March 27, 2005 by s.z.

Happy Easter! A c. 1913 postcard left to me by my Grandma Florence I've always liked Easter -- for me it's about joy over Jesus' triumph over death and the grave, which gave us the promise that death won't be the end for us either; cute little chicks and bunnies (which will be portrayed this year by Hampsty and hampster and Jet Jaguar, the Easter Cat; little girls wearing pastel dresses, patent leather shoes, and straw hats; spring flowers (while my daffodils, tulips, and iris won't be blooming for weeks yet, just the fact that they have sprouted, only a couple of weeks after the snow melted, feels amazing and hopeful); eating chocolate eggs to the point of nausea; dyeing hard boiled eggs (I haven't actually done that this year, but I'm pretty sure that one of my nieces or nephews will give me some of their eggs, since they are more fun to decorate than to eat); and eating egg salad sandwiches for a week to use up all hardboiled eggs .  So, to keep myself from being annoyed, trouble, or irritated by the world, I am going to avoid the news and just have a happy day.  And, to you, however you may choose to celebrate (or not) Easter, I wish you a happy day too. And in case your holiday includes Marshmallow Peeps, here's a repeat of our feature on them from last year (I don't know if the links still work or not).  Oh, and if you happen to like them (which I don't), if you wait until Tuesday, they sell for ten cents a carton around here. The Peeps Report All the News about Marshmallow Peeps That Is Fit To Blog.  And believe me, there's a ton of Peeps news out there.  A Google News search for "peeps" comes up with 165 stories from the last week or so.  Of course, about 30 of them are copies of a wire story called "Peeps: Not Just For Easter Anymore," and one is "Stollmeyer's Peeps Speak out" (which appears to be about rap artists,  not marshmallows), one is a review of a jazz concert which includes the line "tiny coloristic peeps from the horns."  But that still leaves a lot of new stories about (or which mention) Marshmallow Peeps.  The flood of Peeps stories is partly because this is the Peeps 50th anniverary, and partly because Peeps are a well-known cultural icon -- but mostly because Peeps sent out lots of press releases which made it easy for lazy life-style and food reporters to bang out an Easter article. But my philosophy is: if a sweet but insubstantial piece of fluff gets this much press coverage, it must be newsworthy.  I mean, look at Condi.   So, with no futher ado: Peeps in the Media: News You Can Use. 1.  Slate has a story called "Why Eat Peeps at Easter? How the marshmallow chicks found Jesus."  It's the story (based on those Peeps press releases) of Easter.  Okay, nothing really exciting here, but I do like the title. 2.  From some article that I forgot to note, I learned about the The Big List of Peeps Links.  From it we learn that there are enough Peeps-centered sites out that you could waste your whole workday looking at them.  I recomend that you do.  There are Peeps torture sites, Peeps recipe sites, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame made from Peeps, Biker Peeps, Lord of the Peeps, and Blair Witch Peeps.  Sadly, the Passion of the Peeps seems to be down, but make sure to check out Peeps Porn. 3.  The Arizona Central has an informative piece called "Pop Culture, Christianity Converge."  And it contains TWO Peeps mentions:   That we're consumed with Christ shouldn't seem surprising. This is his holiday, after all. But during this commercial frenzy of plastic eggs, Peeps and frilly pink dresses, it is. . . .On the newsstand, Jesus is the cover of Time, the debate in the New Republic, and the big headline on the April 5 issue of People, which asks "Does Hollywood have faith?" At the theater, previews are screening for Saved!, a Mandy Moore comedy that questions: "Are you down with G-O-D?" In hip shops, like Urban Outfitters on Tempe's Mill Avenue, shirts that declare "Jesus is My Homeboy" sit near miniskirts and tube tops (Madonna wears "Mary is my Homegirl") . . .At River of Life Tabernacle in Phoenix, Christian rappers meet to worship and spin lyrics about Christ. They just finished their first hip-hopera, The One, about Jesus reclaiming hip-hop from Satan. So popular, it will be reenacted in June. Listen as rappin' Christ takes on Satan: "You're a stumblin' block, building up then breaking down, stealing hopes and dreams from my peeps." You can giggle or get upset, but River of Life associate pastor Mike Sims explains: "I myself have never been a great fan of hip-hop, but I recognize the opportunity to reach people who respond to this music." I love the idea of "Christian hip-hopera," and hope we see more of it.  I can't wait to see the Passion of the Christ done this way.  4.   The Valley Advocate has a feature story where a geeky reporter tells us all about local sci-fi and fantasy fans who are even geekier than him.  