The Invisible Library

Pam over at Pandagon beat me to the story about the Gerogia Mom who wants to ban Harry Potter books in school here because they indoctinate kids into Wicca, cause school shottings, and acne:

A woman who maintains that the Harry Potter books are an attempt to teach children witchcraft is pushing for the second time to have them banned from school libraries.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four from the Atlanta suburb of Loganville, told a Georgia Board of Education officer that the books by British author J.K. Rowling, sought to indoctrinate children as Wiccans, or practitioners of religious witchcraft.

Referring to the recent rash of deadly assaults at schools, Mallory said books that promote evil - as she claims the Potter ones do - help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen.

That would not happen if students instead read the Bible, Mallory said.

OK, I made up the bit about the books causing acne, but its just as plausible. This woman wouldn’t know a Wiccan if one walked up to her and said “Merry meet”. She probably head the word somewhere and learned that it was the modern religion of “witchcraft” and flipped out like all these ditzy Georgia soccer moms do. A couple years back the local paper advertised a Harry Potter book burning just across the border at a church in South Carolina. That’s the mentality we’re talking about here. Wicca, Satanism, school shootings, they’re all related in her twitterpated little mind. Harry Potter is just the most recent and convenient icon for religious nuts to attach their ire to. Before Harry Potter it was Marylyn Manson, and before that it was Ozzy, and Kiss and Led Zeppelin, preceded by Elvis Presley, then Swing Music, then Ice cream parlors and the evils of the zipper. And flappers. let’s not forget how flappers (and bobbed haircuts for girls) were supposed to drive us all to Hell in a merry little handbasket.

None of this nonsense addresses the real reason school shootings happen, though. Most of the kids who have gone into their schools and shot people did so because of the stringent enforcement of cultural and social conformity. These kids were outcasts, bullied and made fun of for years until they couldn’t take it anymore.

As for the guy who shot up the school last month and the one who shot up the Amish school last week, they were severely disturbed men with violence issues and a pedophilia streek a mile wide. if they hadn’t have shot up schools after raping girls, they would be running for Rep. Foley’s seat in Congress.

So yeah, there are weirdoes and disturbed individuals with easy access to guns and internet porn out there. They are a real problem. But so far, none of them have had dogeared copies of The Prisoner of Azkaban in their pockets. And they didn’t listen to Kiss records either.

The revised Player’s Guide to the Catholic Church is about to be released and there are a few changes to the Doctrine of the Faith that old Pope Rat has seen fit to make. Most noteworthy is the abolition of Limbo, which has many die hard players up in arms.

“I have sent countless souls to limbo!” exclaimed one adamant young player named Adolf, “Now where are they going to go?”

“what’s next?” asked a skeptical Bishop, “Reduce Vampire hitpoints from holy water?”

While the Pope acknowledged that some of the revised rules are controversial, he has stated publicly that it is all simply to make game play more streamlined and easier for new players to pick up the rules quicker, “It’s hard to attract new players to a system that is so outdated. All the other religions have already switched over to the 20d system, for Christ’s sake! All I’, doing is modernizing the Church’s rules a bit while keeping the same flavor of play that our fans have come to expect.”

No news yet on whether or not the rules restricting use of altar boys to seventh level clerics and above will stay the same.

seriously though, if the Pope can just change the rules of theology, just because they are unpopular and no one believes them anymore, than maybe we can really streamline this whole religion thing down to just the bare bones, maybe a few deacons in casual wear offering pamphlets with a few words of generic advice and a stern foot rub.

Why stop with Limbo? After all, most Catholics hardly take the Pope seriously anymore and it’s been decades since anyone has mentioned the whole Infallibility thing, so maybe it’s time to retire the funny hat as well.