Tubing down the river on a hot summer's day is a tradition in the south, maybe elsewhere.

A strip club in Texas is planning a tubing excursion featuring its dancers/strippers, the AP reported.

The New Braunfels city council isn't too happy about it. They think it's planned as a protest against recent ordinances they've enacted regarding rowdy behavior on the river.

"We're not hookers, dope dealers or Mafia thugs," the club's manager said, noting that the strippers will be appropriately dressed. "We're just coming to have a good time."

City Councilman Ken Valentine isn't so sure.

"I'm really disappointed that this is going to occur on Sunday, when people should be in church," he said. "I hope they behave themselves and keep their clothes on, but I'm not sure they will because strippers are trained to take off their clothes."

Trained? Do you need training to drop your swimsuit while floating down a river?

Image: They should be in church.

Strippers | Texas | Christians | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

Way back in 1926, the Southern Baptist Convention urged its members to "just say no" to beauty pageants.

WHEREAS, The purity and sanctity of the home depends upon a proper respect for and safeguarding of our girls; and

WHEREAS, "Beauty contests" and so-called "bathing revues" are evil and evil only, and tend to lower true and genuine respect for womanhood, emphasizing and displaying only purely physical charm above spiritual and intellectual attainments,

THEREFORE, We, the Southern Baptist Convention do deplore and condemn all such contests and revues.

It's never been revoked. Apparently it's one of those sins still on the Baptist books, along with alcohol use and homosexuality.

In May, 2006 Lakewood Baptist Church of Gainesville, Georgia, a Southern Baptist Convention member church, according to Founders.org, held a beauty pageant for women of all ages, from Ms. Infant Miss (6-12 months) to Senior Ms. (age 55 and up), called the Hall County Queens for C.A.R.E. Pageant, to benefit the Hall County (Ga.) Relay for Life.

Contestants were judged "in 4 categories, each on a scale of 1-10. 1) natural beauty, 2) presentation (grace/modeling), 3) personality (smile, eye contact, introduction), and 4) over all appearance (hairstyle, dress color, fit, length, age appropriateness)"... in other words, it "[was] evil and evil only, and tend[ed] to lower true and genuine respect for womanhood, emphasizing and displaying only purely physical charm above spiritual and intellectual attainments." Or so the Southern Baptists said....

Peering a little deeper into their website we find there's a whole franchise set up to do these pageants, called Miss Christian Atlanta. Apparently it's run by two little sisters, ages 7 and 9 (shades of Jon Benet!), who between them hold the titles of 2005 Young Jr. Miss Atlanta Christian, 2005 Little Miss Gilmer County Forestry, 2005 Junior Miss Sweetheart of Georgia, 2005 Young Miss Mountain Laurel, 2004 Miss Georgia Junior Pre Teen National American Miss, 2005 Supreme Miss Atlanta Christian, 2005 Supreme Georgia Peach Princess, 2005 Little Miss Mountain Laurel, and a National title as 2005 All American Princess for National American Miss.

How great thou art!

Image: Lakewood Baptist Church beauty pageant, May 2006

Southern Baptists | Beauty Pageants | Christianity | Lakewood Baptist Church | Relay for Life | Holy Hotties | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

Today's Sun reports that an astronomer who is a fan of the Harry Potter series of books and movies, Dr. Mark Hammergren, who works at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, nominated author J.K. Rowling's name to be given to Asteroid 43844, which he discovered.

He said: "I hadn't read any of the books until the autumn of 2004. But when I did I was hooked. So I immediately thought of naming the asteroid after JK Rowling."

The International Astronomical Union accepted the nomination, and now 43844's official name is Asteroid Rowling.

So far, the Harry Potter books have sold over 300 million copies worldwide, and been turned into a hugely successful film series.

Harry Potter | J.K. Rowling | Asteroid | Asteroid Rowling | Astronomy | Mark Hammergren | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

In an amazing display of hypocrisy, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, mouthpiece for the Catholic Church, writes that the furor over the release of the film The Da Vinci Code was "much ado about nothing" and that the controversy surrounding the film was instigated by the producers of the film, not by the Church, AP reports.

Two months ago Catholics and Protestants and even Muslims were urging massive boycotts of the film. Protesters were marching outside theatres, carrying signs and passing out literature. Theatres were torched. Muslim countries banned the movie. Nuns and priests and even cheesy evangelical preachers were making public statements denouncing Satan for spreading Lies and Deceptions. People were writing nasty blogs about the "blasphemy" to their precious Lord and Savior. One fundamentalist pastor even re-wrote the ending of the book to have Robert Langdon repent of his sins and become a Christian.

