Mmmmm...Sacrilicious!

Communion wafers suck more moisture from your mouth than sin from your soul. The wine is little better, a bitter vinegary solution whose aftertaste is almost worse than total oral dehydration. But all that is behind us, now that we have Chocolate Deities!

The sacred heart of Jesus is available in dark, milk, and "white" chocolate (though it's a whole separate sin to call something without any actual cacao "chocolate"), or hand-painted.

Not a Christian? Not a problem! The pagan icon of your choice is also available in your choice of chocolates: Buddha, Krishna, and even Ixchel! Plus totem animals and trendy symbols, all beautifully molded and gorgeously giftwrapped; deliciously worthy of the deity whose name you moan as you consume it with sticky relish.

Chocolate is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Chocolate Deities is clearly proof that God likes chocolate and has a bitchin' sense of humor.

Killing Children With Diplomacy

See, this is why I always ask my daughter what ideas she has when we have a problem to solve.

Kids don't care about politics or the bottom line, they just want to help. You want to keep kids from dying of water-borne diseases? You don't hire a committee, you just go door-to-door and teach them how to wash their hands.

The teenagers tend to avoid politics and corporate agendas and focus on cooperative action. They're here to learn about each other's projects and spread the word to more children.

"We must all fight together to change our lives and those of others," says Dolly, who was flown here from her bamboo-and-tin home by the United Nations Children's Fund "How can we stand by and let children die if there are solutions?"

Vanessa Tobin, chief of UNICEF's water and sanitation section, appreciates the straightforward talk. "There's no diplomacy in their dialogue. It's all very direct and very honest."

Think of all we could achieve if we could take this simple attitude of desiring to benefit others, rather than trying to benefit our own reputations, our corporations or our governments.

Put a teenager in the White House, not some selfish grizzled career politician. At least teenagers care about fairness.

Cancer: Now With Bubbles!

I don't know about you, but there will be no more soda in my family. I had allowed citrusy caffeine free soda on rare occasions, but it looks like they're the biggest benzene factories of all.

I'm looking forward to the various denial responses about how "my uncle/sister/neighbor drank this stuff growing up and is fine". If other people want to play chemical Russian Roulette with their family's health, they can go right ahead, but I hope they don't expect me to play along to justify it. One cancer scare was enough for me, thanks.

I'm SO Sorry About Missouri #412

First there was Rush Limbaugh. Then John Ashcroft (though to be fair, he was governor before anyone had even heard of Rush). And that whole Assembly Of God Church thing. There's far, far more, but it would take too long to catalog. Rest assured, Missouri has a long and sordid history of closed minded psuedo-religious idiots with loud voices. This stunningly unconstitutional attempt to create an official religion in the Gret Stet of Mizurah is no less than the final nail in the coffin of declaring our Official State Identity as backwards and hateful.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "it is better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." And so those of us who go quietly about our lives are lumped by geographic association with those who have removed all doubt. Damn irritating, really.

On behalf of all Missourians who do not own every single installation in the Left Behind series, or think that it is icky to be gay (but okay to be spanked by other men if you stray from violent, oppressive, fear-crusted christianity), or think that the separation of church and state is a road block to heaven on earth, I apologize. Really, truly. I'm so sorry my state is an asshole.

We are not all like that, I swear. Many of my favorite humans come from Missouri. The folks I know are wonderfully creative and loving and messy and experimental and open and friendly and giggly and don't really care what you do as long as it's not hurting anybody or cramming anybody's beliefs down anybody's throat. We are, I assure you, collectively rolling our eyes.

Please believe this won't go anywhere. Missouri is a joke. This latest attempt is just another sad, pathetic punchline in a comedy routine that became Not Funny a long, long time ago.