Are you afraid of scaremongering headlines? Research suggests you should be

It’s widely accepted in the world of media that panic is always a safer choice than skepticism, because what if you’re wrong? If news outlets took the time to check the veracity of a threat before broadcasting it to the unsuspecting masses, we would lose twenty-four valuable seconds to prepare for each threat, or approximately the time it takes for the average American to eat a steak.

This is why purveyors of the quality alarmist media are safer on average than their better educated, thinner, and predominantly East Coast compatriots. It’s only because informed citizens are aware of the full range of threats that they can sit down and enjoy their breakfasts and their Us magazine. Indeed, skeptical viewers must spend so much time verifying whether looking at your own penis makes you gay that they don’t have time for Us, or for InStyle, or even for People. Would you want to live in a world where you didn’t know about celebrity obesity?

Few prudent Americans would deny that the minuscule chance that bees don’t carry HIV doesn’t mean it’s not worth buying your entire family hazmat suits. Nor can anyone contest that Y2K bugs are only getting worse each year. Before the Y2K08 bug, cats were universally known as man’s best friend. But look at them now! Despicable, ungrateful creatures, hardly deserving of the name ‘pet’. Scientists expect the Y2K09 bug will make your child more promiscuous. In a world where bees carry HIV, is this really something you’d want?

Statistics show that that people least likely to be frightened by scaremongering headlines are the skeptics, a category of people renowned for watching DVD box sets of cancelled 90s TV shows in the basement, like The X-Files, Farscape, and Designing Women. In addition, research indicates that the implausibility of a threat becomes less important the more people dwell on it. If videogames weren’t going to make kids violent by themselves, then by God, good parents were going to manipulate the evidence to make it look that way, because people needed to know!

Anchors resent allegations that their niche news outlets serve corporate or political interests. In one much publicized case, a popular station risked outcry when it warned viewers that homosexuality may be linked to not eating enough red meat. Unfortunately, ninety-six percent of over the counter heartburn medicine is made by companies whose CEOs are rampantly and dangerously gay, so either way, they win! It wasn’t cheery, feel good news, but damn it, they did their journalistic duty and reported it.

Skeptics, of course, don’t want us to be frightened by headlines. They seem to forget that the world is, by its Christian nature, a scary place. They want to be comforted and coddled, and told everything is going to be ok. And then they have the gall to turn around and reject Jesus and the comfort he brings Americans, who need him for protection from the evils of the world. Nor should we forget the economic realities under which the alarmist media must operate. Those responsible for warning the public about incredible threats would go out of business if we ignored them, and who would warn us then? 

So next time you drink a glass of water and marvel that it hasn’t been fluoridated by the Soviets, just remember who told you.

The Ring (of non-desire)

Wait! Sex Week might have officially finished, but that doesn't mean we can't still talk about it. A guest author, who likes to known as Anonymous, has submitted this thought-provoking study on the shortcomings of purity rings. 

This article is about to raise a question which was so hotly debated that when it was first posed back in 1996 it almost broke the internet. “What does Frodo think about purity rings?” I should say that I honestly don’t know how Frodo feels about sex; but, I am confident that I could manipulate at least some of the Scriptures in such a way to make it seem like Frodo is massively against it. It is from this proved and logical premise we move forward.

Here is an all too familiar conversation that people who wear purity rings regularly have:

Jane: “Do you like my new ring?”
Blake: “It’s cool. You take it off when you give handjobs right? Looks like it could be painful.”
Jane: “I don’t ever take it off. It stops me from having sex.”
Blake: “Oh cool. How does it work?”
Jane: “Er… ”
Blake: “Any chance of a footjob?”

You see the problem with other faiths is that their purity rings have no real power to stop people from having sex. It's all willpower this and shame that. Both of those things are dead unreliable. This is a worrying fact. What we need is some new thinking. A new perspective. We need a sort of Purity Ring 2.0. We need boner fide technology to physically stop people from having sex... Here are just three of my suggestions:

1. The ring has a refillable cartridge that releases anti-pheromones:

Pheromones clearly work. Why would people buy them if they didn’t? Also, Frodo loves commodities. Imagine this money-making to and fro at your local store:

Assistant: How can I help you today?
Father: We are looking for a refill cartridge for our son’s purity ring?
Assistant: Hmmm… I see that you have been using the Mickey Rourke plug in. Have you thought about changing him to the Danny De Vito Deluxe package? That’ll keep the ladies away.
Father: Sold shopkeep. We also have a young daughter. What do you recommend for her to repel the boys?
Assistant: The Whoopi Goldberg is our bestseller.

