Ray Comfort Gets Confused About Sex

I recently came across a very unfortunate video of Ray Comfort appearing on Pat Robertson's 700 club show. We'll leave aside the amazingly fun list of "prophecies" Robertson has had over the years that never came true, or the absurdly offensive things he's said on live television for the time being (for anyone who's ever accused me of being offensive - just Google Pat Robertson and realize that I am only the student and he is the Sith master).

For anyone who isn't familiar with Ray Comfort, he's the buxom buddy of the infamous "you have to circumnavigate or go around their logic" Kirk Kameron. The duo recently colluded together to give away free copies of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" with a 50 page introduction attempting to debunk evolution. Comfort is also famous (in the "Brittany Spears with a shaved head" sense of the word) for his video explaining that the banana is the atheist's worst nightmare (giggle). Comfort's argument was, and I'm honestly not making this up, that God must exist because the banana is easy to eat and is shaped well to fit in a human's hand.

Somehow Comfort missed that the yellow banana available in supermarkets that we know and love is in fact a genetic hybrid, created by man, and that a standard banana is not easy to open and is not shaped for a human hand. He also completely missed the reverse of his argument. If the banana proves God is real because it seems made for humans - then does the pomegranate, which is a total pain in the ass to eat, prove God is not real? How about the coconut or the pineapple? How about animals with teeth and fangs that don't want to be eaten? Logic and reason seem to be beyond Comfort, however, as you will unfortunately see should you choose to watch this particularly mind numbing video below.

It’s very telling that Comfort chose to ask random people on the street about a subject as complex as evolution, rather than asking an actual biologist or science teacher. It’s fairly clear the reason for this is because he didn’t want anyone knowledgeable on the subject to explain the answers to his questions. He’s already decided what the answers are, and doesn’t care to hear anything else. In fact it might even be safe to assume that, depending on how many people he interviewed, he very well may have spoken with people who did give eloquent and reasonable answers – he just didn’t put those in his video.

Imagine if Comfort had done this same thing, but instead of asking about evolution, he asked the people to explain another complex subject such as nuclear bombs or jumbo jet engines. The results would have been the exact same. These people, put on the spot and not experts in these fields, would have sounded equally unsure. Ray could have also made the subject matter sound equally unreal. “Oh really, so man can just split the atom then? How does that work?” or perhaps “Oh, so you think that spinning blades really fast just lets objects magically fly?”

It always amazes me when Christians try to say that atheists think everything came from nothing. Um, no, that's actually exactly what Christians believe - that a big invisible man in the sky magically poofed everything into existence from nothing.

Likewise, the "clock without a clock maker" argument needs to be retired, as its been refuted about one and a half billion times now. The Christian first claims that absolutely nothing exists without a maker. The atheist then asks who made God, to which the Christian responds that God doesn't need a God maker, despite the fact that he literally just said nothing can exist without a maker.

This argument only takes the equation back a step, it doesn't solve it in any way. It furthermore takes an exceedingly stupid leap in logic by saying that, since we don't yet have all the evidence on the origins of the universe, we must immediately jump to a supernatural conclusion and decide a big invisible man in the sky did it. Face directly to palm. This leap in logic is especially stunning considering the entire point of his video is that mankind is supposed to use common sense. Even if Comfort were correct (had trouble typing that), and evolution was total garbage, how does he then jump to the conclusion that humans exist as they are today because of one specific deity and his zombie son? It's a massive, absurd leap in logic that has no evidence behind it.

And now onto what Comfort thinks is the big question of how evolution can possibly work if reproduction is required between a male and a female creature. Comfort has this utterly absurd idea in his head of evolution. He's seeing this image of some sort of prehistoric snake randomly having a mutant baby that is suddenly the modern crocodile as we know it. He sees this creature, which is completely different than its parent, as a male who can't survive unless another prehistoric lizard randomly gives birth to another modern crocodile, that mutated in the exact same way, and is female.

Fortunately, this is an idea of evolution limited only to seven year olds and Ray Comfort. He completely misses that evolution occurs between large groups of creatures over long periods of time, so there will be plenty of males and females to copulate. He's also missing that sexual reproduction evolved way, way, way back in the days of things composed of only a few cells. There isn't randomly a male beagle popping out of an aardvark, desperately hoping another aardvark gives birth to a mutant female beagle.

