Given their status as working-class Italian-Americans who spent at least part of their adult lives residing in Brooklyn, it is likely that Mario and Luigi are Catholic, although their adherence to official church doctrine is probably debatable. Indeed, it’s hard to go to confessional every week when King Koopa is always hiding Goombas and Bob-ombs in the booth. However, while they’ve never demonstrated official interest in evangelism since their exile in the Mushroom Kingdom, the Super Mario Brothers do appear to have adapted.

Take, for example, the Holy Grail in virtually every Mario installment, personified as the Princess who must be rescued. Princess Toadstool-Daisy-Peach is coveted in a half-desire-half-worship dichotomy, making her a surrogate for the Virgin Mary. The frequent and unexplained three-princesses-in-one dynamic may refer to the Holy Trinity as well. (I am aware that Princess Daisy is not the same individual as Princess Toadstool a.k.a. Peach. In fact, they rule in neighboring kingdoms. But for the sake of this metaphor, think of Toadstool as the Father, Peach as the Son, and Daisy as the Holy Ghost. The Toadstool/Peach divide is analogous to the active roles of God and Christ in the Bible, with the same multi-aspect Being named as Toadstool in the Old Testament [NES, SNES], and Peach in the New Testament [N64, GC, Wii].)

Yoshi and his dinosaur kin, as well as Toad and his mushroom kin, both hearken back to the Colonial era, and are generally regarded by Mario and Luigi as Noble Savages: honest, useful, and strong as oxen, but still intellectually and morally inferior. Mario and Luigi view Yoshi and Toad with the same arrogant condescension that Cortez displayed when conquering the Aztecs.

Mario clearly considers himself to be the local Christ figure, and his brother to fill the shoes of a disciple or apostle. Mario’s arrogance is so strong, in fact, that he does not even bother to wonder which apostle would be most appropriate. John the Baptist, perhaps, if not for the fact that John was born before Jesus, and the suggestion that his little brother filled the role of precursor is something Mario could not abide (thus do we assign the role of John the Baptist to Pac-Man). Conversely, Luigi himself dreams of the day he can have his “Saint Paul Moment”, capitalizing on Mario’s fame and glory and subtly re-writing Mario’s words and deeds to suit his own purposes.

Wario, as Mario’s opposite, is a parallel of the Antichrist. In the Bible, the Antichrist is totally devoid of independent character development, existing instead only as the direct opposite of Jesus Christ. Similarly, Wario’s existence is meaningless without Mario to mimic and antagonize.

Bowser is Satan, of course, but as with all things in Catholicism, he is a more disciplined and orderly villain than the Protestant Satan. As demonstrated in such games as Super Mario Kart and Super Paper Mario (in which Bowser becomes a playable character), Bowser is a professional antagonist, not truly evil, but a being with a role he knows he must fulfill. This is akin to the Satan depicted in the Book of Job, who makes a bet with God seemingly out of boredom.

The race of turtle-like Koopas, with their ancient heritage and strong national pride, perhaps parallel the Jews, ruthlessly and perpetually antagonized by Mario and his followers, and unjustly vilified in Mushroom Kingdom literature. Like many traditional Roman Catholics, Mario and Luigi demonstrate a bigoted blind spot when dealing with this group.

In contrast to both Bowser and Wario, who fit into a standard Catholic pantheon, Donkey Kong can be viewed as an altogether more primitive, savage deity not unlike Quetzalcoatl or Huitzilopochtli. This is perhaps where we see Mario and Luigi come closest to missionary work, wandering into the jungles outside of the Mushroom Kingdom and stroking their moustaches in disapproval as the squat mushroom folk slice each other’s throats, drink the blood of their kin, and offer the spent carcasses to the ravenous Kong. The origin of Mario and Luigi’s heroism therefore may in fact stem from a crusader-like desire to free the souls of the Mushroom savages from their penchant for heathenistic blood sacrifice.