Now that the movie has proven to be less than a cinematic success, the Church is saying, "Oh, pshaw! We never were worried about that."

I gotta call "bullsh*t!" You guys were about to wet your pants, you were so distraught.

The Vatican newspaper called the uproar leading up to the movie "probably the most gigantic marketing strategy of a book and a film seen in the last few decades."

Search this blog for "Da Vinci Code" and you'll find quite a few stories about the Church's fears about this movie, including:

• Da Vinci Code blamed for Welsh monk's suicide
• Catholics demand Da Vinci Code be labeled as fiction
• War on The Da Vinci Code
• This Week in God: The Da Vinci Code Edition
• The Da Vinci Code already sold out in Mexico, Italy and Spain
• Tom Hanks blasts Da Vinci Code critics
• Simply blasphemous! — Cathlic priests urge protests of The Da Vinci Code

...and many more.

Da Vinci Code | Catholic Church | Movie Reviews | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

Another one of those picture paints a thousand words moments.

Magic Mirror | Goddess | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

On Monday Boing Boing reported that last Friday the nation of India enacted a ban on blogs. Specifically, the government ordered that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) block all websites affiliated with Blogspot/Blogger, Typepad and Geocities.

That means BurningTaper.com and SacredFems.com as well as millions of other blogs can no longer be accessed from India. I guess India will just have to figure out how to survive without us until their government stops acting like they are China.

By Monday, most but not all of India's major ISPs were in compliance.

When asked why this had happened, Dr. Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue directives to ISPs, responded, "Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?"

What would Gandhi do?

Our thanks to our friend GrouchoGandhi for the heads-up on this.

India | Censorship | Blogs | Bans | BurningTaper.com | Burning Taper | SacredFems.com | Sacred Fems

This story just boggles my mind.

A standoff between Port Angeles, Washington, police and a reportedly suicidal woman with a knife ended after five hours when police finally figured out no one was home.

At least five officers, including at least one with an assault rifle, surrounded the home. It was only after a State Patrol bomb squad robot was sent into the house that they realized the house was empty.

I'm not laughing at the police, or at the alleged suicidal woman (if she ever existed)... but still, the whole system that causes things like this to happen just makes questions run through my head, like:

• How common is suicide by knife?
• Why do we care if someone threatens to commit suicide? Isn't it their life to take?
• If she's threatening to commit suicide by knife, why do we need to point an assault rifle at her?
• Why don't TV stations ever follow up on anything? This happened on Friday, and nothing new has been reported on the station's website since. Did they ever find the woman? Was she in fact suicidal or did her mother (or someone) make a false report? How much did this cost the police? Will the cost be absorbed by the departments involved or will they bill the homeowner who wasn't home? Who'll pay for the broken doors and/or windows resulting from the insertion of the robot and the throw-phone?

Port Angeles, Washington | Suicide | Left Behind | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

Imagine being the inspiration for one of the most popular rock and roll anthems of all time.

Then imagine you were also the inspiration for not one, but two, of the most popular rock love songs in history.

Imagine you're Pattie Boyd, first wife of Beatle George Harrison, who left him to marry one of his at the time best friends, Eric Clapton.

The Beatles' Something, penned by Harrison, was about Pattie. So were Clapton's Layla and later, Wonderful Tonight.

She's still rich, famous and beautiful. And now, after a 40-year silence, she's ready to tell all. She had promised never to talk about her marriage to Clapton, but then, Clapton had promised not to talk about it, either. But when Clapton signed a 3.5 million pound tell-all book deal, she found herself a publisher, too.

She now has a nearly one million pound deal to write her own story, and she's promised to leave no skeleton buried. She says Clapton is no gentleman, despite his image in recent years.

Expect her book, as well as Clapton's, on bookshelves in the fall of 2007.

Can't wait for the books? Catch up by reading her story in the London Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

Images: Then (1965) and now (2005).

Pattie Boyd | George Harrison | Eric Clapton | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

Voting closed on July 7, it says, but the poll thingie is still accepting votes, so feel free to stuff the box for your favorite felonious femme fatale.

Iowahawk has been poring over the mugshots of locked-up ladies in Corn Country for the past year. To celebrate the first anniversary of his rather strange hobby, he's set up an electronic voting booth for Miss Hoosegow 2006. Vote for your hoosegow honey today.

Pictured is Jesika, who is currently in first place (or maybe she won, if official voting really did end on July 7) with 20.3% of the vote.

Miss Hoosegow 2006 | Hoosegow Honey | Iowahawk | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

There's a website selling goddess dolls. Looks like Barbie's on her way to a Moon Dance on the Solstice or something. Maybe she's heading off for some lovin' at the Coven.

