The 2005 Summer Religious Fashion Show

Pink is the new pink.According to every single store in the world selling women's' clothing, pink is the hottest and hippest color this summer. Pink. PINK. PINK!!! I'm sure the fashion industry spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours coming up with such a ground breaking fantastic new trend. I mean, come on, it's pink! What a revolutionary color that nobody anywhere has ever suggested appear on the female wardrobe! Maybe the next hot trend will be something equally awesome like "pants with zippers" or "having hair on your head."

While every magazine in existence may be covering the exciting "pink" trend for this summer, I found myself unable to locate a single magazine listing the hottest new religions and beliefs for this year's working woman. How on Earth are females supposed to know what they should think, wear, and buy if magazines aren't explicitly telling them with a series of easy-to-read paragraphs separated by key floating bold-print sentences? Once again, Something Awful is here to fill the gaping void from the consumer-created hole in your soul, presenting you, the viewer, with the hottest and most popular beliefs for this coming summer. Ladies, get on down to your nearest church and let your friends know how utterly hip you are!

Yeah, I understand Spiderman helping Moses, but what's with the flying fish!Members: 1,995,229,000
Book of Choice: "The Bible"
Fundamental Beliefs: The Bible was written directly by God, although it may have been edited by Jesus and spell-checked by the Holy Ghost, who isn't really as much of a ghost as he is an excellent print editor. God is the creator of all things, from toaster ovens and zebras, to lung cancer and Charlie Sheen. Satan is god's adversary, so if we want to get in on His good side, we should do things to piss off the devil, like refuse to engage in sexual intercourse with homosexual men, no matter how charismatic they may appear. Although Jesus was born, died, and came back to life again, he'll supposedly visit the Earth one more time, perhaps just to check up on the whole "religion" deal he created or possibly to cancel his Providian Visa credit card, which as far as I know, is something only He has the powers to accomplish.

Spiritual Overview: Christianity sometimes receives a bad rap for its more obnoxious followers, who are adamantly convinced both Jesus and his dad are really concerned with their devotion to shrieking on late-night TV shows and begging for money so they can build a solid-gold swimming pool in the shape of their huge-haired mistress' vulva. This, however, is a simple rule-of-numbers misconception; the more fans that obsess over a particular subject, the greater a chance some of those fans will start acting like your drunk Uncle Joe the night he got sloshed on egg nog and fell off the roof. Take the Boston Red Sox for example. This team has hundreds of thousand of fans all over the globe, and at least half of them refuse to ever stop talking about baseball and why their team is so talented and awesome that they will not only win the World Series, but there's an excellent chance they'll additionally claim the Super Bowl and Brickyard 400. Boston isn't so much a city as it is a brain disease.

Is this a man you'd trust with your boat?

All Christians believe in a book called "The Bible," which is the basis of an upcoming Dreamworks animated feature film about a goofy hippo's attempt to free a monkey from a group of angry Roman lions with comical lisps. The Bible teaches people to respect everybody, treat all living creatures with love, and work on making the entire planet a better place to live. Fundamentalist Christians believe in a slightly different translation, one along the lines of "Jesus loves those who alienate everybody as much as possible while simultaneously making your religion look less appealing than a salad bowl filled to the brim with medical waste and severed puppy dog eyes," which makes their beliefs a little less palatable to the more mainstream people.

The Bible is basically broken into two sections: the Old Testament, which is all about God blowing people up and killing their children, and the New Testament, where God doesn't blow as many people up or kill their children, but He strongly alludes to it. It also includes a bunch of letters people wrote to God while traveling from one desert to another, and these letters act sort of like the bonus features on a DVD. "I didn't buy this Bible for the letters to God," a pleased customer once confided to me outside a Border's book store. "But they sure add a lot to the back story." Rumors of a "Bible: The Director's Cut" have so far proven to be false, but many Christians still hold hope.

While the Bible contains many excellent stories about water and wine and car chases through bustling metropolitan centers, it also features a lot of goofy stuff that doesn't make too much sense. For example, the Bible says 42 kids were killed by two bears after they made fun of a bald man. I can only image the horrible consequences of teasing somebody with a mullet. Also there's the whole book of Ezekiel, which is like a written version of a Grateful Dead concert. Most Christians seem to somehow forget about these stories when talking about how awesome the Bible is, which is odd because if I was a member of a religion that talked about dead kids and UFOs, I'd be all up about it. "Yeah, that's right, I'm one of the guys who believes in the religious miracle of ZOMBIES" and I'd just hope with all my might that they weren't carrying a bottle of mace.

Famous Christians include Willie Aames (played "Buddy Lembeck" on "Charles in Charge" and is now "Bibleman"), Dolly Parton (first woman to officially become over 50% artificial), and R. Kelly (famous adult rapper / child raper).