Lastly, we can propose a pantheon of obscure Saints for Mario and Luigi to call upon, modified for use abroad. These are typified by the magic boxes full of money, food, and weapons which appear to the Mario Brothers at convenient moments throughout their travels. Some official Roman Catholic Saints were most likely transferable, such as St. Ansovinus, the Patron Saint of Gardeners, blessing Mario with Fire Flowers, or St. Dunstan, Patron Saint of Goldsmiths, blessing Luigi with renewed vitality each time he collects 100 gold coins. Patrons for more unorthodox items such as Invincibility Stars and Raccoon Tail Leaves are presumed improvised.

He’s big. He’s Puerto Rican. He wears a diamond-encrusted Rolex and has “666” tattooed on his forearm. No, he’s not a rapper. He’s the Jesus Christ Man.

There’s a new nutjob in town, winning converts and making headlines, according to a recent media spike including spots on Anderson Cooper 360 and NBC’s Today Show. I’m talking about Puerto Rican minister Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, who claims, at various times and moods, to be both Jesus Christ and the Antichrist. That’s a rather complicated duality for a man in his sixties, with or without the spooky tattoos.

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, a former convicted thief and heroin addict, had an epiphany one day in 1973 that his soul had been integrated with the soul of Jesus Christ. Cute. I once had an epiphany that I was moving so fast that raindrops couldn’t touch me, but then I realized that I was just too drunk to notice and woke up later with a hangover and wet jeans. After taking some time to ponder his epiphany, Miranda started his Growing in Grace church in Miami in the ‘80s, which claims to have thousands (or millions, depending on which interview you read) of members, spanning thirty countries. He’s got an expanding media blitz going, and focuses most of his recruiting efforts on the heavily Christian Hispanic population.

Miranda has declared that he can be considered as Christ or the Antichrist, explaining that the Antichrist is really just Christ’s replacement. He proudly brandishes a “666” tattoo on his forearm, and his congregation has taken it up as a fashion statement, getting the Number of the Beast tattooed on ankles, wrists, the small of the back, basically anywhere your average 19-year-old girl typically gets a rose or a tribal symbol that she doesn’t understand. Remember the Buddy Christ from Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma? Think of this guy as the Buddy Antichrist.

CNN also says that, “De Jesus preaches there is no devil and no sin. His followers, he says, literally can do no wrong in God’s eyes.” This sounds like a half-assed Crowley interpretation to me, one which you might hear from any lazy Thelemite trying to pick up goth chicks in a bar on a slow Thursday evening.

Dig deeper, and Miranda comes off as one unstable son of a bitch. According to CNN, “followers have protested Christian churches in Miami and Latin America, disrupting services and smashing crosses and statues of Jesus.” Wow. I’ve seen the hymnal sing-a-longs and the damnation sermons, the potluck picnics, and even the hippie preacher with an acoustic guitar singing “Jesus is My Buddy” off-key, but never have I come across a preacher who says, “Alright guys, it’s Sunday morning. Time to go fuck shit up!”

Now, the Book of Revelations makes about as much sense as a novel written by William S. Burroughs at the peak of his heroin phase (heroin being something Burroughs and Miranda have in common), but I think I recall something about the Antichrist being a charismatic superman, able to sway millions on the strength of his seductively evil personality. Well, Miranda does wear plenty of bling and ride around in armored BMWs and Lexuses. He actually comes off a bit like Ricardo Montalban’s character Khan Noonien Singh on Star Trek.

When I first learned of this development, it occurred to me that news of someone claiming to be the Antichrist seems almost overdue. It’s the 21st century, right? The last time I can remember anyone talking about being the Antichrist was Marilyn Manson, and anyone with half a brain and a couple of analytical hours can tell you that A.) he’s only kidding, and B.) Mechanical Animals was a far more timely and poignant album than Antichrist Superstar anyway. What have we been occupied with in the meantime?

Well, seven years ago it was Y2K bugs. For the last five years I suppose it’s been terrorists. And of course there’s that damn 2012 thing, inspired by an incomplete Mayan calendar. But no one seems to know if 2012 is the result of clerical procrastination, a metaphor for Quetzalcoatl in the guise of a solar flare, or The Monster at the End of This Book. And it doesn’t really matter, because the Ancient Mayans are all gone now, and if they can’t be any more straightforward than this, then they can go play with a nut for all I care.

