy. Neither did gargantuan, colossal, or really really big.

It later became clear that the nature of the grievance against our belief is not the chosen adjective, but the waffle. Many scientists argue that it’s preposterous to believe that our galaxy is a waffle. If you were to believe that, they argue, you might as well believe in sasquatch, la chupacabra, and OJ Simpson, when everyone knows they’re just fairy tales made up to scare children.

Yes, you could believe all that, and we wouldn’t judge you for it in the slightest. Take note, atheists, appealing to a Frodologist’s sense of reality is like barking up the wrong horse.



Some exasperated scientists have taken a lazier tack and requested that we instead provide evidence that our galaxy is a giant waffle. Well, they asked for it. Frodo told us. He revealed it, in a document that has yet to be published, but that shouldn’t detract from its veracity as most certainly not written by people in positions of waffled interest.

In any case, who do scientists think they are to tell us that the galaxy isn’t a giant waffle? After all, situated in the very galaxy we’re trying to get a look at, it’s not like we can photograph ourselves. That would require some sort of huge mirror, just floating there in space besides our galaxy. What total nonsense!

Having catastrophically failed to disprove the Waffle Theory, secular busybodies are now imploring the state that its teaching in schools should not be allowed. That’s fair. It’s not really like belief in a giant waffle is going to help these kids get jobs. It’d probably just be a waste of time.

Finally, the reader may count himself surprised at having reached the end of the article and not having read a single pun about waffling. Frodo moves in mysterious, Jesus-like ways.

Atheist disappointed by own lack of belief

Still recovering from the trauma of recently getting stuck inside his own thought bubble, an outspoken local atheist spoke up for the first time today about his own disappointment in himself. As an atheist, Mr. Jennings is no stranger to criticism. From the disappearance of babies at the local orphanage to the disappearance of babies from local wombs, Mr. Jennings’ complete lack of belief is frequently derided as an agent of Satan’s will.

“Atheism is the worst thing since bread stopped coming pre-sliced from those fancy bakeries,” opined a smug local pun-maker.

However, Mr. Jennings now has another person to add to his list of people whom he feels he must daily put in their place: himself. It seems that his near-death experience has caused him to grow somewhat introspective, and, dare we say it, spiritual.

“I realized that if was a believer, particularly a Mormon or a Frodologist, I probably wouldn’t have been stuck in that thought bubble. I’d still be alive today,” explained Mr. Jennings. He went on to explain it better, but that portion of the interview has been excluded for comic effect.

Mr. Jennings is consequently disappointed by his own atheism, and believes that atheism will probably be stamped out by natural selection, due to the inherent danger posed by empty thought bubbles.

Until that happens, however, he simply wishes he had been born a believer. “I can’t really choose to believe in God. It’s hardly my fault He didn’t provide more evidence for His own existence,” moaned Mr. Jennings. What's more, Mr. Jennings is convinced he'd be an excellent believer if it wasn't for his lack of belief. "I don't eat babies or anything."

Mr. Jennings realizes he is just part of God’s plan to test the faithful. “I’m fully aware that I’m here to test believers and woo them into Satan’s arms,” he admits, but he doesn’t appreciate the constant criticism that comes with the job. “I’ve been called a tool of Satan, Satan’s tool, and even Satan’s stool once, but I’m pretty sure that was just a typo.”

It wasn't. Mr. Jennings was called a pile of devilish feces by a Hindu, who assured him he would be reincarnated as a hoary marmot as punishment for his lack of belief in Vishnu. "It's a hard blow, especially since I don't believe in any of it."


Thanks to conservation posters, the hoary marmot is now off the endangered species list

Asked whether he resents God’s use of him as a mere pawn in a greater game, Mr. Jennings declined to blaspheme. “It’s not really my prerogative to criticize the job He’s doing, since He has a greater purpose for me as a forsaken heathen, even though I don’t believe in Him either.”

Prompted to explain the apparent contradiction in his statement, Mr. Jennings simply shrugged and explained “I guess God just made me this way, even though He didn’t. But really He did.”

Truly a complex individual.

Frodo’s Story, Part II: Miracles 101

In case you missed it, here is Frodo’s Story, Part I

We last left off in Frodo’s story at his return from Mordor and elevation to demigod in the eyes of Middle Earth. Not all was roses, however, as we saw that from the early days of his omnipotence he was competing with his close friend Samwise for the adulation of worshipers, and struggled under the expectations of his followers. We now continue with Frodo’s story.

Almost as soon as Frodo became an object of divinity, he was under constant pressure to keep safe and take no risks. “I liked playing with swords,” remembers Frodo. “But they soon put a stop to that. At first they let me use a wooden one, then a flimsy reed, and finally I just had to make believe. People say leaders have great vision and imagination, but I’ve always thought followers were better at pretending.”