Your typical atheist.Members: 1,782,809,000
Book of Choice: "The South Beach Diet"
Fundamental Beliefs: Atheists don't have any fundamental beliefs, except possibly the belief that all other religions are annoying enough to warrant them staying at home and smoking pot all day while watching reruns of "Wheel of Fortune" and giggling uncontrollably whenever somebody chooses the letter "p." If you approach an atheist on the street and ask them what they believe, they'll respond with something like "I believe I'm late for lunch" or "I believe you need a tissue for your nose" and then they'll punch you in the face, causing your nose to start gushing blood like a faucet. Never ask an atheist what they believe or else they'll start going crazy and murdering shit like when Billy fed Gizmo after midnight.

Spiritual Overview: Atheists refuse to believe in heaven or hell, instead hoping that when they die, they'll spend eternity in a wooden box underneath six feet of dirt. This is the ultimate goal for any atheist, and during atheist religious retreats, the atheist elders will often threaten lesser members with the promise of having their corpse deposited in an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese stage where animatronic replicas of their parents will engage in jerky, mechanical sex directly in front of their lifeless body. Atheists don't believe in God, the devil, heaven, hell, Glade Plugin air fresheners, miracles, sexual healing, or most of Detroit, so you can imagine what an unbridled bag of fun they are to talk with at parties.

Atheists often choose to believe in science and technology over the idea of an omnipresent god. They claim things like "atoms" and "physics" are responsible for pretty much everything, as opposed to the universally accepted truths of "bearded guys building giant boats containing a pair of every animal" and "a dead guy's ghost magically curing diseases through television airwaves." Unfortunately, most atheists encounter a stumbling block when trying to explain the origins of the universe. If everything, every planet, every galaxy, every SCO Group lawsuit originated from a single atom which got pregnant and blew up, then what originally created this atom? Nobody knows the answer to this question, and many scientists fear the answer would shock and amaze them, like the season finale of "The OC."

Many people refer to atheists as "bizarro Christians," since everything they believe in seems to be the polar opposite. Christians believe in a god; atheists don't believe in anything. Christians think Jesus can save your soul; atheists think Hungry Man TV dinners are a quick and easy dinner solution for when they're too stoned to drive. Christians vote republican; atheists would vote democrat if they actually believed in not being so lazy. Despite the fact that nearly two billion people don't believe in a centralized religion, most atheists will go out of their way to inform you how incredibly original and individualistic they are by refusing to believe in god. These conversations usually last between six and seven hours and are surrounded by verbal masturbation for vegetarianism and the environment, in addition to lyrics from their favorite KMFDM song.

Popular atheists include Mark Twain (wrote books about rafts and painting walls), Karl Marx (invented "Communism" which, much like Real Networks' Real Player, has so far repeatedly failed to work in any form), and Sigmund Freud (psychologist who theorized all emotional problems stemmed from the innate human fascination with their parents' genitals).

Silly Muslims, that's not how the US flag looks! Jeez, can't you guys even do any simple research?Members: 1,126,325,000
Book of Choice: "The Qur'an" and "The Sunnah"
Fundamental Beliefs: Much like Christianity, a few bad apples have managed to spoil the reputation of Muslims across the world. Unfortunately, instead of simply going rotten, the Islamic bad apples have a tendency to explode and kill innocent children eating apples, which makes me wonder why Muslims haven't outlawed fruit yet. While the Qur'an is still a tremendously popular book, it has unfortunately been eclipsed by 50 Cent's song "Ghetto Qua Ran," which looks very similar and takes up the first five pages when doing a Google search. I think this means Muslims must now photograph themselves wearing no shirt and looking really annoyed while they pray to 50 Cent and his legion of prison-bound posse members for a new set of meaningless tattoos.

Spiritual Overview: Muslims receive a pretty bad rap from white people because their only exposure to them lies in eight-second video clips shown on the local news with the headline "MIDDLE EAST RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE KILLS LEMONADE FACTORY EMPLOYEE AND HIS 57 SONS" floating below it. Then there was Malcolm X, a very famous American Muslim who promoted violence and the concept of Denzel Washington becoming a Hollywood lead actor. Despite the fact that both Muslims and Christians share fundamentally similar religious beliefs, these two groups find it nearly impossible to work side by side, brother by brother, to group up, combine their powers, and successfully alienate everybody else in the world. According to Jack Chick, a guy who puts the "mental" into "fundamentalist," Muslims essentially worship a giant glowing bearded Satan.

Second, if you read the Qur'an's description of Allah, and read the Bible's description of God, it becomes obvious you are reading about two different persons. Allah orders his followers to kill those who deny Islam, while God instructs us to love our enemies. Allah had no son while God sent His Son to die for sinful men. Allah is "unknowable" while God seeks a personal relationship with His creation, man.

Nobody showed up for the flag burning these two guys organized. I'm sorry :(.

