Austinite Worried Heaven Won’t Be as Awesome as Austin

There is a city set upon a hill, a land flowing with craft beer and whisky, a utopia where Teslas abound and where the bodies and the beards are sculpted with an attention to detail that people in cities like Oklahoma City or Topeka or Fresno give to basic human survival. High paying jobs in technology abound for the deserving alphas that swarm to the farmers markets with their dogs, whose lives are immeasurably better than most of the members of the human species.

Twenty-eight year old mega-church attendee and software developer Boone Higgins boasted that Austin is the perfect city. “When I graduated from San Jose State, I was worried that I wouldn't find another place like the Bay Area. I had heard Austin was a sanctuary city for single young semi-Christians, but it turns out that this place is utopia. There is so much to do and see and buy, and there are so few unintelligent or unattractive people, and also virtually no children. I love it!"

As to Austin's reputation for materialism, Boone said, "The people here are rich, but in an authentic distressed-designer-jeans wearing kind of way. They are also environmentally conscious and spend their money in ways that love and respect the planet, like buying overpriced Yeti products. They give a generous minuscule amount to their mega-churches that don't seem to need it. They buy electric vehicles and solar panels and live on the lake, where they can commune with the divine in the simplicity and beauty of nature, sometimes on their boats. They don't build roads so that the trees can give us fresh air and hiking trails, which of course leads to miserable traffic, but who cares? I work in tech and live downtown and telecommute most days."

When asked whether Boone not only didn't want Austin to change, but that perhaps he didn't want to change to learn to appreciate something deeper and truer and better than Austin, like heaven, Boone responded by looking confused for a few seconds, and then sheepishly muttering, "that's deep," and then shuffling away to ponder this over a Thirsty Goat IPA and tacos.

Pastor Raises Un-Obliviousness to Theology in Radical Sermons

Sacramento, California

Local aspiring mega-church pastor Chad Simpson is venturing into some treacherous territory by attempting to raise un-obliviousness to theology at Expedition Church of Sacramento, California.

"Un-obliviousness" is a strange term, and when asked about why he isn't simply trying to "raise awareness" of theology rather than "un-obliviousness," pastor Chad said, "Christians today are like baby lambs, very easily spooked. We didn't want to carry on some sort of aggressively organized campaign to solve the overwhelming ignorance that exists in the church regarding the crucial doctrines of the faith. That would scare them off. We still want them happy in their relationship with Jesus and don't want to change our emotionally comforting and emotionally stimulating services. We are only occasionally, for a few subtle seconds, helping our people see that theological ideas exist out there and that some Christians find them important and even defining of the Christian faith. Think of it as an experiment. We are only taking baby steps here."

The format of this radical step is for the pastor to drop in a key theological term here and there, within the flow of the sermon, as if he were some seminary professor for a few seconds. After the term is presented and loosely tied into the flow of the sermon, the pastor will then quickly return to his normal charismatic storytelling and jokes and self-help and kitschy moralism, using the Bible as a spring board of course.

When asked why he would even bother to do this if the theological content is to be so quickly subsumed into the noise of modern life and the general demand for fluffiness, the pastor replied, "While it is true that our primary mission is evangelical, our pastoral staff wanted to try something different than simple evangelism and service projects and rock style worship. We thought we would spice things up a bit by doing some things to engage the minds of our people. Obviously it is a deep dive when we talk about things like depravity or regeneration or election or the Trinity for a few seconds--appropriately supported by visual graphics of course--but we are committed to helping our people see if the mind and the faith have anything at all to do with each other. Don't get me wrong. We aren't crazy here. We will only do this so long as it doesn't harm the numbers that fuel our tithe revenue. Our goal is modest. If we can help just one Christian become un-oblivious to theology, then that probably is a win."

Man With Metaphysical Dysphoria Identifies as The Concept of 3.141

Los Angeles, California

Discrimination against those human beings who don’t feel like human beings is a serious and growing problem, say experts. One such case is the story of Pi, who came out recently as the number 3.141. When asked why he carries his decimal point to the third place rather than the second, he said simply that he was "offended that we would assume his decimal position, and that he was non-binary.” Obviously!

“Being homo sapiens is a biological fact, but the concept of ‘humanity’ is a social construct," Pi insisted. It appears that Pi and his disciples have seen some ridiculous, fatuous, obviously disanalagous connection between the idea that gender identity is unrelated to physiological and genetic strictures and their own position that physiological and genetic strictures like homo sapiens have little to do with how we define "humanity."

When asked if he meant to be wholly conceptual and abstract, like numbers, in which case presumably he would lose his human characteristics, like motion, speech, interaction, etc, he insisted that we were again, "imposing the binary categorizations” of "number" and "humanity" on him, and that, as stated before, he was "non-binary." In short, he is both a number and a human, as he defines himself. In fact, Pi envisions a world where there are no foolish categories, like a right way to be human and the like. When we asked him if his views on these things are right and that others who hold to binaries are thinking wrongly, which of course would be an obvious contradiction, he only responded by disappearing into the silence of his purely rational numerical self. 

Progressive Church to Have Vegan, Pescatarian, Gluten-Free Pot-Luck

Bolder, Colorado

In an effort to more fully reverence the planet and create sustainable pot-lucking practices, Infinite Sustainability Church of Bolder, Colorado recently held its first "Mother Earth Potluck."

After the service, in which congregants praised various deities in various languages in various ways, like some great jazz concert to every imagined deity, including a group vowing silence in reverence to the "unknown god," the community of Infinite Sustainability joined together in feasting and pharmaceuticals. There were many dishes for the community to enjoy, but some of the favorites were:

1. Lentils on a bed of grass and julienned Lebanese cedar. This was paired with a mulled hemp wine.

2. A mini pot of CBD infused compost with succulent earthworms.

3. For the pescatarians, a live minnow stew in a seawater broth with picked kelp.

4. And for dessert, the curdled secretions of the Himalayan mountain goat, sprinkled with candied crickets over a gluten free mound of organic coconut flour.

One of the community members, Zoe Earthrider Smith, said of the event, "It is beautiful to see so many people of different races and sexual identities and religions come together to the glory and beauty and pleasure of Mother Gaia.”

Unfortunately, one of the vegans inadvertently partook of the fish stew and had to be ceremonially purged, which is something like a biological exorcism too frightening to describe here.

All in all, the event was an enormous success, so much so that planners are already excited about next month's potluck, in which they hope to double the attendance to twelve.