Left Behind Fridays

So where were we? Page 71?

We've been at this for a year and half and we're only on page 71?

I'm going to try to keep our ongoing book review from devolving into another weekslong lapse by imposing a more orderly schedule.*

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the first installment of Left Behind Fridays.

I take as my inspiration the selfless devotion TBogg and World O' Crap have demonstrated in their willingness, week after week, to subject themselves to the latest offerings from America's Worst Mother.™ Immersing myself in the Worst Books Ever Written may not be pleasant, but at least I won't have to come up with new names for the children each week.

In other Left Behind-related news, I'm now a bona fide member of the "Left Behind Prophecy Club," a particularly shameless, money-grubbing subscription service from Tim & Jerry. The club's message boards provide a gathering place for fans of the book series to meet and to reassure each other that, happily, the world is getting worse and worse, the gyre ever-widening towards the blessed hope of apocalypse.

Among the recent signs of The End recently cited on the message boards: a halter top in church.

It seems that in this last year I see so much moral decline … The Terri Schiavo case … The promotion of homosexual lifestyle all over TV. Especially HBO. No, I don't want to see makeovers by the Fab Five. And the clothing they are foisting on us ladies … they want to dress us worse than prostitutes. The young lady in church with the halter top and satin mini just blew my mind. … When I was young, ladies wore white gloves and hats to church. My mother was always fussing about my getting my gloves soiled on the way. Experimentation with human and animal combinations. Removing the Ten Commandments from public view, outlawing Nativity Scenes at Christmas, chocolate crosses for Easter, labeling Christians as 'nuts', outlawing expressions of Christianity in school and public, a movement to end church 'tax exempt' status and so on and on.

I'm not sure if her comment about "human and animal combinations" refers to some kind of genetic engineering or to something more Santorum-ish, but either way you have to love that this is included on a spectrum of depravity that includes ladies no longer wearing white gloves at church — the abomination that causes desolation.

Anyway, welcome to Left Behind Fridays. It may not be the end of the world, but at least it's the end of the work week.

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* I invite you to hold me to this schedule. I have a sad personal history of convulsive attempts to become more organized, occasionally resulting in mini-spending sprees at Staples. Weeks later the unused accordion files and color-coded labeling systems sit there, seeming to radiate an aura of disapproval, like so many New-Years-Resolution inspired treadmills gathering dust in the basements and garages of couch potatoes across America.