It is Pulpit Freedom Sunday — a day for pastors to break the law and endorse a candidate.

They’re welcome to do so, of course. I’ll be thrilled to see them paying taxes.

If they want to remain tax-exempt, though, they should refrain from doing so. And other Christian pastors ought to condemn their colleagues who are trying to unite their religion with the government.

This video from the Interfaith Alliance documents the shaky wall of separation between church and state:

It won’t be long before we see the fallout from today’s events…

(Thanks to Eric for the link!)

The blogroll has shrunk. Now it can expand!

If you’re interested in joining, please fit these criteria:

• Write a blog with a religious, non-religious, or scientific bent (and be interesting)!
• Please make sure you have an RSS feed so I can read your posts through my Blog Reader! If that sentence made no sense to you, go here. As you can see from the nifty orange icons on the left of the current blogroll, cool people have RSS feeds.
• Check the current blogroll and make sure you’re not already on it! Because if you are, it means I already read your posts. While you’re at it, go read the other wonderful sites already on the list.
• If everything above checks out, let me know about your website by leaving a comment! You can write the URL of your website out or just link to it. And it’d be helpful if you gave us all a short summary of it.
• Please link back here and help everything come full circle!

I was waiting for my flight home from Minnesota the other day… so I had to do it:

The infamous Larry Craig bathroom.

Somehow, the trip just felt complete after finding that.

Don’t forget to fill out this coupon while you stand in line to purchase tickets for Bill Maher‘s new movie Religulous!

If you turn in ten of those coupons, you get a special surprise from the Jonas Brothers!

In fact, you should just check out the entire advertisement from the Landover Baptist Church (PDF).

His opponent is running an attack ad:

(via EdwardCurrent)

If you’re in New York City, you can get your dose of atheism and comedy at The PIT Saturday night!

The show is Saturday night at 11:00 p.m.

It features:

Jared Logan (Comedy Central’s Live At Gotham)
Ross Hyzer (Aspen Comedy Festival)
Jamie Kilstein (BBC, Comedy Central)

Hosted By John Knefel (The Huffington Post)
With a video by Mike Drucker (The Onion, McSweeney’s)

Tickets are $8.

If I were in NYC this Saturday, I’d go.

If anyone wants to buy my plane ticket so I can attend, let’s chat.

Until that happens, my plans include speaking to MENSA members in Chicago! Woo!

I’ve written before about a student activist from Oregon, Leslie Zukor, who has been running a service project for a few years now where she donates freethought books to prisoners. It a way to counteract the potentially harmful religious literature they’re usually exposed to behind bars.

Every now and then, the prisoners send Leslie a letter of appreciation.

Leslie just passed along this letter to me — it was sent to her last week. It shows how important it is for inmates to receive freethought literature.

If you think the project is worthy, she could always use the donations. She uses a lot of her own money (and you know how much money college students have…) to ship the books across the country.

This is a project worth supporting.

The actual letter is below (click it for a larger image) and the text of it is under that (with my own emphasis):

16 Sep 08

Dear Leslie,

I wanted to thank you for sending us the donated books from your Freethought Books Project. As I read them I’m passing them to friends of mine and they in turn will donate them to our library here. One of the many odd and ironic things that I’ve learned about prison is that the percentage of professed Christians here is much higher than I had ever known it to be on the streets. To my amusement there’s even a resurgence of Norse myths and God worship called [Ásatrú] that the more racially divisive whites are embracing. Most all of it circles back to my questioning what so many Christians are doing here in the first place. If the Christian tenets had been properly applied in their lives prior to their incarcerations then shouldn’t they not be here in the first place? It all seems so much more rote and dogmatic when seen in the light that a stay in prison casts.

The few of us here that trade similar books between ourselves are trying to recommend these and other titles to friends who might enjoy them. I thank you again for your infusion of sense into an environment that is, at best, utterly nonsensical. It is heartening to see an alternative point of view represented in such a place and the books you’ve sent will be read and re-read many times over, so once again — many thanks.

Sincerely,

[Name redacted]

A couple years ago, a college friend of mine found out they were holding a casting call for extras for a Nicolas Cage movie being filmed in Chicago called The Weatherman.

The two of us showed up at an office building in the city, where a staffer had us both fill out forms with vital information (name, age, height, etc) and took a polaroid an inch from our face.

A few days later, I got a call saying they wanted me in the movie and that I should show up at City Hall on Saturday morning wearing “dark, but casual” clothing.

My friend didn’t get a call. (I will hold that over her head *forever*.)

I went by myself to City Hall that weekend on what felt like the coldest day I’d ever experienced in Chicago. No snow; just freezing wind like you wouldn’t believe.

We were told that the main scene we’d be filming was one where Nicolas Cage would stroll down a sidewalk, thinking to himself. In the actual movie, a voiceover would be heard with his thoughts. The extras would be the other people on the sidewalk.

I took a seat next to some other extras and minded my own business for a few minutes. Then some lady working on the movie came around and put us into groups. The people sitting closest to her were in group 1… then group 2… and so on. I was in group 3289423.

This meant I would be as far away from the camera as humanly possibly.

So I took the long walk to my designated spot away from the camera, cursing my bad luck. I came there to be in a movie and the camera wasn’t going to see me at all!

We were so far away, in fact, that a crew member told us we had no business being outside. We could go back inside where it was warm and wait until we were needed.

The other extras were thrilled at the idea of getting paid minimum wage to sit and do nothing. I was pissed. My shot at being in a movie was passing quickly.

So instead of walking back to the holding area, I saw another group — closer to the camera — already positioned. Some people were facing the camera, some were facing the opposite way, some were right next to each other.

I decided to make my move.

No one was really paying attention, so I snuck into the group.

And faced the camera.

No one called me out on it.

We began doing some run-throughs of the scene. On the cue, we were told to walk in the direction we were told. They told us to walk fast or slow or in a zig-zag manner — Look normal, in other words.

After a couple takes of this, a van pulled around to my area and Cage stepped out!… taking the spot of the man in front of me. Who apparently was his body double for blocking purposes.

I was right behind him. I’m not even a huge fan of his movies, but when he’s right there, you just sort of want to touch him…

I refrained.

We did a couple more takes. I figured out that when Cage crossed a particular intersection, a Chicago bus took the cue and began driving across the street. (From the camera’s standpoint, it would help make the scene environment look more like a real city.)

I realized that in order to be in the shot, I needed to do two things: cross the street faster than Cage (and then slow the hell down afterwards so he could catch up with me). And stay by his side as much as possible. He was obviously going to be in the movie… so if I stayed glued to his side, I would have to be in the movie.

It was foolproof!

And while all the other extras did their job and walked in random directions at various speeds, I stayed close to Cage. No one stopped me

It finally came to my attention that the link of my four seconds of movie-fame is on YouTube!

Check out the 0:17 mark!