From an Ain't It Cool News review of The Passion of the Christ and Dawn of the Dead. This cracked me up, and it's as charmingly insensitive as my wanting to yell "H it him again! I don't feel forgiven yet!"

"I'll make the Jesus review quick -- it fucking rules. It made me yell, "Jesus Christ on a cross!" even the scenes that didn't have Jesus Christ on a cross. This one's directed by Mel Gibson and he obviously lea rned some shit from LETHAL WEAPON 2 because he gets right to the action. There's a shot of the moon and then right away there's gladiator dudes beating the crap out of a bunch of hippies. Jesus is this guy with a super-powered left hand -- it's like he ca n give people Wolverine powers by touching them with his left hand. He makes a guy's ear grow back but before you know it the gladiator dudes arrest him and beat the be-jeezus out of Jesus for two straight hours. Then they nail him to a cross, and he dies, but not after bleeding enough blood to fill up everyone in CADDYSHACK plus that fat vampire dude in the first BLADE movie. Everyone's pissed at Jesus. They all want him dead. But this is back in Bible times, when they didn't have shotguns and chainsaws, and back then when you want to kill a superhero you have to rain two hours of whomp-ass on him and then nail him to something, sort of like a message to other superheroes. And they must have gotten the message, because there weren't any more superheroes until Superman."

Kristofer and I have been playing a text-based online game called Nation States. You choose a name for your country, answer a few questions to work out the country's political structure, and you're good to go.

Ea ch day, a new political issue comes before your government. My nation, The Holy Replublic of Pardes, had to decide today about uranium found in a rain forest. Do I go in and bulldoze everything to get it, restrict mining to preserve as much of the environment as possible, or keep it off limits to protect the rain forest? Do I ignore the problem altogether? The choices you make will introduce subtle changes into your country's infrastructure.

It's really sort of a political choose-your-own-adventure game. There's no set goal, although there are forums for discussion and a Nation States version of the United Nations.

Players can develop regions so their friends can play in the same area. Kristofer and I have our countries in a region he created called Tattooine. His country is a very liberal civil rights paradise, while I'm playing as a despotic, iron-fisted theocracy along the lines of The Republic of Gilead in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Naturally, our respective nations are constantly poised on the brink of war. There are no actual wars in the game, but players in the same region may leave messages for each other; we do a lot of saber rattling.

So, here's an open call if anyone out there is interested: go to Nation States, create a country, and then move to the region of Tattooine. My country needs room to expand, so I need other nations in the area so I can pretend to want to invade them..

I'm wondering what's on the agenda for tonight's PFLAG Parkersburg meeting. I'm sure the constant changes in the gay marriage situation will be discussed.

If you're in the Parkersburg area, why not stop in? They meet at 7p.m. at the Red Cross building on Market Street.

As if West Virginian's didn't have to work hard enough to erase the image of being inbred hicks, Abercrombie & Fitch is selling a shirt with the slogan "It's all relative in West Virginia. Naturally Gov. Wise is pissed.

I think we're missing out on something. Instead of focusing on the "I'm sleeping with my cousin" aspect of the phrase, why not argue that it's nice of them to recognize our work in physics?

It's a clever shirt, although I don't know why anyone is surprised. This is the company that thought Asian stereotypes like "Two Wongs Can Make it White" were the height of wit. Ancient Chinese secret, huh?