This is actually a rather complex issue, and one that has been explained much more in-depth by others. An informative post specifically dealing with Comfort's claims by PZ Myers can be found at this location. I wholeheartedly recommend everyone read this post, as it breaks the topic down into chunks that are easy to digest.

There's also an article at the Examiner, which can be found here, that deals with this issue as well as several of Comfort's other ridiculous statements, such as the aforementioned banana debacle.

One of the websites I provide content for has a forum for writers to post off topic threads. There has been a long history of people posting requests for prayers and whatnot, along with the occasional atheist or agnostic themed discussion. Recently one of the writers started a thread regarding a four year old boy being murdered and then disfigured by his father in Utah. The discussion was titled “Agnostic leaning atheist” and the writer expressed his disgust at the idea of a loving deity, who is also all-powerful, leaving this child to his fate. This idea is best summed up in the following famous quote, which has been attributed to several different philosophers:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Of course there were immediately a long string of responses from religious folk giving their explanations on why they think their deity can be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and still let exceedingly terrible things happen. As would be expected, there was a good deal of mental gymnastics going on. Before getting to these responses, there should be a few words on the original argument itself. This can actually be a very effective argument against the traditional Christian idea of an all-powerful, supernatural force that created everything, and has some sort of grand plan for everyone. A potential issue that can arise from the idea, however. It is a very emotional argument, and while that isn’t necessarily bad itself, it allows for equally emotional responses that have less grounding in logic or reason. It also leads to [insert irrelevant personal anecdote here], which was seen in many of the comments.

This is an issue I constantly harp on: personal anecdotes have absolutely no place in any argument for the existence of the supernatural. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to prove the existence of unicorns, magic spells, leprechauns, or the Christian deity. Personal anecdotes are simply never a valid arguing tool when dealing with these issues that require serious substantiation. The problem with personal anecdotes is that we have no way to verify them. For example, say a Christian explains that they know God is real because a family member miraculously recovered from cancer (we’ll push aside for the moment the counter argument about people who are otherwise healthy suddenly dropping dead). In all likelihood this claim of magical healing is an exaggeration, a misunderstanding, or an outright lie. I have no way to contact this person’s doctor and ask just how “miraculous” this recovery was. I don’t know how many rounds of chemo they went through that the Christian is just conveniently ignoring so they can believe in miracles instead. I don’t even know if this family member exists. It’s virtually guaranteed that any serious inquiry into the matter will reveal a non-supernatural conclusion. A concise, calm, and rational video explaining why personal anecdotes have no place in any attempt to prove the existence of the paranormal can be viewed below.



I’ll now cover some of the specific responses to the original post. Quotes from other people are in red.

“Think of God the way you think of a human parent. We create our children and, as they grow up, we let 'em play out in the yard. Being good parents we build a fence and all, but we don't supervise their every single move as they grow. At some point, humanity is responsible for its own misdeeds.”

This quote makes what might appear to be a reasoned argument, and it even uses a fun little analogy that even the most simple minded can follow along with. The problem is that it completely ignores the fact that this analogy in no way applies to any God. Comparing parents to a deity doesn’t work, because parents are not omniscient and omnipotent beings. That’s the entire point of the original argument. Were parents to have the attributes of God, they wouldn’t let terrible things happen to their children. The analogy only further proves the point of the argument. They can’t have God be both all-powerful and not all-powerful. It’s one or the other, and it can’t just change whenever convenient so people can keep their supernatural world views working in their heads.

“For me it is better to believe there is a God, one who is just, and a gentleman. Part of being a gentleman is not forcing yourself on others, and allowing them to have free will to make their own choices good or bad. I have to believe that there is a Heaven beyond this otherwise as a mother I don't think I could have made it through those first months without my son. I have to believe there will be a judgment for my own personal monster and the role he played in my sons death otherwise I would have killed the SOB myself. Lastly, I have to believe there was some reason for me to go through the pain and anguish that I did. Some plan or direction even though I may not ever know what it was. For me, if there isn't a God there would be no reason to hope.”

