Eat Your Jesus -
Joel was at church. Of course, he had to be. It was Sunday, after all, and his parents wouldn't dare leave him behind for fear of breaking their perfect image of familyhood. Even if they couldn't be perfect, they can at least make themselves look like they are. Well, in accordance with the images propagated by family church magazines, anyway. Father slipped out of his cum-soaked sweatpants and beer-stained t-shirt to don a more godfearing look consisting of polished dress shoes, pressed slacks, and a coporate-gray jacket, and mother took out the smelly rollers, cleansed her face of funky lime cream, and shaved her legs in favor of looking more attractive in a size 4 dress that cleverly hid a choking girdle and equipping high heels which always messed up her steps. They had their daughter, sister to Joel, endure a whirlwind of perfume and makeup upon her face and several dozen missing hairs due to having her hair tied, untied, and retied with two bows. Her mother is never satisfed with a look if it's older than a day. Of course, as much as he tried to protest, Joel wasn't left out. He had his head assaulted by several combinations of greases and ointments with the purpose of applying rule and dominance over his willful hair, and was forced to wear uncomfortably small leather shoes over his huge, hardy feet because boys with small, fragile feet are considered cute these churchly days. Obviously, in reality, none of this pretense could be up held up for long due to how sickenly expensive and tiresome the process is. But if everyone is to ignore the truth of the matter for sake of living up to tradition's protocol, then by all means go ahead and dress yourself up silly. Those 3 hours of sunday blessings you earn a week's work a respect and admiration by fellow god-seekers.

Now that Joel was at church, he began to get figity. None of this stuff ever made sense to him. Instead, he found it all to be quite a chore, and a purposeless one at that. For all the preaching and singing and yelling and dancing and devil-cursing that went on, none of it seemed to affect nor have anything to do with the reality that existed outside of those stained-glass double doors. people just return back to their house and once again become the no-knowing, unaccomplished slobs they mask every Sunday. Because of this, he had to find any way in which he can keep his mind distracted from what's going on. However, he liked things that gave him a sense of accomplishment, so what he did was focus on making making every occurance and situation a game. He liked to toy with the idea of how many of the choir boys could fit inside the female singer's mumu, and how long they could tolerate it in there. He also liked to imagine replacing the sacred mother mary statue with one of Charles Darwin.

However, the preacher today had something different to say that caught Joels attention more than the purple flith the preacher used to keep his sensitive face from chafing.

"Everyone, I believe that nobody here has accepted god more than I have. That's besides the point, though. God-Fearing Monthly has printed an article explaining how the spirit of jesus and all his virtues can never be inside enough people nor can people have enough inside them. However, they give no solution to this predicament. That shouldn't be unexpected, though. The nature of humanity limited capacity for processing correct thoughts is undeniable. Thus God can never be fully known, and what we do know as today's ideal faith may be tomorrow's heresy..."

Suddenly the choir bursts out:
The nature! The feeble nature of humanity! Nothing can be known, nothing at all, oh no, oh no, oh no...

The preacher continues "Anyway! No need for sounding bummish! What I want us to do is to try and figure out, with our limited minds, a method in which we can all compact more godliness into every hour we're here. Don't worry if your ideas go beyond regular hours, though. Church can last all day, for all God cares!"

And to that, everyone laughed. Everyone except Joel, that is. Hearing this made him do anything but laugh. In fact, he was in a state of alert. A state of stress, if you will, but a state of attention nonetheless.

"HAHAHA, *HONK*, *HONK*, *wheeze* *SnOrt* God, *choke*... save me... *cough*... from this curse.. *A-HEM... of HAPPINESS!!!" the Preacher cried from the depths of his coughing rage. The preacher trembles and shakes to such a extent that the audience shuddered in anticipation of the Godful wraith that they assumed had just entered their beloved priests body. After a minute, the priest cooled off and continued "Ahem... *cough*.. My idea is to get everyone in groups and brainstorm. The first group that comes up with the best idea gets to tithe more!" Then preacher then takes a sip from his trendy bottled Blood of Christ.

And to that the choir hummed in joyful unison:
To tithe is to be close to God, only without as much weath as he. But humans are fundamentally poor and intrinsically miserable, so who cares...

The priest spazes and a quick scattered blast of Jesus's lifeforce precedes a bellowed "AMEN!!~". The priest then wipes his mouth with his robe and says "The power of ephemeral truths have a profound and deep grip on my life like that. Anyway, let's all get to thinking, shall we?"

Everyone nods in approval. Suprisingly, Joel nods too, but not for the same reason. He just felt a hardness building up in his stomach, one that can become an ulcer or kidney stone at any second. But he has no time to think about that, since everyone has already formed into collectivistic mind, thinking unified for the task of producing a single idea that the preacher and, ultimately, God would be pleased with.

Before Joel could do anything, though, he was yanked by his parents into the group they had chosen for him to participate in. He father tells him "Now Joey, we know how hard it is for children to think. After all, they have no purpose fooling with thoughts at such a young age, but please, try your best. For God."

His mother adds "God doesn't like underachievers."

Joel bit his tongue so hard it gave up a trickle of blood, but he kept his furiosity to himself. His parents smiled in approval of themselves, and then took off with their hapless daughter to socalize with their weekend friends. Joel looked at his group. He saw that fat kid down the street that always chewed on his shirt, leaving the cuff a stinky, sticky mess. "God I'm so hungry" The kid whined. Another in his group was this kid named Billy Blagsworth, but he was nobody dangerous because he never bathed and prefered to keep to himself. Everyone else was of the typical lot of youths one would expect at a church. Uncommonly clean, frowning, and pale...

-Bluh, this has went on for far too long, so I'm stopping here. I think most people can see how this will tie into the topic, so that's good enough for me right now-