2. The ring is made of Kryptonite

Run with me on this one. Superman is probably the hardest man alive. Yet, when he even goes near Kryptonite he gets bad headaches, adopts the foetal position, grimaces, etc. Everyone knows you can’t have sex with a headache. So what would happen if a normal kid went near Kryptonite? Exactly. On the downside Kryptonite is fictional, expensive and rare. On the other hand Lex Luther is well into Frodology.

3. The ring is so shiny that any sort of romantic “navigation” is impossible due to blindness

A lot of you have thought ‘what can hip hop teach Frodology?’ I don’t know and it is completely off the topic of this article. I didn’t know a lot about sex before writing this but thanks to a fascinating link I found after googling the phrase ‘stimulus package’ I think I get a good idea of how it’s done. In light of this new knowledge, what would happen if the ring was super shiny? Hello! Here is a believable scenario that reflects my new found understanding of sex:

Claire: What are you doing? You’re hurting me.
Dan: Sorry, I can’t see anything! Your ring is blinding me.
Claire: What can we do?
Dan: I guess we’ll have to stop.
[Claire looks disappointedly at the cameraman]

Even in the early days of purity rings, 

wearers had difficult convincing others of their sincerity

Where do you stand in the scheme of things?

Following requests for transparency from our members, we have decided to make public for the first time the Faith’s official ranking scheme. Unfortunately, the branches of Frodo’s temporal government are so convoluted that not even I, its leader, know the full extent of the system, nor even in fact whether I really am its leader.

Truly, Frodo works in mysterious ways.

 

Underling

Converted atheists start out at the bottom of the pack. As explained in How to Join Frodology Part II this is actually just a portmanteau of Underhill, a common hobbit surname, and halfling, another name for hobbits, and there is nothing sinister about it. 

Nothing inherently sinister about it, I should say. Early Faith leaders decided it would be appropriate to retrofit a degree of despicability to Underlings befitting of their name. Thanks to modern human rights standards, however, we’ve left the Dark Ages far behind and can proudly announce that these days, Underlings are allowed to keep six of their favorite fingers.  Also, rather than the highly unsafe practice of sewing eyelids shut that prevailed in previous centuries, surgeons now prefer to use hot wax.

 

Cretin

Converted Christians and followers from other faiths can skip Underling status and go straight to Cretin. Other than wearing slightly lighter manacles, however, there’s very little difference. Some followers obviously take issue with being called a colloquial synonym for ‘retard’, though I’m sure they would be interested to learn that owing to political correctness, Frodology enforces actual cretinism upon its followers. Though our newest members can never really disguise their enormous goiters, they sure have fun trying!

 

Banded sea krait

Followers live for several months as a highly venomous sea snake. 

 

Couch Jumper

By this stage in a Frodologist’s journey of Faith, he has lost all forms of physical restraint and his missing fingers have largely grown back. Thanks to their ability to consume iodine once again in their diet, Couch Jumpers’ goiters have largely receded to barely noticeable grapefruit-sized lumps, easily hidden by a turtleneck or isolated confinement in the home. Of course most outsiders will only have eyes for your unbridled enthusiasm for the Faith at this point, which is frequently demonstrated by inappropriate jumping up and down on couches in public. For those unable to do this on TV talk shows hosted by black women named after musical genres, Ikea is a suitable substitute.

 

Yeti Slayer

Other evangelical faiths might send their naïve, underprepared young into dangerous parts of the world to proselytize to people who fully resent them, but Frodology is more serious about testing its followers’ mettle. At this stage in their journey, missionaries are expected to journey to the Himalayas to slay a yeti. As difficult as this may sound, surviving yetis constitute such a small gene pool that they are invariably retarded, making the expedition something like murdering a giant care bear.

As much fun as it sounds

Polo Shirt

Only once you have vanquished the Yeti may you properly enter the Faith as an adult member. This is akin to the Catholic sacrament of Sublimation, though it is generally easier to reach since followers aren’t expected to skip the liquid state entirely. 

Polo Shirts are considered iconic by outsiders since they are the face we most frequently show the world. Unsurprisingly, Polo Shirts get their name from their uniform, which includes pleated chinos two sizes two small; the goatee voted ‘Facial Hairstyle of the Decade’ in Gay Times’ August 2001 issue; and polo shirt with PermaButton™ collar. By this stage in their journey, Frodologists’ fingers have grown back sufficiently to clutch a copy of The Lord of the Rings jealously to their breasts.

Temple Worthy

If you haven’t already, expect to lose all of your outside friends. Since your infatuation with the Faith means that you are unlikely to have seen their eyes rolling in their sockets like those of a bored invalid whenever you mention it, this may come as a surprise. While the lolling tongues of your former friends might tell you that you’ve lost their respect, they are almost certainly jealous. 

