Backwash

Jimmy the Fetus

Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, helping everybody see that what we learned in Sunday school really matters.

Dear Jimmy:

I always dug searching for eggs on Easter Sunday, although now my friends and I just skip the plastic eggs and stash kind bud around the house. We didn’t find one baggie ’til the start of fall semester last year, which could have been a disaster, if you think about it. Anyway, I just wanted to ask, because my churchy friends don’t seem to know the answer — why’s it called Easter anyway?

Seth

Lawrence

Dear Seth:

You provide a perfect example that helps explain the answer to your question. Floating in fluid may keep me sober as a judge, but I can appreciate the way you’ve co-opted the holiest of Christianity’s holy days for your own purposes. Which is only fitting, because that’s what early Christians did to all sorts of pagan holidays (i.e., the big winter party that became Christmas). Spring had its own rites, and rather than try to keep the hippies of their day from celebrating, the early Christers simply took their revels to the Germanic Oestre or the Sumerian Astarte (either of which may have given the day its name). At least pagan touches such as bunnies and eggs remain, and there’s also the Jewish contribution with the lunar-based date: the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. But then, who am I to quibble with a ghoulish annual feasting of pig flesh to commemorate the dead coming back to life?
Got a moral quandary? E-mail Jimmy at editorial@pitch.com.

Get the Man a Bro

Poor PETA. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals often gets a bad rap for going a little over the top in its passion for saving animals from being targets for evil hunters, experimental subjects for heartless scientists, and filling for tacos. But was its latest local gambit really so wrong? PETA’s Veronica Van Hof says this “man boobs” billboard was rejected by every outdoor advertising company in Kansas City, including Next Media, LaMar, Wyatt and Porlier. “One company told us they had had something similar and had gotten a lot of complaints,” Van Hof says, giggling. “But I don’t think there’s anything similar to this.” Actually, we remember one. A stupid publicity stunt by a local “classic rock” radio station featured similar man-flesh last year. But Van Hof seems to have missed that one.

“I’ve never seen anything like it — except on the beach,” she says. Van Hof explains that PETA wanted to perform a public service by raising awareness about a condition known clinically as gynecomastia (Greek for womanlike breasts), or what she calls “the scourge of summer.” PETA targeted Kansas City because of its reputation as the barbecue capital of the country. But Kansas City area billboard companies told PETA that the ad was not appropriate for the area. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 40 percent to 60 percent of American men are affected by gynecomastia, and many undergo breast-reduction surgery to correct the problem. “It’s insane,” says Van Hof, who blames meat and dairy consumption for the problem. She scoffs at the notion that eating meat is manly. “All this meat and dairy causes boobs,” she says. PETA will now attempt to erect its billboard in Fargo, North Dakota.

Mr. Blue Sky

Show me? Heck, Missouri Sen. Jim Talent doesn’t need to see evidence to make up his mind. Here’s what he said during a recent Congressional hearing on the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad: “We have the best military in the world. I don’t need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane tactics by the American military, because those guys and gals just wouldn’t do it. Everything about the culture and the training in the military and at home works against that. That’s why the terrorists are attacking us, because we’re not the kind of society that would do that.”

Net Prophet
Notes from KC’s blogosphere.

Dear Crackhead: Please stop breaking into my car. I don’t leave my stereo in there any longer and you’ve been through my CDs twice now. Also, you may want to consider sobering up before smashing a window, since it seems your first attempt with the rock failed, instead leaving a nice huge dent in my door. Either you can’t aim or you were still magnanimous and woozy from your last hit of baking soda and dogshit. I hope you enjoy the 57 cents and the blue poker chip that you took. I hope it buys you so much crack that you bleed out through your eyes and are fed upon by hungry dogs. Maybe, in a twist of irony, one of your crackhead brothers-in-arms could steal your shoes as you belch up white foam and get the distinct sensation, yet again, that you have disappointed the world. So, please, direct your attention to any other car on the lot (did you happen to see the nice Beemer just 10 steps away from my car?) and give me a fucking break. Also, could you bring back my coin tray? From Thoughtpeach.com, the online diary of Chris Sebela