Here's the Peeps part: At the weekly SSFFS gatherings, the activities are often consciously silly. There's the Zen scavenger hunt, in which students collect objects -- whatever takes their fancy -- and then compete to make the case for why their objects match up with a fantastical list. They also hold verse battles, contests in which students face off, oratorically, over questions like whether Spiderman or Gollum would win in a fight. Their most sacred tradition, one for which alumnae often return, is the Peeps Sacrifice, or which they find creative ways to sacrifice the marshmallow chicks to the gods. While I enjoyed the story behind the geek in-joke "gazebo" (it turns out to be a Dungeons and Dragons thing), I found this even funnier: it's the description of a Smith student interviewed for the piece:  She's now a sophomore, and looks like any other Smith sophomore. She has a pleasant, open face and when I met her in Seelye Hall, where the convention was held last weekend, she was wearing a curve-hugging, thigh-length knit jacket.  Because you'd never expect a woman interested in science fiction fandom to have a normal, non-mutated face and to wear regular clothes. 5.  And here we have the basic Peeps story, which includes a factoid repeated in many of these pieces which I find very hard to belive: In those days [1953] three-dimensional Peeps were made individually, hand-squeezed from a pastry tube. It took 27 hours to create one Marshmallow Peep. Each of the chick's eyes was hand-painted. Okay, it's possible, I guess, if those 27 hours included drying time.  But if it took 27 man-hours to make one marshmallow chick, these would have to be the most labor-intensive candies EVER, and should have cost like $100 each (which would be $7,000,000 in today's money. 6.   The Times of Northwest Indiana gives us the story of John "Johnny Peep" Valiska, track coach by day, Peeps addict by night. John "Johnny Peep" Valiska's passion for Marshmallow Peeps has him popping at least 15 a day. In 1997, he gobbled 1,535 of the gritty globs of glucose in just under four weeks, his personal best.  That was the year The Times published a story about his Easter obsession and his otherwise quiet life as a tall and lanky track and field coach for Highland High School and a fitness instructor for Omni 41 Health &Fitness Connection gym in Schererville. "After reading the story in the paper, I had one lady call me up and ask me to stop by her house for some Peeps she wanted to donate to my eating efforts. So I go over to her house, and she had 80 packages leftover from baskets she assembled for her church." He ate all 480 Peeps. Each year since, he's eaten between 600 and 1,000 Peeps. But this year is special, marking the 50th anniversary of Peeps, and Valiska, 48, of Highland, is closing in on 1,000 swallows of yellow sugar and marshmallow. He hopes to break his previous record.  An inspiring story, to be sure; what it inspires is feeling of nausea and revulsion, and also a contact sugar high.  But every man needs a dream, and if Johnny's is to consume more than 1000 artifically-colored blobs of sugar, egg white, and gelatin this season, then more power to him, I say.  And he can have my Peeps too. 7.  So, what is the religious significance of a bunny who lays eggs?  Should we really be whipping him at the Stations of the Cross?  And what color eggs does Jesus lay?  For the answers to these questions and more, we go to The Catholic Herald: What about the Easter bunny? The actual word Easter is derived from the word Eoster (also spelled Eastre), the name of the Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and Spring, and the annual sacrifices associated with her. (Keep in mind that while the Romance languages used the root word for Passover to denote "Easter," as mentioned previously, the German and English languages "baptized" the word Eoster.) Spring is a season of fertility, life, and abundance. In Teutonic mythology, Eoster’s pet bird laid eggs in baskets and hid them. On a whim, Eoster transformed her pet bird into a rabbit, who continued to lay eggs.   So there you have it: it all goes back to some flighty goddess of Daylight Savings Time, and her idea to improve her pet bird by turning it into a rabbit, much like how Bart Simpson turned his cat into a fire-breathing monster in that Tree House of Horror ep.  Oh, and if you want to mess with the minds of the children of friends or relatives, tell them the delightful story of where they came from: they were laid by a bunny, put in a basket, and hidden in the garden.  And then tell them that Easter is the day we go out and look for little brothers and sisters. 8.  The Washington Post has all kinds of essential Peeps info: In the past three years, Peeps consumption has surged by more than 100 million a year; Americans eat an average of 2.3 Peeps apiece each spring.  So, are you above, above average, or below average?  Or are you even American? Certainly Peeps are eaten in a variety of ways: fresh, stale, warm, microwaved, frozen, fricasseed, roasted and sometimes even as a pizza topping, says [Peeps spokes woman Milena] DeLuca. Many fans say Peeps are tastiest after they have hardened for two to three weeks. Others find them most satisfying when they bite their heads off first. Well, you have to bite off their heads first, or those beady little eyes just stare at you reproachfully.  