My first clue

I saw this video on Scotteriology today and I just had to do whatever the blogging equivalent of retweeting is.  This played a very large part in making me what I am today.  Not this specific video but videos, articles, books and sermons just like it.  It's why I'm the lovable heretic I am today.  I'll explain after you've seen the video.

My formative years were filled with and shaped by this kind of propaganda.  All the shows, toys, music and comics I liked the most just happened to be the ones I weren't supposed to like because they were "demonic".  Good Christian kids shouldn't even watch that or the devil would get a hold of you and mess you up!  No, I'm not joking, they really tell stuff like that to kids in church.  I was a very pious little fundamentalist so on more than one occasion, fearing for my salvation, I tried to rid myself of some of these "occult" toys and comics.  But then I got a little older and started noticing something.  These people didn't know what the fuck they were talking about!  They were mixing up different stories, they would add a ton of embellishments that made no sense and sometimes they would just plain make stuff up.  Mullet guy in that video is a shining example - there was no magic in TMNT of any kind.  Splinter didn't use white magic and

Demonic!!

Bebop & Rocksteady didn't use black magic either.  Now it would still be years before I would be willing to start asking serious questions about my faith but this really laid the groundwork.  These guys preaching to me about the Turtles and Rock music were my first clue that people in the church could talk with great conviction and certainty about things they knew absolutely nothing about.  Once I realized that people could stand on a pulpit and talk out their asses (without blushing!) it was only a matter of time before I started questioning more things.

Oh, and this also led to my first publicized rant!  Sometime in early High School I just got so fed up by the BS on "evil" kids shows I wrote a letter to Die Huisgenoot, a local tabloid style family mag (only in SA!) calling them on all the nonsense they were publishing.  Sadly when they printed my letter it was heavily edited - they left out all the bits where I pointed out that their "reporter" was a sensation seeking moron who clearly never spent 5 seconds checking out the shows he was criticizing and the part where I pointed out that they were making false claims to rile up parents - but still, it was my rant and it was out there in public.  It felt good!  That probably had some effect on me eventually taking my rants to the internet. Even though their hatchet job on my letter made it seem like I claimed Bugs Bunny was also a bad influence on kids.  Actually what I said was that children's entertainment had always been violent, using Bugs and Tom & Jerry as examples to show that Power Rangers didn't invent violence in kid's shows.  But I guess that also gave me my first clue on how far to trust the media...