This second quote falls prey to a common pitfall of a great many arguments for the existence of God – they aren’t arguments at all. The entire quote is an explanation of why this person wants God to exist, not an actual argument for why that God exists. Take for example, the statement that “I have to believe there was some reason for me to go through the pain and anguish that I did. Some plan or direction even though I may not ever know what it was. For me, if there isn't a God there would be no reason to hope.” The fact that this person doesn’t like the idea of an uncaring universe without a loving sky daddy doesn’t somehow make it more likely that such a loving sky daddy exists. Reality is reality, regardless of how much any given person doesn’t like it. Yes, the universe is an amoral entity. Deal with it. There are plenty of reasons to continue existing and continue having hope for the future that have nothing to do with big invisible men in the sky.

There is something in the second quote that also brings up some serious morality issues that are beyond the scope of this post, but I’d like to briefly touch on them. Notice how this person stated “I have to believe there will be a judgment for my own personal monster and the role he played in my sons death otherwise I would have killed the SOB myself.” Why do religious folk require a deity’s commands and the threat of an afterlife to keep them in line? I don’t believe there will be any punishment at all for evil people when they die, and yet I would never kill anyone. Morality is in fact more meaningful when it’s freely chosen without the threat of hell behind it.

“Questioning the existence of God reminds me of a discussion the Dali Lhama once had with Carl Sagan: Carl Sagan asked him, ‘If we could prove that reincarnation is false, what would you do?’ The Dali Lhama replied, ‘Well, then we'd cancel it.....But how are you going to prove it.’"

The third quote about Carl Sagan brings us to one of the biggest problems with any supernatural belief system. Carl Sagan absolutely does not have to disprove reincarnation to the Dhalai Lhama – the Dhalai Lhama has to prove reincarnation to Carl Sagan. That’s how the burden of proof works.

When someone makes an absurd claim (say for instance, “Zeus is real” or “I believe in faeries”), the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim to then prove that claim. The burden of proof absolutely does not fall on the person hearing the claim to disprove the claim. Christians insist that a big invisible man in the sky wants us to telepathically affirm our allegiance to His zombie son (who is also Him), because of the actions of a talking snake. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and to be blunt, there quite simply is no evidence to suggest that a zombie savior and his talking snake nemesis are battling for some invisible part of me.

“Well, we kicked God out of the school system and our courts, but somehow we think He's required to intervene for each atrocity. We've given Him the message that we want Him to leave us alone and stay out of our lives. Well, He gave us just what we asked for. And like it or not, He can't MAKE us behave without messing with free will. And guess what. If He did stop us from acting out, we'd accuse Him of being a puppeteer. Am I wrong? We'd accuse Him of MAKING people act however HE wanted them to act, and we'd take issue with that. So He gives us a choice, at which point we blame Him for not stopping people.”

If I had a nickel for every time I’d read this absurd notion about God being kicked out of the school system… As someone who has attended both public school and a private Christian school, I can assure you that no one’s deity has been kicked out. The public high school I attended had a Bible club. My sophomore French teacher taught us Christian hymns in French at Christmas time. Our principal said a prayer before the ceremonies at graduation. They just don’t FORCE kids to pray or read the Bible, and that’s what this person is really peeved about. The idea that public schools should spread one particular kind of religion is absurd when you consider the sheer number of religions out there. The same person who wrote that quote would absolutely throw a fit if public schools forced kids to read the Koran and pray towards Mecca.

This poster also seems to be dropping the “loving” aspect of God. Shouldn’t God want to stop atrocities regardless of whether we like him? It also brings up some interesting counter issues. For instance maybe if God came down and stopped atrocities, then people might not be so inclined to ask him to leave, eh? The second part of that quote just rehashes the idea of the first quote - that somehow God is omnipotent and omniscient, but he gave us free will so he’d be off the hook for not stopping terrible things from happening. Now first of all, if he were a puppeteer that controlled everything, we wouldn’t be able to accuse him of anything, so that’s a moot point. But moving past that, Christians seem to keep forgetting that they made their God all-powerful. Since he created reality and all its rules, he easily could have made a reality in which he doesn’t allow evil to happen, and yet we still have free will. If God can break other contradictory rules of reality (for example, Christians claim that a “clock cannot exist without a clock maker,” and yet they will freely state that God exists without a God maker), then there’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to reconcile the two ideas without resorting to using his own kid as a blood sacrifice.