From the beginning, Frodo was pressured into performing miracles. Lepers and the crippled frequently lined up at his door, interspersed with the infertile and the inadvertently pregnant. “It was terrible,” remembers Frodo. “When one of the lepers’ legs fell off, a cripple accused him of taunting the legless and having ‘limbs to spare’. Then the sterile women became jealous of the pregnant, and vice versa. It was a bloodbath.” Indeed it was; one hemophiliacs would sooner forget.

Frodo wasn’t even aware he had performed his second miracle until the news filtered back to him. “’Frodo cures blind man!’ I remember them shouting, and I had no idea what they were talking about. Only later did I remember giving a passing beggar a carrot from my vegetable patch. They said I’d cured his blindness.” Frodo doubted the man had actually been blind, but even if he had been, Frodo still downplays his role in the alleged miracle. “Vitamin A. I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Carrots are full of it, and it's good for vision. Vitamin A, beta carotene, call it what you like, but other than the actual act of handing him the carrot, I can’t say I cured his blindness.”

Frodo would have one more brush with miracles before it all came apart. “Gandalf wanted to stage a resurrection at one point, but I hadn’t finished reading that chapter in the textbook, so he just killed someone and said I’d come back to life!” But when Frodo tried to leak the scandal to the news, no one would believe it. Conservative pundits called it an “incredible conspiracy theory” and a “dishonest attempt to discredit a genuine miracle.”

Facing a world growing ever more entrenched in their belief in him, Frodo found himself spiraling downwards into a seedy world of drugs, sex, and traditional panpipe ballads. “I was definitely living the cliché,” he remembers. “It was like the point in those movies where you see the protagonist stick a needle in their arm for the first time, and you think ‘ah, so that’s how they got AIDS’. There was no needle, but the descent into ruin was all a little predictable.”

At first his drug use was recreational, mostly Southfarthing weed, and it improved his panpipe playing if anything. “But one day, one of the North Downs hobbits brought round his lute and a wahwah pedal, and told us we needed to take some pills to really ‘get it’. It was like a journey, man, so intense. I definitely ‘got it’. I got other things too though. An addiction, and diseases mostly.”

Frodo would of course climb the long ladder of privilege out of his despondent drug dependency, and other things equally terrible all beginning with ‘d’. But that story will have to wait for next time.



The stuff dreams are made of?

Santa, sussed

Few holidays can claim an entire genre of music all their own, and it’s probably for the best, because tunes about turkeys would wear thin before the start of the first verse. However, Christmas more than makes up for this dearth by treating bemused listeners to a panoply of forced auditory festivity. 7-11s have a certain terminal cheer threshold, which, just as objects can never attain the speed of light, simply cannot be met by tinny holiday ditties.

Due to this principle, ears for whom Christmas is a holiday worldwide associate many such songs with memories of the depressingly uplifting. “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” is the crumbling veneer on an overstretched budget. “Jingle Bells” suggests the solution for pent up shopping frustration might be homicide, and “Frosty the Snowman” double homicide.

For these reasons it’s rare that listeners take the time to listen to the lyrics of the lo-fi songs they hear. And who can blame them? Many Christmas songs are deplorably inane. For example:

Here comes Santa Claus
Here comes Santa Claus
Right down Santa Claus Lane

Every one knows Santa flies. There is no Santa Claus Lane. And:

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero Ano y Felicidad.

Complete gibberish.

But one song in particular is alarmingly revealing as to its sinister underlying purpose. It beguiles listeners with saccharine lyrics and bewitching stanzas. It is the musical equivalent to a paedophiliac old man taking candy from a baby.

But “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” fails the hand that wrote it. Its clever rhymes cannot but belie its intentions.

He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out
who's naughty or nice.

Santa’s brown nosing into the deeds and misdeeds of children is worrisome by itself, and his obsessive compulsive list-making does nothing to allay fears. The casual listener might ponder what could be the purpose of such devoted organization. The same listener may be placated by the assurance that Santa simply wants to deliver toys to the good children.

But hark! What’s this?

He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.

The listener should at once be alarmed at the overtones of espionage, which carry not the slightest hint of embarrassment. Are these just the harmless advances of a lonely stranger beckoning children thither through the school gates? The next line however only exacerbates the listener’s unease:

He knows when you've been bad or good

Who does that sound like? The obsession of Old Saint Nick with the morality of children too young to understand the word absolutely reeks of God’s constant interventions. Jehovah, the original condescending paternalist, co-opts what appears to be an honest folk myth by reaching his desiccated hand down Santa’s shirt to wield him as a puppet. Christians must have realized that Yahweh betrayed Himself in the Old Testament with His appalling displays of brutal malice. What child would trust and befriend Thanatos incarnate? Santa then is His stooge, His agent of deceit. Santa's disarming, cheery appearance is wholesome enough for Coca Cola, but the red of his suit should be the flag of distress to all children who meet him.

