Book Report: Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Image from Wikipedia.org

This is at once 1) a book report, 2) an acknowledgement of genius and entrepreneurship and 3) a jealous screed.

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (2006) by Bobby Henderson

Today, for one of the last days of my extended holiday break, I settled into the comfortable couch (leaving The Other Half adrift on the semi-tolerable one) with the down comforter, the lazy fat cat, and the above mentioned book. I'd purchased the book for myself for Christmas, along with an additional copy for the Stupid Monkey and car emblems for both of us. Having written previously about the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) phenomenon, I expected the best. I was both delighted and enraged by the contents of the book.

We'll start with delighted. I first encountered/discovered the FSM shortly after his "creation." To quote Wikipedia, FSM was "founded in 2005 by Oregon State University physics graduate Bobby Henderson to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution." Bobby is apparently both very smart and very funny, and managed to skewer "intelligent design" proponents while simultaneously emulating them--to hilarious effect.

This happened during my pre-blogging days, but somehow I stumbled onto it very shortly after it happened, and have followed the development with great interest. See, Bobby didn't stop with sending a letter to the school board. He followed with a web site. Car emblems. T-shirts and bumper stickers. And of course, his own bible! This is where the outrage comes in.

Bobby Henderson is a 26-year old kid! And hey, if you're 26 and are thinking, "you jerk, I'm not a kid!"--yes you are. You don't realize it right now, but you will. Besides, his name is "Bobby." 'Nuff said.

Anyway, The Other Half is always accusing me of having a big juicy brain that ought to be making us some money. I started this blog, of course, which has netted a big fat 81 cents from AdSense. But it's one in a billion. Shoot, even amongst agnostic, gay, liberal moonbat bloggers from Las Vegas, I'm probably one in a couple hundred thousand. I've even toyed with the idea of creating a religion from scratch, like L. Ron Hubbard or Joseph Smith. But, dammit, little Bobby Henderson beat me to it!

But if I'd started it before he did, I could only hope I had his follow-through and inventiveness. His book manages to be both blatant and subtle, sarcastic and sweet. And it's made me laugh so hard that tears rolled into my ears, and the lazy fat cat scampered away (but returned). Now, to counter with my own creation, an anti-FSM of sorts. . . Every religion needs it's demons! I'll get my noodle working on that!

Recommendation: Buy it. Buy it now, along with tons of swag. Do it for little Bobby. Heh.

RAmen