Please feel free to weigh in on the argument in the comments below!

Episode 5 is almost here!

With the release of the fifth episode of "The Misadventures of Jesus H. Christ" very rapidly approaching I thought I'd go through a little retrospective on the last four.

Here it is, our very first episode of the toon! Although the story and animation grow by leaps and bounds in further episodes, this is still a classic that I love watching in all it's absurdly offensive glory. There's nothing quite like a raging Jesus boner getting soft because God decides to show up and ruin the party.



In this second episode we get an inside look at what heaven is really like, and Jesus unintentionally ruins the family breakfast. This is the first episode to delve into the unstable mental state of Joseph, who is afraid God is constantly screwing his wife. My favorite moment is at the very end, when God reveals the only person he likes to see suffer more is Job. We also discover that Mary is not only a smoking hot mama, but she also can't seem to stop from getting her shirt wet. The God board appears for the first time here (keep watching the background in God's office throughout the series!)



Jesus' training finally begins in episode three, and God explains why murder is necessary. We got raging drunk for part of this one, as Jesus and Gabe give up on trying to develop magic powers and decide to hit a party.



After a plan to get Jesus' love interest drunk goes terribly wrong, Jesus and Gabe deal with the consequences. Meanwhile, God invites some of his closest mythical friends over for a card game. Here we finally get to see some of the other deities like Cthulhu and Black Santa. There is a brief appearance by Jayne as the cutest angel who makes the terrible mistake of contradicting God during a poker game.



There are also a host of special features, including deleted scenes and outtakes, that can be found here. You can also send in a God question that just might show up in a future episode. Please feel free to leave us comments on the website or Youtube pages and let us know what you think!

Something I didn't get into in the last post about our weekly gaming sessions was our use of props. We don't often use miniatures or grids, as there's too many rules going on there. I rather enjoy ignoring any rule that slows down play (if you have to look it up it isn't worth using) to keep the action going. I do make liberal use of maps and pictures though. Here are two of the white boards I used while we went through Rise of the Runelords, our first Pathfinder campaign:



This one is contains some of the non-player characters the group met during their adventures in and around the sleepy little town of Sandpoint. Of particular note is the group at the middle labeled the "Company of the Black Banner," who were a rival adventuring party that tried to overtake the characters as the heroes of Sandpoint.



I also use a board specifically for important events that occur to paint a better picture in the player's heads. The three pictures on the left are from the very first adventure when the party was enjoying the yearly Swallowtail festival when goblins decided to try to burn down the newly rebuilt cathedral. The girl at the right (clearly more an event than an NPC...) ended up mistakenly married to Matt's character Valeros after a night of drunken revelry that involved a doppleganger and an evil cult.



This is a set of maps I made for our one-off Call of Cthulhu session. The one marked "Baker's Island" is actually based off a real location that I felt really exuded the feeling I wanted in the game of an isolated place where evil could lurk unnoticed. The small town on the right is also modeled on a real town in Massachusetts where the group, having escaped death at the hands of a tentacled monstrosity on Baker's Island, met their grisly ends as a horde of zombies rose from the dead to consume living flesh.




This one is a combination Events/NPCs/Handouts board from the Call of Cthulhu game. You can see two newspaper clippings the investigators found about a meteorite falling over Baker's Island and an entire family being massacred in their Massachusetts farm. There's also images of a journal entry, a piece of an ancient magical tome, and pictures of Shub-Niggurath, the nightmare thing that nearly messily devoured the group during their misadventures. It was a great time playing a game where the group knew ahead of time that none of their characters were likely to survive, as it led to some amazing scenarios. Reporter Mac Hartley was the first to fall, fighting naked when the cultists broke into the group's hotel rooms. Whether devoured, driven insane, smashed to bits during a crazed high speed chase, or consumed by the hungry dead, each character eventually met an unpleasant end - and it was a total blast.