One of the best of inventions MST3K's Dr. Forrester ever came up with was the Chocolate Bunny Guillotine ("Eliminate the guesswork in biting the heads off bunnies!")  But I don't think it would work on a Marshmallow Peeps, because the chick guts would get the blade all sticky. The newest Peeps craze is Peeps jousting, according to DeLuca. To see two Peeps joust, insert a toothpick into the chest of each, place them 1-1/2 toothpicks apart in a microwave, and nuke them for no more than 10 seconds. It would almost be worth buying some on-sale, post-Easter Peeps to try this out.  And speaking of 75%-off candy . . . Sacramento hosts an annual Peeps eating contest, the Peep Off, a week after Easter for the sole reason that, by then, $30 will buy about 2,000 Peeps. Last year's champion, the aptly named Dennis Gross, downed 103 Peeps in 30 minutes.  Yes, but we think that "Johnny Peep" Valiska, who goes for long-term quantity in lieu of speed is the real champion. The debate over Peeps as an icon boils down to whether a miasma of marshmallow has drowned the spiritual message of the Resurrection.  I think some minister should get one of the Chocolate Bunny Guillotines and behead a bunch of Peeps in order to teach the kiddies the real meaning of Easter.  He could read the official charges ("You, Pink Peeps, you have smothered Jesus in a misasma of marshmallow stickiness.  And you, Yellow Peeps, you have stolen painted eggs in a time of famine").  And then he would order his executioner-garbed assistant, "Off with their heads," and the kids would learn a valuable lesson about the True Meaning of Easter.  And one about the French Revolution, too.  And then the youth group could perform "The Greatest Story Ever Rapped," followed by refreshments consisting of Christian-colored jelly beans (Green is for the grass of Gethsemene; Red is for his blood, which was shed for you; Black is for your many, many, sins, which killed him) and Passion of Christ Fruit Punch. The Post story then discusses some of the experiments performed at Emory University to measure the stress and heat tolerance of Peeps.  You know, what happens when Peeps are placed in a vacuum, in a hot tub, in liquid nitrogen, electrocuted, etc.  You can see the unholy results at  WWW.PeepResearch.org.   But just be glad we live in an age when such performing such perversions on innocent Peeps isn't enough to get you banned from society.  American University's Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of communications who is writing a book about the baby boom generation, thinks Peeps mania speaks to the diversity of American culture. "Fifty years ago, people who did experiments on Peeps would have been shunned," he said. Yes, that was the plot of a horror movie made in 1952, The Peeps That Grew Too Much.  It was about a scientist who did experiments on marshmallow chicks ("They call me MAD?  Well, I'll show them all!  With my 50-foot Marshmallow Peeps, I will CONQUER THE WORLD!")  But he learned too late not to tamper in God's domain, and it all ended happily, with his horrible, violent death and s'mores for the Army.    Well, that concludes my Peeps wrap-up.  If you want to learn more about Peeps, visit your library, or go to the official Peeps website; www.marshmallowpeeps.com.  Or just watch for the PeepsMobile, which may be coming to your town any day now. 1:23:59 AM

Swank o' the Day We've previously discussed our fondness for Thomas Carder of CAP fame.  We like him for his horribly mangled prose, his loony pronouncements, and his cluelessness.  One of the highlights of our life was when mistook an Onion story about children joining covens after readiing the Harry Potter books for a real news item, and claimed that it vindicated his claims that grade-school children were turning to Satan as a result of J.K. Rowlings' work -- and then, when Thomas was flooded with email pointing out that he had been fooled by a fake story, he said that this was how Satan worked: by making us think that the truth was a lie.  Oh, and he also cited a Paul Harvey story he remembered hearing 20 years ago which said that most missing children are eaten by witches.  But we especially like Thomas's stories about his life.  It seems that before making his living by taking in a passel of foster children (and by pleading for donations to his "movie ministry"), he used to be: a drug counselor; a safety inspector, a martial artist; and a nuclear power technician (no, not at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant -- I think he said he worked for Oak Ridge or Area 57 or something).  The impression that one gets from Thomas's stories is that Thomas hasn't been especially successful at anything, and so naturally drifted into trying to make a buck from the combination of religious fundamentalism and the internets. And that brings us to today's Swank o' the day, EVIL LURKS AT MICHAEL SHIAVO'S DOOR.  