Pictured is Aphrodite, Goddess of Love.

It looks like it's the only one available right now. Guess someone's busy sewing some new clothes for the next Goddess.

Barbie | Goddess Doll | Aphrodite, Goddess of Love | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

A picture is worth a thousand words.


Thanks to Action is Eloquence blog for the link.

Sex | Rape | Self Defense | Weapon | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

We've recently discovered an interesting new blog called The Pagan Temple.

Patrick Kelley is an American pagan and witch. On his blog he propounds "on all subjects across the spectrum — from the darkness to the light, from the newsworthy to the trivial, from the mysterious to the apparent, from the magical to the commonplace, from the sacred to the profane. The Pagan Temple is a refuge from absurdity, and yet is a repository of it."

Recently he's posted a Victorian pornographic photo which led to a long comment-discussion on the identities of the participants and their psychological motivations for posing, a discourse on J. Lo's voodoo practices, a look at a Christian jihadist on the warpath against Satan, and one of my recent favorites, an article about sex during pregnancy.

Apparently Patrick spends his after-glow moments before drifting off to sleep contemplating the possibility that his passion for having sex with pregnant women is creating sex-addict babies. After all, coked-up mothers lead to coke-addicted kids, nicotine-fiends lead to baby chain-smokers, and alcoholic moms lead to tipsy tots... so he wonders if nine months of safe sex (meaning you can't get a pregnant woman pregnant) leads to sexually promiscious children.

Prude Alert: Four-letter words abound, as well as the occasional naked Victorian-era sex worker.

Sex | Pregnancy | Sexual Addiction | Victorian Porn | Pagan Temple | Witchcraft | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

Ever wonder what the backside of a Smiley Face looks like?

Click here to find out.

Thanks to Cindy Broeker for the smiles.


Smile | Smiley Face | SacredFems.com | Sacred Fems

Katherine Jhawarelall, 35, a Hindu woman living in Seaview, Durban, South Africa, claims to have the "stigmata of Jesus" on her palms, feet and stomach. She says she has healed the sick with her touch, and is the reincarnated Christian Messiah and Jewish Holy Man — Jesus Christ.

Ms. Jhawarelall has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Africa, majoring in sociology and criminology. She claims she was born with the marks on her body, but only recently figured out their meaning, and her real identity.

Mysterious markings are also appearing on walls in her house and in her garden, she said.

She claims to be "7.635 billion light years old" but says she can't remember most of it. Now even her parents believe she is the reincarnated Saviour of the World, though local officials have warned townspeople to be "wary of her revelation."

Despite her extreme age (which apparently she measures in units of distance, a very godlike quality, wouldn't you agree?), she says that on the morning of her 33rd birthday on May 15, 2004, she woke up with a swollen arm and realized there was a message written on her skin: "Happy birthday, Katherine. God gave you life."

She also claims to be the reincarnation of other gods and angels. "I carry the legacy that Jesus Christ is the Archangel Michael and He is universal. In Judaism he is Mikael, in Hinduism he is Shiva, Saraswathie, Luxmi, Lord Krishna and Shirdi Baba, in Christianity he was Jesus Christ and in Islam he is Hasrat Mikael."

Apparently she is healing people with light that shines from her stigmata. She told the Post, "In the past two years the stigmata have developed a pulse and a beam of blue or golden light can be seen emanating from the markings. I have used these markings and light to heal many sick people."

She said many people had threatened her life and "several attempts had been made to assassinate me."

Read the full article. It discusses her beliefs as well as those of her supporters and detractors. It's bizarre reading, and drives home the fact that religion can be the absolute wackiest thing on the planet. We've got Christians saying she can't be Jesus because Christians don't accept reincarnation and we've got Hindus saying she's crazy, because gods can't be reincarnated, only humans. The article tosses out plenty of quotes from all over the theological spectrum, and the only thing they all agree on is, she's not Jesus.

Reincarnation | Jesus Christ | Second Coming | Stigmata | Katherine Jhawarelall | Hindu | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

A bored Dutch design student found himself semi-famous and threatened with a lawsuit recently. Fed up with conventional advertisements, Raoul Balai set up a fake online ad agency offering advertising space for beer, cars and TV stations on prostitutes' thighs and cleavage.

On his website www.instoresnow.nl (currently offline, probably due to the press he's received), he also proposed painting brand names on zoo animals and using helium ballons to lift huge billboards above popular beaches to get vacationers' attention, Reuters reported.

"I was getting sick and tired of advertising everywhere," Balai told reporters. "But I don't want to preach, and I thought satire would work better."

The Amsterdam Zoo didn't find his satire funny. It had its lawyer threaten Balai with a defamation suit after his website depicted fish from the zoo bearing the brand name of a frozen fish company.