That's all for now, as I need to start getting set up for tonight's game. The anti-heroes of Korvosa are going to have to finally leave their burgeoning criminal empire behind and head out into the open plains. Who knows what trouble they will get into with the various Shoanti tribes who roam the plains?

Weekly Gaming

We've been running a weekly gaming session for a couple of years now, which recently switch from Monday nights to Saturday nights due to changing work schedules. I usually run the session, although sometimes we switch off and one of our players Glen runs a game of Scion or Vampire. After coming off a stint of Alternity (a pre-D20 system sci-fi game by TSR) we returned to our Pathfinder game.

We've worked through the first adventure path (Rise of the Runelords) and most of the third adventure path (Second Darkness). For one reason or another we never actually finished Second Darkness and went back to the second adventure path (Curse of the Crimson Throne) instead and made new characters with the new Pathfinder RPG rules. Pathfinder originally used the D&D 3.5 rules, but using the Open Gaming License they now have their own take on the rule system. Many dub the system "3.75" as it improves on 3.5 but doesn't go in the direction of fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons, which requires miniatures and grids to play.

Here's what goes on behind my DM screen setup:



And here's what the players see from their view:



Megan got me the Pathfinder GM screen you see on the left, and it's super sexy. Unlike most screens it isn't cardstock or even thin cardboard - its actually the sort of material that would be used as a board for a high quality game. The cover art has all of the "iconic" Pathfinder characters which are, in order from left to right, Kyra the Cleric of Saranrae (None of our players ever took her. Playing a good cleric who has to act altruistically is basically anathema to our group), Harsk the dwarven ranger (Changed by Glen into "Harsk the drunken monk," who believed it was his religious duty to start a bar fight in every town they encountered), Ezren the wizard, Valeros the fighter (Whom had many misadventures, including mistaken identity, drunken marriage, and an unfortunate fall off the goblin fortress into the sea), Seoni the Varisian sorceress (Whose constantly exposed cleavage caused dozens of rape attempts), Amiri the barbarian (Who, upon failing her sneak roll, began singing "the quiet song" at the top of her lungs), Seelah the Paladin (Hahahaha, a paladin? Not gonna happen.), Lini the gnome druid, and Seltyiel the Eldritch Knight (Serious daddy issues - Twice).

We are just about to finish up the "Escape From Old Korvosa" adventure and move onto the next entry, "A History of Ashes"



Our current group has thrown party balance into the wind, as it consists of four rogues and a sorcerer, with no access to a healer. Of course they've been involved in all sorts of misdeeds (that happens when one of the party worships Zon-Kuthon, the Hellraiser inspired lawful evil midnight lord of pain and suffering), from trafficking with devils, refining a more virulent form of the blood plague instead of stopping its spread, and slowly taking over the criminal underworld of the city of Korvosa.

Here's a picture of an earlier gaming session when we were playing a one-off Call of Cthulhu game:



My laptop is hooked up to the Xbox 360 through a wireless connection to stream music appropriate the scene. Since it was a Call of Cthulhu game I used lots of disturbing and weird stuff obviously, like the "Somnium" album by Thou Shalt Suffer (an earlier keyboard heavy outing from Ihsahn), and the "Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectere Me" album by the infamous Abruptum.

Here's Glen and Crystal during the gaming session:



Matt recently brought me home an industrial spinning D&D case from his job, as they were just going to throw it away when they were done with it. I've been using it to showcase my pretty hardcovers and put books within arm's reach of the bathroom for easy reading :)

Here's two of the four sides, showing off Forgotten Realms and World of Darkness:





I swap each side out periodically, but right now the other two have my Pathfinder books and my Star Wars books - first edition (d6 for the win!), second edition, and D20 edition.

Any trip out of town, at least for food fanatics such as ourselves, is going to be defined by the dining options. We actually plan our route based on the restaurants located along the way to our destination. Our recent trip to Salt Lake City was no exception. Why would I be willingly going to Utah? The back story can be found here.

Our first stop along the way was at a chain restaurant called The Texas Roadhouse. We first found this little gem on a short weekend trip to Billings and wanted to go back to try more. It has a redneck, country music style atmosphere, but it actually works for the type of restaurant it is. They put buckets of peanuts at your table so you can crack them open and drop the shells on the floor, which is always fun. For steak lovers it really can’t be beat either. When you first walk in they have all of their meat on display and you choose the specific steak you want them to cook for you. One of their best options isn’t a New York strip or a Ribeye however, it’s actually a chop steak called the “Road Kill.”