It fills in another piece of the Swank bio, which, from what we've learned from the Pastor's previous stories, includes a stint as a minister for a congregation that hated him, got him fired, and then all died amd/or went to hell; a job as a teacher in the blackboard jungle, until the administration, which hated him, got him fired; and winning a writing contest. Anyway, the thesis of today's column is that Michael Schiavo caused Terri's heart attack by strangling her, and that he's evil and stuff.  And the proof of Michael's evil is that he reminds the Pastor of an assistant manager he used to work with at a methadone clinic. Here, see for yourself: Have you ever worked in a place where there was an Evil Manager? Oh, my, heavens no!  Managers are always good, decent people who never abuse their power.  They are competent, industrious, fair, and invariably beloved by their employees.  I did. It was a methadone clinic where we worked night and day as counselors to help heroine addicts kick the habit. It takes those kind of 24/7 efforts to help those who are hooked on Eleanor Roosevelt, Wonder Woman, and Emma Peel. But when I was hired, the second in command despised the administrator for hiring me — a minister. Yet they were uptight for counselors, so he hired me. I think that that last line was supposed to say, "Yet their faith-based federal contract required them to employ a certain quota of uptight counselors, so he hired me." But the second in command despised me. So she, mentoring me on the job’s initial training, trained me incorrectly so that when it came down to filing reports, I appeared not to know how to do it. I made mistakes. Finally I figured out that I was not trained properly. The second in command was an Evil Manager who was intent on seeing that the minister looked like a jerk. Yes, I'm sure it was the Evil Manager's fault that the minister looked like a jerk.   And, as you probably already guessed, the end of the story is that Pastor Swank got fired -- not for being an incompetent jerk, but for "defending the client against the administrator’s lies and undercutting."  So, I guess that facility was plagued by both an Evil Manager and a Demonic Administrator.  You know, it seems to me that the Pastor was lucky to get out when he did, or we could have had another case of demons crawling on the walls. Anyway, Michael Schiavo is an Evil Manager because he used to bully the staffs at the facilities treating Terri into giving her good care.  He did this by "pressing down on staff, ordering them around, threatening them with cursing and scowls."  Everyone who has ever been threatened by a scowl can surely relate to this evil. But now it's time for the global message we should take from the stories of how Pastor Swank's boss made him look like a jerk, and how Terri Schiavo's husband tried to murder her: Is not this duplicated around the globe in clots where the devil’s agents hold sway — in politics, in corporate management, in schools, in hospitals, in ecclesiastical power cliques, in families? Yes, it is duplicated around the globe in clots.  Indubitably.    Oh, and the Pastor also uses his experience as a drug counselor in the column Whitney Houston: Another Stay at Rehab.  There was one young woman who, when she found out that I believed in God, exclaimed, "Oh, I was praying that I would have a Christian counselor!" Yes, she was a heroine addict. So remember, kids, "Power Puff Girls" is a gateway drug that can lead you to full-fledged heroine addiction. So, what's the solution for Whitney? Well, she should "remember in 'The Bodyguard' when [she] sang about Jesus," while the rest of us "just keep poking around the bushes with the prayer stick."  Which I'm sure isn't a sexual metaphor, so get your mind out of the gutter. Oh, and speaking of Thomas Carder, you'll be happy to hear about his latest project, which he recently disclosed in a CAP Alert:  The Christian Educators Association Int'l is sending us a copy of the controversial video We Are Family for CAP analysis.  It is suspected the video promotes the homosexual lifestyle and indoctrinates the young viewers into acceptance of it using well-known and popular cartoon characters.  Judging from the number and intensity of email attacks we received defending the practice of homosexuality after posting to our website a preliminary report about the suspected pro-homosexual content of We Are Family, maybe there is something to it after all.   Maybe there is something in that video for it to garner such "hatred and intolerance" from those who are not like us.  For now, it is all speculation.  After the report is calculated there will remain no doubt.  One way or the other. Because after Thomas subjects the video to his scientific analysis (which consists of looking for examples of swearing, nudity, violence, suicide, sassiness, magic, lascivious eye movements, married movie characters played by actors who aren't married having off-camera sex, and instances where you could see Will Smith's fine, naked butt cheeks if he wasn't wearing clothes), then there will be no doubt about whether or not SpongeBob is gay. Oh, and while the four-minute video reportedly consists merely of 100 cartoon and puppet characters singing "We are Family," if anyone can suss out any hanky panky that the characters may be up to, it would be Thomas. 12:38:55 AM