Atom Blog

While I have enjoyed skewering Obama over the election season, I must admit it’s not my favorite thing to do.  The problem with making fun of politicians is that partisanship always limits how many people you can offend with it.  As a professional smart ass, I demand much more of myself.  Luckily, so much wacky shit happened in the world of religion in the last week that I’m pretty certain I’ll be able to conjure some hate from all of you.  A boy can dream, right?

Never give up hope!
 

Fun With Fatwas
Salman Rushdie announced last week that he was preparing to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fatwa issued for his death for the sacrilegious content of his novel The Satanic Verses.  For the uninitiated, a fatwa is an official ruling in Islam, usually issued by religious scholars wishing to clarify why evils like the polio vaccine, unclothed sex, and pokemon are to be scorned.  Polio-vaccinated Muslim pokemon having unclothed sex is also forbidden by extension, so make sure they’re wearing socks or some form of lingerie.
 

Not shown – tiny pokebandages on the inoculation site.  I also fuzzed out their genitals.
 

He indicated he wouldn’t be making a big deal celebrating the anniversary, opting for a quiet dinner with friends in his secret underground bunker at an undisclosed time.

Papal Infallibility Goes Digital
Since the Catholic church’s embrace of Galileo’s heliocentric model of our universe in 1992, it can’t get enough of this crazy "science" stuff.  This has led to adopting the technology to create a YouTube channel for Pope Benedict XVI (username: lonelypope16). In his first address he took a moment to warn people of the social dangers of immersion in online media in a vlog entitled "Irony".

Though it hasn’t gone public yet, atom.com has inserted a mole into the Vatican (under the alias Cardinal Shenanigans) that has leaked the Pope’s forthcoming Facebook page:
 

Caught Red-Hoofed
One of Nigeria’s largest newspapers recently published a story about a car theft intercepted by their police force.  Unfortunately, the crime fighters’ diligence was only partially repaid, as one of the two suspects was able to escape by transforming into a goat.

Though this is just a re-enactment, the crime could have happened just like this
 

This may sound a bit far-fetched, but the belief of black magic is common in more remote, rural areas of Nigeria.  It doesn’t help that goats are notorious for gang violence in the region as well.

If brought up on charges, the goat will be tried in a local court of law by a jury of his peers:

It’s worse than you think – these are the goats that were too stupid to get out of jury duty
 

Scandalous Sex Wasn’t The Scandal
Say what you will about Ted Haggard’s legacy, he certainly set the bar high for Christian sex scandals.  These days when the media hears about a new megachurch sex scandal they usually come to find out it’s just a report that Ted actually had a good deal more gay sex than was previously alleged.  

Still, even in the wake of Ted’s sexual aftershocks, one runner-up story did emerge last week. A pastor in the Church of Sweden was given a disciplinary warning for his "unacceptable lifestyle" when an internal investigation revealed unsavory details of a recent incident.  The incident in question involved the pastor inviting a man over to join he and his wife (also a pastor) for dinner followed by a sauna threesome (or, as the Swedes call it, "dessert").  However, the chlorinated sex chowder was not the cause for concern.  The church took offense at the male pastor slamming his wife’s head into the wall when he discovered her deleting pictures of the incident from their digital camera.

The church expressed regret for the pastor’s actions, but moreso for being denied frothy three-way imagery.

Ian Cheesman makes apostasy even more fun over at www.internetsensation.com, just in case you haven’t had your fill.

“Modern medicine” is quickly becoming an oxymoron, like “military intelligence” or “the smart Olsen sister”.  Long past is the time where it was laying diseases down like red-shirted Star Trek officers surveying the planet Bombfracturestab during its shrapnel-rain season. There is some suspicion that early science was just cherry-picking the easy diseases like rickets (”Hmmm…do you think it could have anything to do with those toxic, black plumes of smoke obliterating all sunlight?”)  and the lesser known Surrenderitis.  Medical journals, all too aware of the dearth of groundbreaking research, is relegated to publishing reports like these.

DOCTOR CURES AIDS! (Apart from not curing it)

To any filthy whores with a penchant for ignoring parenthetical asides, please stop cheering and soliciting passerby with an all-access pass to your tender vittles.  This is about to take a turn for the worse.

The recent medical breaththrough arrived courtesy of a patient who was afflicted with end-stage Leukemia and was HIV positive.  There is no known connection between the two diseases, but doctors are pretty certain that God hates this guy.

“I’m coming for your ass!”

Dr. Gero Hütter was treating the patient for the Leukemia using a bone marrow transplant.  Upon the patient’s recovery from the procedure, Dr. Hütter noted there were absolutely no traces of the HIV and immediately ran out into the hospital’s lobby to loudly declare “I am the greatest motherfucking doctor of all time!”.  There’s no indication if the patient survived the cancer, but even if not Dr. Hütter would still be batting .500 which is major league any way you slice it.

There are just a couple of minor caveats to consider.  The technological breakthrough is contingent on getting a marrow transplant from someone who is already born immune to the AIDS virus.  And the genetic expression comes with the trade off of being more likely to die from West Nile virus. And the transplant procedure kills up to 30% of patients.  And it’s entirely possible that AIDS will further mutate to defeat this particular “invulnerability”.  Apart from that, it’s a lock.

This has far-reaching potential.  If there are other similarly healthy people that would be willing to let doctors randomly scoop at their viscera with a melon-baller for depositing in sick people, the frontiers are endless.

HEART ATTACKS MAY BE BAD FOR YOUR HEART

The Institute For Advancement Of The Utterly Apparent recently released a cardiac study lead by Dr. Obvious.  After an investment of thousands of tax dollars and countless man hours pensively tranfering the contents of one beaker to another, they reached the conclusion that there is an “elevated death risk after heart attack“. The institute hopes to use the notoriety from this publication to facilitate funding for their “Using decapitation as a modality to prevent headaches” study.

Eastern doctors have long embraced the healing power of the sword

The Mayo clinic study actually did demonstrate that there is a four-fold increase in sudden cardiac death during the 30 days following the initial cardiac arrest.  That means affected patients should rest at least 32 days before resuming their training regiment of shotgunning nachos prior to explosive up-hill runs.

“Just doing a little carbo-loading before the big race!”

DOCTORS CONTEMPLATE DIAGNOSTIC OPTION

OF “SOMEWHAT DEAD”

We understand that doctors are not miracle workers.  Treatment options are sometimes limited and often there is nothing that can be done for a patient.  However, when our time comes and we slip off this mortal coil, the one thing we should be able to count on not hearing is “He looks pretty dead, but it’s hard to say.  You’re sure he hasn’t even moved a little today?”

“I’d like to bring in a second opinion on this.”

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has recognized this need and begun updating UK guidelines for drawing that line.  They insert guidance on problematic areas like determing brain death, which can be questionable if drugs are present in the system or if anyone has recently performed an incantation from the Necronomicon to raise an army of the undead.  The guidelines will detail a simple, hands-on methodology that will encourage doctors to eschew technological diagnostics in favor of more classical methods.  That’s why all physicians are going to be bestowed their own body-poking stick:

“If you are not 100% clear on where it is okay to poke them, please see myself and the resident psychologist ASAP.”

Ian Cheesman is not a licensed medical professional.  His opinions are only informed by a few classes in college and those impromptu surgeries he performed on random hobos.  He’s beginning to think he’s shared too much here.