I'm assuming they don't publicize that on the information pamphlets when trying to convert people to Muslim. "So what's this I hear about your god being false, a Satanic counterfeit whose worship will directly lead me into the fiery gates of hell?" a prospective Muslim might ask. "Well, yeah there's that, you know, the whole burning in hell for all eternity deal," the representative would reply. "But you get to force your wife to wear a big black blanket whenever she goes to the Piggly Wiggly. Think about that!" Christians cannot make their wives place blankets on their head, but can suggest they wear sunglasses to cover up the black eyes resulting from accidentally "falling down the stairs" after the Green Bay Packers lost on Monday Night Football. Atheists don't have wives because they don't believe in taking showers or losing all the weight they gained during a 48-hour nonstop dungeon mastering session.

There's also something in the Qur'an about a pregnant hermaphrodite camel who was born in a rock and drank all the water in a village, leaving none for the other animals. But on the positive side, the pregnant hermaphrodite camel provided enough milk for everybody to drink, assuming there was a bunch of folks lined up at the "FREE PREGNANT HERMAPHRODITE CAMEL ROCK MILK" booth. A few guys "plotted to hamstring then kill the she-camel," which really shouldn't come as a shock to anybody not expecting such a monstrosity of nature to spontaneously appear in their town and drink all their water. Three days after they killed it, Allah destroyed their town and everybody living there in an earthquake. The moral of this story is either "don't screw around with thirsty pregnant hermaphrodite camels born inside rocks" or alternatively "don't make up Qur'an stories after taking cold pills."

Some people see Islam as a very primitive, backwards religion, since women are treated as second-class citizens, as opposed to the 1.8-class citizens the rest of the world treats them like. Many Muslim countries forbid women to vote, hold government positions, obtain any education beyond watching puppet shows on public access television, breathe during non-breathing hours, or sleep in a bed not composed entirely of rocks and spikes. If a woman is caught violating any of these, she is immediately stoned to death by crowds of Muslims trained to throw fastballs like Nolan Ryan. If somebody refuses to throw stones at the woman, then they too are stoned. If somebody throws a stone and it misses the woman, then they are stoned to death as well. Once the people are done murdering everybody scheduled to be murdered, they throw more stones at the stones to make sure nobody is able to somehow come into contact with the sin-covered rocks. All these religious activities prepare young Muslims for an exciting world in both the concrete and landscaping industries.

As mentioned above, famous Muslims include Malcolm X (angry black man who futilely preached acceptance of shooting other people to death just as long as those other people weren't him), Muhammad Ali (beat a lot of people up while rapping about wildlife), and a bunch of guys who started crying and moaning when prostitutes showed them their breasts. Fundamentalist Muslims are the only religious zealots who favor the touch of bombs over boobs. If you convert to Islam, you gain the additional benefit of seeing your name appear on a large government watch list, which I assume you can use to find new friends.

I don't know who this guy is, but he's under citizen's arrest for stealing Dilbert's boss's hair.HINDUS: A religion of over 793,075,000, entirely funded by tech support call center desk income.

BUDDHISTS: The ultimate religious pansies. They talk a lot about animals and flowers and stuff, which I guess would be really interesting if you wanted to work for a homosexual zoo keeper.

SIKHS: I don't know what this is, I think it's people who worship Emperor Palpatine.

JEWS: They run all the banks and media with their invisible nanobots and mind control gas. But seriously, who the hell would even want to run a bank? It must be boring as hell. Numbers stocks accounts blah blah blah who cares about banks?

BAHA'IS: I had no idea this was even a word until today. It appears to be the Wal-Mart of religions, which has a little of something for everybody at a discounted price. Not to be confused with the religion of Bauhaus, whose primary religious text is a copy of Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman."

CONFUCIANS: An entire religion dedicated to a series of "Deep Thoughts" published hundreds of years ago. Confucius used to say things like, "It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." Yeah right! What if you're a bus driver? Moron.

JAINS: A group of people named Jane. Members include Jane Curtain, Jane Fonda, and Sam Jain.

SHINTOISTS: The members of this religion focus more on having parties and celebrations than sitting in a church and mulling over tedious core beliefs. It's as if Japan had one central frat house that could accommodate around three million people.

SCIENTOLOGISTS: My wife and I visited the Scientology "church" in San Diego a couple weeks ago. A representative there claimed there were "over 10 million members" of the church, shortly before informing us "10% of the population is certifiably insane. Not like crazy-insane, but like Darth Vadar insane." Then he hooked me up to his e-Meter and attempted to read my mind. I'm not kidding.

MORMONISM: They have their own state. It's the state of complete brain atrophy. Mormons believe a bunch of crap some convicted criminal named "Joseph Smith" made up about golden plates and magic sunglasses or something. Some people claim Mormonism isn't a cult, but you should keep in mind some people also liked the movie "Robocop 3."

Whew! What an exciting, trendy summer to be alive! I hope this year's Summer Religious Guide has helped steer you in the direction of your dream religion so you can become the happy, successful, easily suggestible human being you've always dreamed of! And, if not, at least you can still wear pink while trying to do so.

I've Been Snookered By Three Youths

This Dirt is Daily! Click here to read some stupid crap I typed in after writing today's update! Wow, it's like somebody gives a crap!

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)