Devout Christians departing May 21: Yippee!

Looks like anyone who purchased for full price a 2011 calendar paid twice too much. A group of Christians is making news for pinpointing the exact end of days.

Mark your calendars. It’s May 21.

The precision of the date was determined by Christian broadcaster Harold Camping, the 89-year-old leader of the Oakland, California, based Family Radio Network.

His calculations are based on thorough Biblical readings and external factors such as the 1948 founding of Israel.

And you had to figure the Jews would have something to do with it.

“Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgement,” Camping says.

If Camping is correct then, according to Rapture believers, all the most devout Christians will be magically whisked to heaven while the rest of us face times of deadly upheaval.

Well, good riddance.

Tea Party morons will have lost their greatest constituency, the “God Hates Fags!" crowd won’t be around to torment soldiers’ funerals, and Rush Limbaugh will have so few listeners he’ll be relegated to a static-filled backwater AM channels.

Yes, Rush’s listeners may be going to heaven, but he’s not going anywhere.

I’d love to see how the rest of us could do on solving problems like the spread of AIDS and global warming without having meddling Christians around to tell us things like condoms and compact fluorescent light bulbs are the devil’s playthings.

We could enact some common sense gun laws, build temples devoted to ecumenical peace near Ground Zero and -- who knows? -- maybe even persuade Simon Cowell to return and save “American Idol.”

For me, hating Christians is an act of self-loathing because I’ve always considered myself one.

Yes, I think I’m one of the baptized good guys. I kneel down and pray to God and Jesus every night. I do unto others as I’d have them do unto me. It’s my faith and I revere essential Christian tenets of love and forgiveness. 

But guys like me don’t make the true Christian cut because we entertain the cosmic possibility that just maybe we’re wrong.

We can believe, but we cannot know.

That’s why three of my favorite musings on the subject of religion are firmly secular thoughts from a trio of monumental men.

The first is from Thomas Jefferson who said, “Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there is one, He must more approve of the homage to reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

Then there’s this from Henry David Thoreau who on his deathbed was asked if he’d made his peace with the Lord. Thoreau’s sublime response: “We’ve never quarreled.”

The third is from my late grandfather who shortly before his death at 98 said he was hoping he’d get to meet God to ask him, “Now, I know you created heaven and earth, but who or what created you?”

A heaven with the Christians who say they can divine things like when God plans to flip the big “off” switch is a heaven I do not wish to attend.

All the people will have the same boring haircuts. They’ll say the same sanctimonious things. They’ll be Dallas Cowboy fans. They’ll still find reasons to think they’re superior to other less pale Christians.

I’ve been to parties like that and they seemed to last an eternity.

I cannot begin to fathom how long an actual eternity like that would seem.

So, go ahead, you true believers, and rise up to your exclusionary stick-up-the-ass heaven, the one that will make lilly white places like Augusta National seem diverse and hip.

I’m staying here with my friends, the ones who like to drink, smoke, swear and screw.

Sure, if Camping and his followers are correct we may be in for some historically tough times.

But we’ll give it hell.

And in many ways, that will seem like a heavenly alternative to what the most devout Christians have always had to offer.

Cheering for a devil of an NFL celebration

Please don’t take this wrong or think me evil, but I’m rooting for a Satan worshipper to score a touchdown this weekend.

I want him to set the football down and make a demonstrative sign of gratitude to the Prince of Darkness. I’m not saying I want to see him sacrifice a virgin on the goalpost -- as if there’s one to be found at any 70,000-seat NFL colosseum.

I’d just like to see some humble gesture to show the devil that, hey, this one’s for you.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the god-like men who run the NFL would have a collective fit and that would please my mischievous soul.

This will be the year I’ll remember as the one the NFL came unhinged. One week it’s fining its best players tens of thousands of dollars for hits it celebrates with commemorative DVDs. The next week it defends as just referee decisions that confound logic.

I think it is in the midst of a nervous breakdown at the realization it is about to initiate a work stoppage that will cause the game grievous harm.

And through it all they simply ooze arrogance over the league belief that it knows what’s best for America.

No where is this more apparent than in the league crackdown on excessive celebrations. It doesn’t want any one doing any dances, donning any costumes or smuggling fireworks in their jock straps.

It’s gotten so bad the officials flagged two Dallas Cowboys who merely chest bumped, a move that infuriated -- speaking of Satan -- Cowboy owner Jerry Jones.

Fifty years ago there was no such thing as excessive celebrations. Stoic midwest farm boys would score touchdowns, hand the ball to the ref, and line up for the extra point.

But America’s changed and so has the NFL.

Today many of the men scoring most of the touchdowns are urban blacks from impoverished backgrounds. Newly enriched, some of them now flash gold teeth, wear $15,000 mink coats and drive Hummers tricked out with things like hot tubs.

For them, excess is something to celebrate.

The exemplar of this is the artist formerly known as Chad Johnson. He’s paid to play wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals. But as anyone who's ever watched him knows, he’s a performance artist who plays for himself.

He changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco (his number’s 85) and was the greatest end zone celebrant the game’s ever known.

He didn’t just dance. He performed skits. Clearly, he practiced what he’d do after he scored a touchdown as intently as he did the skills needed to score touchdowns in the first place.