So be good for goodness sake!

It is this last line that dispels all doubt, if any remained. The lyrics implore the juvenile listener with an asenine alliteration, but bludgeon him with a hammer of circular reasoning. It should by now be obvious that the Mayor of the North Pole is none other than a mythical Dr. Mengele, torturing dreams on the rack of cynical dogma.

The tried and tested tool of Christianity has always been the hammer, not the carrot. While wordsmiths may have created a façade of jovial bonhomie with portly Father Christmas, inducing children to behave with promises of presents, it is the explicit threat of denied joy for misbehaviour that again resonates most strongly. Having failed before to win people over, Christianity falls short again when it betrays Santa as the wretched wrecker of childish innocence.


Would you work for Santa?

Vatican heist sees millions of years’ worth of indulgences stolen

The latest round of the Catholic blame game kicked off earlier this week with the Holy See’s announcement that it had been robbed. Believers listened in horror as the Pope’s spokesmen reported how thieves had broken in during the night, and made off with several tons worth of paper indulgences. The rest of the world barely batted a collective eyelid when it later developed that nothing of actual value had been stolen.

Quite how the burglars entered the Pope’s vault is unclear, though Vatican authorities are reportedly meeting with their contractor, Honor System Security Ltd., to assess the breach. In the mean time, any obvious flaws will be addressed with candlelight vigilance.

Though neither Italian police nor the Carabinieri have released a list of suspects, the theft bears all the hallmarks of frequent sinners such as gays, and some of the hallmarks of casual sinners, such as Hallmark. The Vatican also suspects religious skeptics who aren’t quite skeptical enough to be sure there’s no God, but is skeptical that said skeptics are organized enough to pull of such a heist.

In simpler times, the stolen property itself would have pointed to the likely culprits. Mothers of unbaptized children were once the most prolific thieves of indulgences, but in recent years organized crime rings, some of them full of good Catholics, have been responsible for the biggest robberies.

Taken together, the indulgences amount to millions of years off time to be spent in purgatory, and as such represent about 5% of the global indulgence black market. Vatican authorities are confident that the majority of the stolen indulgences will wind up in the United States, particularly California and Arizona. Since the introduction of crimesin, illegal Mexican immigrants have all become sinners in the eyes of God. It is a setback they certainly could have done without.


Paco has to sell a lot of tacos to pay for his ill-gotten indulgence

Asked about their plans to retrieve the stolen indulgences, the Vatican said that its chief worry as always was that sinners would be cheating the system and not spending enough time being punished for their transgressions. Still, a spokesman reassured reporters that they “can always print more,” though he cautioned that recent cutbacks will mean future indulgences will be printed on A5 paper, rather than the standard A4.

Residents of Heaven sick of perpetual daylight

Christianity suffered another setback today when residents of Heaven filed a formal complaint against God for the perpetual daylight in which they have to live. Disenfranchised denizen Dale Keats told a reporter that he was “initially enchanted by Revelations 22:5, where it says that God is light and all. I didn’t realize that God really is light!”

Many citizens of Heaven have since come forward and admitted to being similarly tired of eternal light. While newcomers are often thrilled at the prospect of endless soccer games and picnics at all hours, it seems that after a few months, most just want to catch a bit of sleep. “It’s not that I need it,” declared former manicurist Betty Jenkins, “but it is Heaven, and honey, I loves to sleep!”

Perpetual light is also quickly becoming a health concern, as residents of Heaven have been subjected to constant UV light ever since they arrived. Gabriel, Heaven’s surgeon general, admitted that while melanoma is on the rise, by far the biggest problem is that no one knows what happens to people who die in Heaven. “Perhaps there’s some sort of super heaven we don’t know about yet.”

Nor are the angels unaffected, as it is well known that winged creatures quickly succumb to dizziness and disorientation after prolonged exposure to unnatural light. Suffering from acute insomnia, St. Peter has not been properly checking credentials at the pearly gates, and has recently let in a panoply of sinners and Cuban immigrants. Worse, the archangel Michael inadvertently flew into the glass-sided HSBC building in Heaven’s financial district, severely breaking his neck.

As the light shows no sign of diminishing, the situation in Heaven is getting dire. Angels are desperately trying to track down and stamp out the makers of t-shirts reading "I came to Heaven and all I got was this lousy migraine", and "Kept in the dark about being in the light". Already, Christianity is feeling the effects of members fleeing for other faiths, and many argue that fitting manacles to churches across the country is not the answer. Until however Heaven can offer its sunkissed souls some shade, the flock would flee but for lock and key.