Words fail to describe how incredibly moist and juicy this steak gets, and the seasoning is absolutely perfect. They top it off with sautéed onions and melted pepper jack cheese, which leads one to think it would also be great as a sandwich. There are a lot of side options and you can’t really go wrong with any of them. The steak fries are thick and seasoned well, and the mashed potatoes get the job done. The cactus blossom appetizer is something that shouldn’t be missed either. It’s positively massive and their seasoning and dipping sauce is easily as good or better than those found at other places famous for the blooming onion like Chilli’s. For the faint of heart there is the half sized baby blossom, which is pictured here.

Iced tea fans should pick one up while they are there. It’s a dark and heavy brew that has a very thick tea taste, which is perfect for a hearty steak meal. You can find the whole menu at this location.

When we checked into the hotel we found they had a very interesting variation on flavored water in the lobby. Instead of lemon or limes in the water they put small pieces of melon and orange rinds. It was a totally different take and has me rethinking how I’ll be jazzing up my water from now on. The melon gives it a very fresh taste with a just a hint of sweetness.

Coming up next - adventures in sushi, grilled pizza, sweet potato fries, and more!

The fam and I took a couple of days off and headed to Salt Lake City for a Muse concert this past Sunday. Now, it should be stated for the record that I don't particularly like Muse. In fact it would be safe to say I actively dislike Muse. They are moderately tolerable as background noise, but further inspection in the music leaves something to be desired. Muse has a fake veneer of progressive rock, but its only skin deep. Any serious study of the music leaves one thinking they've heard this backing beat about a million times before on any radio friendly track (there's even a song that sounds like it could be a dance floor hip hop hit if they added in a little rapping). To be blunt: Muse is a band that lets people feel they are listening to something outside the mainstream, while they are actively listening to the mainstream. To each their own and all, I mean I obviously like music other people despise, but Muse is so not my thing.

Now the family on the other hand loves Muse, so there I was headed to Utah, land of the Mormons. Yeah, I know, the last place I should be with all my anti-religious rants. I've been there before, and my initial impressions were reinforced on my return trip. There's a lot of fun stuff to do there, but holy shit you have to wade through some nonsense to get to it. The first thing you'll notice on the highway into Salt Lake are the billboards - of which most are advertising for liposuction or some form of weight loss program. Yes, this is a shallow town focused solely on outward appearance and social appearances. But they can't help it, they're Mormons. One of the remaining non-liposuction billboards had the whole car laughing for a good long time. "Have a problem with porn? We can help!" Well, if the problem is that I don't currently have enough, maybe they can help me...

Things got even more absurd when we reached the hotel and saw a newspaper sitting on the counter top. I can't even make this stuff up here. The headline on the front page actually read "EVIL TARGETS FAMILIES." Take a moment to absorb that. How did a journalist not feel dirty writing that down? "Evil" isn't a thing. It's not a tangible person like Osama Bin Ladin, nor is it an organization like Focus on the Family, nor is it a law or political policy or anything else. It's just whatever the hell anyone wants it to be. What precisely is this "evil" supposed to entail? Who is the source this "journalist" used to find out about this evil? If you can't show a picture of it, list its address, or provide a source who has seen it, then it isn't newsworthy. But again, they can't help it, they're Mormons. They didn't think through their headline too far either, since it should actively encourage people to either stay single or shack up and live in sin. Evil only targets families after all, so why start a family and be targeted by the great cloud of unknowable darkness and doom that only Mormons are somehow able to detect?

Nonsense aside, there are some pretty cool things in Utah, especially for someone like me who lives in a relatively small place. The outdoor walking mall is something that really takes a full day or two to explore, and its very appealing to the eye. Mormons may believe some absurdly crazy things (even more crazy than standard religion!) but their constant focus on physical beauty does make them keep their city incredibly nice. You won't find garbage on the sidewalk or dirty streets here. The fountain light/water show is pretty spectacular, although the overblown orchestra music makes you feel like you are in a ridiculous fight scene from Pirates of the Caribbean.