Of your cool new onesie underwear! I know what you’re thinking, but the coarse linen wasn’t merely chosen for its classic aesthetic appeal. It also chafes like industrial sandpaper! Thanks to its magical properties, which result from a secret manufacturing process, Temple Worthy Frodologists are able to let their spirits wander independently of their bodies. Sound cool? Maybe you’ll be the first to discover a use for it!

Disembodied perambulation may cause birth defects, nausea, loss of appetite, premature baldness, uncontrollable cravings for deep fried sea krait, and in rare cases sudden death. No refunds.

Katie Holmes

Frodologists this committed to their faith are the stuff of legends. New Frodologists should be warned that it takes levels of devotion that laymen and hospitals might attribute to psychosis to become Katie Holmes. While incarceration – we prefer to call it “staying at holmes” – and/or the sponsorship of a spouse might get you a foot in the door, there really is no substitution for vanquishing your better judgment of your own volition. After all, it’s a matter of faith.

February was a good month

Champagne all around!

February was officially Frodology's best month ever, and with its niggardly supply of days, that's saying something. Perhaps it's our use of words that sound casually racist. In any case, there are no chinks in Frodo's armor. Everything's just spic and span. 

First of all I'd like to thank everyone who orgiastically (but responsibly) participated in Sex Week. Thanks to good sense and proper decorum, no one's about to be excommunicated by the Vatican as a consequence. So, a huge thank you to Christians Scare the Bejesus Out of Me, Yunshui, Filliam, and CodewordConduit for their outstanding contributions. 

Second, I am proud to say that Frodology's 1019 total hits in February accounted for fully one-third of our all time unique visits, and exceeded our previous best by over 300 hits. Them's some stats!

Finally, because it's a cheap laugh, I'd like to share with you my ten favorite search referrals that have brought unsuspecting Googlers to Frodology.

"hairy women dwarves"

"gondor fossil watches serial"

"sexiest panis"

"frodo hairy feet why"

"preteen model naked"

"5 pages satires written in microsoft word about candy"

"marrying dogs"

"real jesus open your own bank"

"women like mysoginy"

"hiv is a cure for homosexuality"

None of this reflects well upon the world.

Christians to stop celebrating birthdays

The latest trend to sweep the nation originates from an unlikely source. Groups of Christians around the country have stopped celebrating birthdays – including those of friends, their children, and their own – in a bid to finally put paid to their whimsically sound belief that the soul enters the body at conception.

This generalization is admittedly somewhat misleading; by ‘body’ I of course meant ‘cell’, as there really is no body to speak of instantly after fertilization. In fact, the fertilized egg is so small a target that it can be notoriously hard to hit for novice souls recently out of flight school. Since the zygote unfortunately does not wait for the soul’s entrance before it begins to develop, it’s thought that inevitable misses have been responsible for producing some of history’s more soulless characters, Martha Stewart being only the most recent example.

Believing that birthdays detract from the significance of conception, many Christians agree with the view put forward by a spokesman today that “the birth itself is actually an unremarkable event in the life of a person.” He added that, “especially when compared to the miracle of conception, a miracle which we finally understand thanks to science, birth is pretty mundane.” Indeed, the clinical tile of a hospital is almost a ubiquitous experience in birth these days. Celebrating conception, however, will allow copulating couples to personalize the event, perhaps with asses scratched raw by hay, or the enthusiastic burst of a punctured condom.

Addressing criticism that this sidelines the role of women in nurturing children, the spokesman agreed that this was really the secondary aim. “Women have kept their stranglehold on birth over the centuries by pretending that it’s painful, but since they’re the only ones who ever experience it, we don’t really know that it hurts,” he explained. “I don’t even think it’s all that bad,” concluded the spokesman.

The new convention will thankfully also cut down on home videos of childbirth, a genre of film frequently classified as ‘torture porn’. Since the spawning female is at the ugliest stage of her life cycle since her dental headgear-laden teenage years, the trend is expected to be widely applauded.

As the standard by which ages are determined will have to shift forward accordingly, Mormon parents are reportedly thrilled to be able to get their girls out of the house and married nine months sooner. “It shaves nine months off the risk of her wanting a career!” enthused one parent.

The move is, however, not without its losers. Twins, triplets, and other iterations of superfluous clone children are expected to suffer most from the policy. Since they won’t all be entitled to celebrate their birth anymore, children will have to fight it out between themselves to determine who is the legitimate inheritor of the soul. While not all parents are thrilled at the prospect of facilitating natural selection within their own homes, most are satisfied with the chosen moniker of ‘moocher’ to describe the losing children.

