Amazon: Shaun of the Dead Director’s Cut

Presenting IDW’s official adaptation of 2004’s wildly popular rom-zom-com (that’s “romantic zombie comedy,” of course). This “director’s cut” adaptation - produced with the full participation of the movie’s co-writer/director and co-writer/star, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg - will feature deleted scenes and other never-before-seen material. Adapted by IDW’s Editor-in-Chief, Chris Ryall, with art by Zach Howard (Detective Comics), this volume also contains movie storyboards, production stills, and additional bonus material courtesy of Edgar and Simon.

Okay, Okay … so it isn’t a DVD director’s cut. What? A director’s cut graphic novel isn’t that bad of an alternative!

Yesterday I had the distinct displeasure of listening to a radio interview with the daughter of Pastor Fred Phelps, Sr., conducted by Ed Norris’ afternoon show on HFS 105.7. The interview had been arranged after producers of the radio show learned that members of the Westboro Baptist Church planned to send picketers to demonstrate at the funeral of the West Virginian Sago miners’ funerals. It seems that Mr. Phelps is of the belief that God killed the Sago miners because of West Virginia’s love of homosexuals — much the same line of belief Pat Robertson recently espoused when he said Ariel Sharon’s heart-attack was a result of splitting God’s land; and in Jerry Falwell’s comments that God caused 9/11 as repayment of this country’s “love affair” with homos.

The show’s producers actually had Fred Phelps on the air for about five seconds before he got angry and hung up (he doesn’t take criticism well?). His daughter, anticipating her father would hang up (apparently, he does this often), carried on the interview. Her name escapes me, so I’m just going to call her S.U.S.A.N.*.

Ed Norris was amazed that anyone would dare picket the Sago funerals, particularly as some of the miners’ family members were close to a murderous rage when learning their family members were, in fact, dead (and not alive, as erroneously reported). When, during the interview, Norris asked S.U.S.A.N. is an infuriated mourner were to kill her, if that would be God’s Will, she replied yes, certainly, everything that happens is God’s Will.

Now, on one hand, this is keeping with what she believes. For the members of the Westboro Church, and the members of the far-religious-right who believe that God caused Katrina and September 11th, Sago, and whatever other tragedies as punishement for an immoral nation, sure, God’s got his hand in everything. So if some miner’s wife gets really teed off at these picketers, pulls a .357 from her purse and blows S.U.S.A.N.’s stupid effin’ head off her stupid effin’ neck, that’s God’s Will.

Let’s step back for a moment.

God Wants S.U.S.A.N. Dead = God’s Will
God causes Miner’s Wife to Kill S.U.S.A.N. = No Free Will
Miner’s Wife killing S.U.S.A.N. = Murder
Murder = Sin

Except in this case, Murder = Sin NOT!, because God’s Will isn’t sin.

I always understood, about Christianity, in a concept called Free Will (no, not with the whale). Free Will enables people to do right for themselves, to worship God or turn away from God for themselves, in the venacular of S.U.S.A.N., it gives every person on the planet the ability to “save” themselves … or not. Free Will is the lynchpin for these lunatics’ complaints that God has sent hurricanes and terrorists to destroy us as punishment for choosing to ignore God’s word. We stray, Phelps says, and God sends us warnings so that we might correct our course.

But then S.U.S.A.N. says that everything that happens does so according to God’s Will. If a picketer is shot and killed at the Sago miners’ funeral, it is because God Wills it, not because an individual with Free Will made a (perhaps not completely rational) decision to pull a firearm, put it to a picketer’s head, and pull the trigger.

This is S.U.S.A.N.’s belief. This is her father’s belief. This is the belief of the far-religious-right. Everything that happens does so according to God’s Will, and the bad stuff that happens does so because God is a vengeful motherfucker who gets teed off when people don’t do what he wants them to be doing.

Let’s step back for a second — wait, if everything that happens does so because God Will it to happen, doesn’t that mean God WANTS sin to happen? And then He’s punishing us for what He’s Willing us to do?!

In other words, no one on the planet is responsible for anything we do. I’m writing this post not because I have the Free Will to write this post, but because God Wants me to write this post. The kid in the apartment above me isn’t smoking weed because he enjoys the mary-jane, he’s smoking week because God Wants him to smoke weed. The out-of-wedlock sex, the gay sex, the drinking, the dancing, all the sins that everyone does are done because GOD WILLS IT.

And as we established above, if God Wills It, it ain’t sin!

In other words, God isn’t responsible for the Sago tragedy, for 9/11, or for Katrina, because since we don’t have Free Will (as S.U.S.A.N. so elegantly put it) we’re doing God’s Will and God’s Will can never be a sin. So why would He punish us for doing His Will? I mean, He could, I just don’t see why He would.

Conclusion! = Westboro Baptist Church –> RETARDED! They’ve undermined their whole reason for being (God Hates Everyone) because they’re so fucking retarded they don’t even know they’re making the case for why they’re stupid!

*S.U.S.A.N., in this case, stands for Stupid Ugly Sluttastic Angry Noxiousbitchwhorewhoneedstogetlaidreallybad.