My favorite was when he put the ball down and did his “Lord of the Dance” impersonation.

This gold-toothed, 6-foot-1, ebony-skinned gazelle for just a moment convinced me he was a plucky little leprechaun. It was featured on all the sports highlight shows, which was its sole purpose. 

I thought it was marvelous, but stoic midwest farm boys, the kind who now run the NFL, were outraged. 

They want flashy blacks to play football and attract that demographic, but when they score points they want them to act like pro golfers after sinking a long par putt.

Meanwhile, all this is going on while one excessive celebration is overlooked nearly every game.

Yes, it’s the “Praise Jesus!” touchdown celebration. The player scores, kneels down, head reverentially bowed and then leaps skyward to say something like, “Thank you, Lord, for allowing the defense to part long enough for me to score for your greater glory and so I can fulfill a lucrative bonus clause in my multi-million dollar contract. Now, how about that two-point conversion!”

But no official would dare flag a player for a praise Jesus celebration.

That’s why I want to see a Satan worshipper score and later inform reporters his gestures were to celebrate his dark under lord.

It would infuriate the holy rollers who run and support the NFL. They’d want to run him out of the league.

But it’s an obvious freedom of speech issue. Either you’re allowed to celebrate in your own way or you’re not. 

To be clear, I do not worship Satan or advocate others to do so. 

And it’s certainly not God I resent.

It’s all the men who act like Him. To hell with them.

A night with all the groan-ups

This weekend was yet another reminder that I’m just not cut out for the parent thing. Sure, I’m good about spending time with the kids, the love, the discipline and the misguided instruction that will likely lead to years of psychotherapy for the both of them.

It’s giving up my time to spend it with other parents that forever grates on me. Saturday was a case in point. It was the annual cheerleader and midget football combined banquet. After eight weeks or so, cheerleading had come to a merciful close and there was a grand ball for about 250 cheerleaders, midget football players and their kin. And that meant mingling.

Understand, I have an innate love for my fellow man -- right up until the instant I have to mingle with a single one of them. But that’s a big unwelcome part of parenting for me.

I’ll never understand why I need to be chummy with people with whom all I really have in common is the coincidentally timed conception of our offspring. Plus, I’m suspect of any parent who gets their children involved in activities that involve adult supervision, the sole shining exception being my darling wife (yep, she found out I’m blogging and is vigilantly monitoring 8Days2Amish for perceived slights).

The first disappointment came when I saw dozens of immaculately uniformed U.S. Marines of all ages crowding around the upstairs bar to celebrate the proud 233rd birthday of the Corps. I was calculating the odds of what would happen if I walked in and bought a round of drinks in exchange for the simple privilege of eavesdropping on their stories.

Instead, I was steered down stairs to a spacious facility that made Chuck E. Cheese seem like an ICU waiting room. In desperation, I looked for an open bar. None. It was cruelly booze-free.

It was going to be one of those excruciating functions that made me wish I’d years ago had taken up smoking. That would at least allow me a handy escape hatch to partake in the kinship of the cancer prone, the brotherhood of the butts. At least smoking parents have something in common, albeit a death wish.

Then the gods must have sensed my unease and took pity. Instead of a table full of adults, Val, I and the girls were assigned to table with four 10-year-old boys and two girls of about the same age. Here were people with whom I could commune.

“Who wants to have a spitball fight!” I screamed.

“Yea!” they yelled.

It’s more important to me be cool and feel accepted at a table full of preadolescents than it is for me to earn the said same from their parents. So I tried to ingratiate myself by telling them that I, too, was a football player and a good one. Maybe they’d heard of me.

“What’s your name?”

“Terry Bradshaw.”

It was a scheme destined to fail. They all knew Bradshaw, my eyes were doing that shifty thing they always do when I tell a real whopper and, worst of all, my daughter lashed out with venomous scorn, “He is NOT Terry Bradshaw!”

The failure of that lie meant I wouldn’t dare go up and try and fool the Marines into thinking I was one of them. And let’s be honest, I’d have trouble impersonating a Cub Scout.

So we made the best of it. The dinner with the kids was fun -- they gave me all their unwanted olives from their salads -- we talked to a few friendly parents and Josie said, “Dad, can we go home now?” about five slim minutes before I was about to secretly offer her $10 to tell Mommy she wanted to go home.

Still, there was one episode with one parent that I’ll not soon forget. Billy, one of my table buddies, truly appalled me when he told me his favorite team was the Dallas Cowboys, a team the real Bradshaw used treat like a government mule. When his father came up to scold him about not eating his salad, I interrupted to narc, “Hey, do you know you’re raising a Cowboy fan?”

He glared at me like I’d blurted out his kid was stupid (and Cowboy fandom does bring the issue to the table). Didn’t say a word. He should have just smiled at my stupid little joke and just smugly sauntered back to the table with the rest of the grown-ups. But he had to be a jerk.

It was an insult I could not let stand.

So before we left, I bet Billy he didn’t have the guts to go upstairs and not come back until he persuaded one of the old Marines to buy him a beer.

Sure, it probably could have gotten the kid in trouble with his sourpuss father but -- who knows? -- it might have led to a proud career for the young Cowboy fan.

The Marines are always looking for a few good men willing to risk it all on a dangerous mission.