Prospective customers who phone his fake agency are kept on hold and bombarded with sales pitches until they hang up.

Advertising | Hookers | Boredom | Satire | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

The movie A Scanner Darkly opens on July 7, and to celebrate, GrouchoGandhi wants to show you his Dick.

A Scanner Darkly is not the first book by Philip K. Dick (PKD), genius/whacko pulp masterpiece science fiction writer, to show up on the Big Screen, but it is the first one to show up under its original title and to show up with the storyline more or less intact.

Previous PKD-inspired movies include Schwartzenegger's 1990 Total Recall, which was based on Dick's short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," and 1982's Blade Runner with Harrison Ford, which was based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

If Hollywood would only look at more Dick, there would be a lot more good movies being made.

But I digress.

GrouchoGandhi has exposed his Dick to the world — 30 full inches of his Philip K. Dick love: his bookshelf. See photo above.

He's sponsoring a contest 'cause he wants to see yours. The winner gets bragging rights for having the biggest Dick.

If you don't have any Dick, you need to get some Dick.

This article cross-posted on BurningTaper.com

Groucho Gandhi | Books | Philip K. Dick | A Scanner Darkly | Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com

Molly White, a high school sophomore, this week wrote a stirring essay about a recent book burning inside the Chicago Public Libary, and about how "we must remember that by respecting the rights of others, we preserve our own."

Atop the webpage showing the American Library Association's list of the Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books 1990-2000 is a quote by children's author Judy Blume: "[I]t’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers."

Among the books on the list we find such classics as Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (#5), John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (#6), the Harry Potter series (#7), To Kill a Mockingbird (#41), Flowers for Algernon (#47), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (#52), Slaughterhouse Five (#69 ), and several books by Judy Blume and Stephen King.

Image: "On Sunday evening, members of the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Penn Township [Pennsylvania] sing songs as they burn books, videos and CDs that they have judged offensive to their God." Published in the Butler Eagle, March 26, 2001."

The File Room reported on the Harvest Assembly book-burning:

Description of Incident: The Harvest Assembly of God Church held a book, music, and videotape burning ceremony in the parking lot of their church. Approximately 30 participants gathered to burn their own possessions that they felt were disloyal to God. The event was the idea of some church youths who were studying the book of Revelations. Acts 19:19 was also cited as inspiration, given its description of how former practitioners of magic burned their books in public. Participants congregated for the ceremony wherein they deposited their popular music, literature, and movies in the fire, while singing Christian songs. Among the "objectionable material" was music from artists such as REM, Bruce Springsteen, and Foreigner. Disney movies and Harry Potter novels were destroyed for promoting sorcery. Additionally, Mormon and Jehovah's Witness materials were burned for not being truly Christian since they promoted several gods. The event was catered toward people who had already "received Christ" and wanted to demonstrate their commitment to him. That may explain the absence of pornographic materials or any discernable idols.

Results of Incident: No protesters attended the event. Reverend George Bender from the Harvest Assembly of God Church was disappointed that there were not more visitors at the burning, but felt the ceremony had worked out well.

The Post-Gazette expanded on the list of videotapes and CDs that were burned. Included were the Disney cartoons Pinnochio and Hercules, the movie Jurassic Park II, and music by artists Joe Walsh, AC/DC and Pearl Jam. Also torched — though no one was sure why — were a small, black and beige stuffed dragon and a coconut carved with the face of a pink pig.

Recent public burnings of The Da Vinci Code:

• In Cecanno, Italy, the city council burned copies of the book on the Saturday after the movie opened.
• Terming the contents of Dan Brown`s bestseller The Da Vinci Code as contradictory to the Biblical truths, the All Manipur [India] Christian Organisation declared a ban on the book by symbolically burning a copy at the Manipur Baptist Convention on June 25th.
• Youth and religious groups held a Da Vinci Code bonfire on Sunday, May 26, in Manilla, the Philippines. One teenager in the crowd was quoted as saying, "I wish I'd read it first."

Rev. Mark H. Creech, the executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc. recently wrote on Lifeway.com: "I am not one for advocating book burning, but I will say that The Da Vinci Code is not worth the ashes burning it would create."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 said during a commencement address to Dartmouth College in 1953:

Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It's almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions.

And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they're accessible to others is unquestioned, or it's not America.

And consider with a certain trepidation these words from the 1821 play Almansor by Heinrich Heine: "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." (German: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.")

The Da Vinci Code | Book Burning | Banned Books | Religion | Censorship | American Library Association | Public Libarary | Intolerance |Sacred Fems | SacredFems.com