For the gamers amongst us Salt Lake actually has an amazing hobby shop called Hastur's Games. How in the hell a Cthulhu themed game store that sells role playing and card games managed to take root in Utah is beyond me, but man I'm glad it did. I knew I was in the right place when I walk in and see Elder Signs painted across the walls and Cthulhu fanny packs and altar statues in the display case. Their role playing selection was out of this world (pun intended). Old, new, in-between, they had pretty much everything. There was of course a ton of Cthulhu stuff, from Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu to the new Cthulhutech game system.

We mostly play Pathfinder, and I wasn't disappointed in my options there. They had almost everything Paizo has released so far, so I picked up a couple of the Adventure Path books I missed out on previously, which were "Legacy Of Fire #2 - House of the Beast:"



and "Council of Thieves #1 - The Bastards of Erebus:"



I was particularly interested in the rules for variant tieflings in "The Bastards of Erebus." I had to chuckle at the introduction to the adventure path when the author was discussing how the adventure assumes the party is generally chaotic enough to be willing to oppose the oppressive government in Westcrown (former jewel and capitol of Cheliax, now city in decline since the death of the living god Aroden). Being chaotic isn't an issue with our party, and generally causing havoc wherever they go is the rule, rather than the exception.

Initially I was a little leery of "House of the Beast," since is a big dungeon crawl, which I don't particularly care for, but Paizo again delivered the goods as usual. The backing stories of the dungeon's inhabitants, the various side information, and the way the dungeon is structured allows for massive story telling opportunities. I especially appreciated how the party can recruit or work beside several evil creatures who are opposed, for one reason or another, to the main bad guys. That helps me out, as our party almost never consists of altruistic or selfless adventurers.

They also had tons of preconstructed decks from old Magic the Gathering sets, so I picked up the "Sacrilege" deck from the Torment expansion, which was one of my favorites way back in high school. Combining white and black in a Magic deck is an all around awesome thing to do.



I probably could have just wandered around for hour looking at all the books and minis they had, but alas we had to move on. After picking up a Jamba Juice (except no substitute - we have a "Junga Juice" here at home, and its disappointing to say the least) we noticed their Super FYE had a sign saying all CDs were 9.99 so we had to check it out. It was an awesome deal, so I picked up some of those albums I only had the digital copy of from the record labels for review purposes. We also had some really great sushi that day, but I'll get into that in the next blog which will only cover our food adventures in Salt Lake.



Later on we went to a lingerie/porno store called Doctor John's, which again shocked us for the very fact that not only did it exist, but it was massive. More lingerie than I've ever seen in my entire life. They had a policy where they have to keep your ID the entire time you are in the store, which I'm guessing would piss off all the 40 somethings who very much don't look like they are under 18. It probably makes Mormon guys nervous too, as the whole time they'll be wondering if the lady at the cash register is looking up their bishop in the church directory. We didn't end up buying anything after browsing through, as the prices were absurd. To give an idea - they were selling the same brand of lube we buy from Walmart, but at three times the cost. (For the record, no bottle of lube should ever be in the double digit area, and certainly not in the "almost thirty dollars" double digit area.) We did notice one cute little Salt Lake City-ism though - they used white out tape to cover all the nipples on the movie covers and clothing tags. That's so cute.

Weirdly enough there was also a movie theater next door that was also a pub. Yes, you get to drink while watching a movie. Unfortunately we didn't have time to catch a flick that day, but we'll have to next time. We did see a movie the first day of the trip in the theater at the outdoor mall though (love the ability to pick your seats from a touch screen and buy your tickets from an automated machine!). "Clash of the Titans 3D" was pretty lame to be honest. The 3D was a tacked on after thought, the constant injection of lame humor did not help the movie, the action scenes were too choppy so it was hard to tell what was going on, and the characters constantly changed motivation (I hate the gods, no wait, the gods are awesome so go ahead and use their gifts, no wait, I hate the gods again!). It was basically a popcorn action flick in the vein of Indiana Jones, so if you dig that sort of stuff you'd probably like this.

That's all for now, more to come tomorrow!