But the Antichrist? There are still people who think that one is actually possible (stupid people, but people nonetheless). And, at least according to tradition, he’s super-scary and super-evil. But not according to the Growing in Grace congregation. Miranda says that, “Antichrist is the best person in the world.” When accused of being a cult leader on the Today Show, Miranda nonchalantly replied, “If it’s a cult, it’s the best cult I’ve ever seen. It’s a nice cult. I’m proud to lead a cult like this.”

As near as I can tell, the evidence that people are eating this shit up can be attributed to the fact that we haven’t met any space aliens yet. Hey, science fiction staples suggest that we should have run into somebody by now, and the knowledge that we haven’t is leaving a serious hole in the collective human imagination. With no space people, many of those with a serious Weird Craving are turning to ancient myths and superstitions. This is at best a complete waste of time. Unless you’re an old crook junkie with nothing to lose, of course.

While analyzing this story, my editor Varius has pointed out that, were there any hypothetical plausibility in the Revelations story, there’s no way we as a culture wouldn’t be onto the clues in a heartbeat. How would an Antichrist figure actually sneak by, when the talking statues and seven-headed dragons would be a dead giveaway? Much to our embarrassment, neither of us even considered the possibility that some smiling anus would just come right out and say it like it’s a good thing.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the day I found a beak. It was lying on the porch of the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, slightly out of the way, its origins a mystery. There were no signs of a struggle, no indication that someone’s precious Mister Whiskers had been starting shit. The scene of the apparent crime was devoid of feathers and blood; there was only the beak.

My friends have heard this story more times than I care to count, due mostly to the fact that they kept introducing Horatio and me to people who hadn’t heard it yet. If I end up following Horatio and Princess Wolfsbane to New York next year, I’ll find plenty of opportunities to tell it again. As stories go, it’s something of an attention-getter. Disgusting though it may be, finding a beak, sans bird, is just weird enough to make an audience curious.

Weirder than finding a beak, as this audience soon learns, is the fact that no one else found it first. As far as I know, nobody else even noticed it. I admit it was a few yards from most of the foot traffic, but the Cathedral porch was (and remains) a popular spot to stand around and talk with your friends, or at least smoke with them. Still, even with all these potential witnesses, none of them took notice of the beak in their midst.

Once I realized what I was looking at, something– call it madness– compelled me to stake out the area and point out the oddity to whoever I thought would listen. It wasn’t long before I ran into an acquaintance of mine, a bit of a dick really, and one of his friends, and introduced them to the beak. After a few dull minutes of trying to explain to them why this was awesome, I found a more sympathetic audience in the form of Horatio and Captain Fun and told them of my discovery.

They could dig it. We set to work.

We drew a chalk shrine around the site where the beak was discovered and maintained it for several months afterward, even when the janitors washed it away on a near-daily basis. We wrote ridiculous scriptures detailing the mystical history of the beak. We started capitalizing the word “Beak.” We added nearly everyone we knew to our ranks. We devised a Beakly calendar. We clashed with the campus police on several occasions, mostly due to our (washable) vandalism and our attempts to sacrifice a potato to the Beak. It was all very silly, but it certainly felt like we were accomplishing something.

Four years later, on the fifth Day of the Beak, what has become of these young prophets-to-be? Why did we tone down the goofy mysticism? How the hell did we all manage to graduate? How could people who were already so bitter become so bitter? Why didn’t we sell out and live off the T-shirt money? Didn’t we have a band at one point in there? In short, did we fail?

Of course I’ll say we didn’t. We’re all still alive, more or less, and the handful of us who still care about the Beak have tried to lead lives in line with the philosophy we established. That’s very Zen of us and all, but when a movement is as new as ours we should probably focus on increasing our profile. Finding a comfortable worldview is nice, but it does sort of keep you from winning converts with mystical bullshit and garish rituals. Maybe we should re-open our propaganda wing.