Misogyny Meter for this article a comfortable 8/10

Health and Safety’s “grave concerns” for Rapture

Evangelicals in the United Kingdom became forlorn today at the news that Health and Safety has “grave concerns” about the safety of the End Times in general and the Rapture in particular, and that it plans to audit the event to ensure its compliance with government and EU standards.

The potential failure of the Rapture to meet Health and Safety requirements came to the attention of director Jonathan Brady as he was walking down the high street doing some Saturday afternoon shipping. “I was actually off duty at the time,” remarked Brady, “but a gentleman was there proclaiming that the streets would run with the blood of unbelievers.”

Though bloody streets specifically are beyond Mr. Brady’s field of expertise, “it sounded like something Health and Safety might be interested in slash statutorily obliged to regulate,” he explained. Indeed, it is frequently the unseen patches of blood, or “black blood,” that are most dangerous. They can often cause the elderly to slip and break a hip, or perhaps just wobble a bit.

“Woahh,” they might say, before recovering their balance and carrying on their way.

Upon further investigation of the Rapture, Health and Safety found all sorts of serious statutory contraventions. For example, they will want to be absolutely satisfied that ascenders into Heaven will have a railing to grip due to the great heights involved. Signs reading “Risk of death. Wear appropriate footwear” will also be mandatory during the Rapture.

Event organizers have already spoken out against the tentative plans of Health and Safety to move the thunder and lightning portions of the Rapture to less inhabited areas, arguing that it “totally defeats the purpose.” Justifying the decision, an official assured concerned would-be participants that they appreciate the importance of smiting to the Rapture, but warned that there must be no risk of lasting auditory or ocular damage.

The plagues in particular are a source of contention, and it is thought that unless they can go ahead without jeopardizing the safety of the working environment, they will be cancelled outright.

Government officials are also worried about the potentially discriminatory effect of the Rapture against non-Christians. In order to comply with European Union equal rights legislation, they warned that the law requires that an equal proportion of Muslims, Hindus, non-believers, and Other be struck down and taken to Heaven too. Event organizers commented only that they could “make no promises.”

Sexting – the sexiest moral panic yet?

It's been a sexy romp this week, and I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we're probably feeling a little worn out. But if you can hold on just a little bit longer, this marathon session is just one post away from its climatic conclusion. This one's by your very own FrodoSaves of, well, here.

American parents have found a new reason to worry about their children as the latest moral panic sweeps the nation. With the dissemination of mobile phones to youngsters of all ages – well, not all ages, because then they wouldn’t necessarily be young, but that hardly heeded pointing out – and the decreasing cost of multimedia messaging, teens have been titillating each other with naked photos of themselves.

The craze is known as ‘sexting’. While the origins of the word are unclear, experts believe it to be a portmanteau of ‘sex’, a popular activity for adults, and ‘ting’, a common name for Chinese people. The obscure etymology of the word is a key reason why parents and educators were so slow to catch on. “We’re completely out of touch,” commented one.

The naked photos are certainly a concern for all parties involved. District prosecutors have in some areas taken matters into their own hands by charging youngsters with possessing and disseminating child pornography, which is funny because ‘dissemination’ comes from the word ‘semen’ (I’m serious this time), and not funny because now these kids have criminal records. While parents tend to be extremely critical of the prosecutions, it is thought that at least some of the children will be grateful for the opportunity to go to prison, where they will be able to act out more of their perverted fantasies.

Yet while school officials discuss with police better methods for discouraging sexting, there is a danger that Americans aren’t asking the most important questions. For example, ‘which pose is the sexiest?’ ‘How fat is too fat?’ And ‘should they use props?’

While professional pornographers are skilled at including a wide range of believable props, from a well placed pillow to guns and car parts, it’s likely that without proper education, these children will be using objects that stretch the imagination a little too far. “I confiscated one of my student’s phones last week,” remembers high school teacher Jim Matthews, “and imagine my shock when it contained a naked picture of the kid’s girlfriend posing with a textbook. A textbook! It ruined the photo for me. And it definitely wasn’t worth the half hour it took to find it on his phone.”

The sexting craze has not left the Mormon Church unscathed either, and a group of concerned parents have voiced their worries that it’s only going to get worse. “We need to stop this filthy trend now,” warned representative Barbara Shepherd to the assembled community. “We should consider ourselves lucky that this so called ‘sexting’ has so far only been happening between married couples.”

As the sexting phenomenon shows no sign of abating, one thing remains abundantly clear: prudishness and unemployment make for a deadly parenting cocktail.