There’s been positive stuff too, of course. We’ve been called the heirs of the Discordian movement, for crying out loud! Considering our admiration for the Discordians (and their always-awesome goddess Eris), this is both a tremendous honor and a huge amount of pressure. In forty years, will the lovable freaks of the world pass our books around once they’ve retired the bong for the evening? Does that mean we’ll have to write some books?

Writing a book about this stuff doesn’t seem too terrible, nor does taking modern-day Discordians to task for failing to continue the decidedly cool work of their forebears. Then again, we’ve made promises like that every year (usually in private) and have yet to keep them.

If we absolutely must make a statement, let’s just say we’re at a crossroads. No matter which way we go, we’ll end up somewhere Beakly; the real mystery is how long it will take before we get the actual work done.

And if that isn’t the definition of the Way of the Beak, I don’t know what is.

Via Pam Spaulding at Pandagon

The greatest problem with religious video games, the problem that made them funny and pathetic at the same time, was they way they attempted to work around one of the hallmarks of gaming — namely, killing shit. I recall one Christian game for the NES which was essentially an action game, except with Bibles taking the place of ammunition. When you shot your enemies, instead of falling down dead, they knelt down and prayed. The concept was the same as countless far-more-violent games, but at least the screen wasn’t filled with pixelated corpses.

Yeah, that shit’s about to fuckin’ change.

Yes, it’s a “Left Behind” strategy game, based on the best-selling series of Evangelical novels of the same title. Unlike the cheesy Christian games of years past, this one uses next-generation technology and a realistic New York City setting, in which you join up with the forces of righteousness, find heathens, and fucking kill them. Not with prayer or any weak shit like that. With bullets. Admittedly, there’s also a “spiritual warfare” element, in which you can try to convert the Jews, Muslims, gays, secularists, etc. But sometimes, the conversion doesn’t take, and you move on to plan B. Which is to say the killing.

And just like “Starcraft” let you play as the Zerg, “Left Behind” lets you play as the followers of the Antichrist, turning your guns on the Evangelical forces. Of course, the Christians will be more than happy to kill you right back.

And hey, just to amp up this toxic super-freakout of a story even more, how about this: the whole affair is tied up with a megachurch empire led by pastor Rick Warren, a.k.a. the “Purpose-Driven Life” dude. Apart from a conventional advertising campaign in gaming magazines, Warren hopes to see the game marketed and distributed through megachurches nationwide. And why the fuck not? You can already get your your music, your espresso, and your salvation in one place, so why not toss some holy carnage into the mix?

If you’re like me, you think this is some kind of joke. Surely they wouldn’t come right out and say “kill the infidels” like that? Well, it’s real, and Gamespot has a page for it. Take a look at the screenshots if you need proof of all the killing that’ll be going on. There’s not much ambiguity here; we’re looking at little digital New Yorkers getting blown the fuck up by dudes in military uniforms.

Don’t get me wrong here, I love me some violent video games. And I’m reluctant to heap too much criticism on this project, not because it isn’t a colossally bad idea (it totally is), but because I’ve spent a lot of time slowly and deliberately explaining that no, I do not want to go out and kill people after playing one of these games. Then again, I’ve never heard a sermon about the coming war with the orcs, or read a book about “reparative therapy” for zombies — not one that was presented as non-fiction, at least. Even the infamous “Grand Theft Auto” is far from realistic; if you do that shit, you’re gonna get caught or killed in the process.

But to steal a line from Dr. Venture, can’t you see how this is maybe different? After all, the events of the “Left Behind” books (and the game) are being presented as something that’s going to happen fairly soon, and this material is being marketed to people who share that belief. Even the most loathsome violence in “GTA” is presented as part of the game’s decidedly unrealistic world, but “Left Behind” has more in common with the grimness of “The Passion of the Christ” (a comparison made by the game’s developers). Which is to say, realistic or not, you’re expected to take it seriously.

Screw it. I’m not going to get my head around this madness anytime soon, so I’ll just point out that it’s creepy as hell, and maybe come back to it after I’ve had a stiff drink.