Every bloody Sunday most of us have been rudely thrown out from our beds, dressed in uncomfortable church clothes and dragged to a boring building where the guy up on stage was going on and on about Jesus this, Jesus that. Sheesh, why don’t you marry the guy while you are at it? Either way, it is a safe bet church was torture for us all: it was boring, the pews were hard and cold, and the service always skimped out on the wine and crackers (that is why I never tipped). It’s even sadder when you consider all the things that could have been done for the church to make it more exciting and marketable to the new younger generation, taking lessons from various places of worship throughout the world. I am talking about places like:

6. The Sedlec Ossuary
Between the 14th and 15th century in Central Europe, if you were not buried at the Sedlec Cemetery (Czech Republic), then you were a nobody. People pointed at your tombstone at some who gives a rat’s ass graveyard, laughed and promptly urinated all over it. What was Sedlec’s selling point, you ask? Necrophilia Insurance? No! It turns out back in 1278 an abbot from Sedlec brought some soil with him from Golgotha (Holy Land) and sprinkled it all over the local cemetery. In a short time the small corpse garden expanded beyond imagination, which as you can imagine was a massive zombie liability which undoubtly skyrocketed their insurance rates like nobody’s business. You literally could not dig at any random location and not excavate someone’s grandma.

Therefore, with time, all the collected bones of the people dug up during the churches reconstruction works were stored in the basement ossuary, which is just a fancy name for a Room With Lots of Skeletons. The creepy collection has over the years gotten so out of hand that in 1870, František Rint was hired to put them all into order. And he did. Here are some of the examples:

All in all Rint built four enormous bell-shaped mounds which occupy the corners of the chapel, an enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, garlands of skulls draping the vaults, a large Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance. Mr Rint might or might not have been 19th century’s first recorded Goth kid who thought the world sucked and whose parents did not understand him.

But say whatever you want about old Rint, or Rinty as I am sure he would have liked to be called: he did manage to make church less boring, which is a feat in itself. Yes, he also managed to make it nightmarish, but let’s be honest, kids love to be afraid, and the Catholic Church has spent the last century trying to instill the fear of God into them, not realizing that once you’ve seen 2 Girls 1 Cup, you are more or less emotionally dead for life. But this? Hell, this is something that will both get the kids to church, shut them up and actually make them listen.

If you would like human remains to decorate your church please write to your congressman today!

5. The Karni Mata Temple
Located in the Indian district of Rajasthan, near Bikaner, this particular red sand-stone structure has beautiful floral design, a rich history and great religious value to the people of India. It is devoted to the deity Karni Mata (or Karnimata), who is said to greatly reward her servants by, for example, protecting them from epidemics like cholera or small pox, and making sure you will be reincarnated as a rat. Now, this may not sound like such a good deal (reincarnation wise), considering other options, say, Jessica Alba’s Sport’s Bra and the like, but… what if you, a rat, had an entire temple for yourself where people fed you and were not allowed to kill you? Welcome to the Rajasthan Kari Mata temple, aka Rat Church:

So take off your shoes all ye who dare to enter… just be careful of the rat poop. Feel the thrill of taking in India’s rich culture while thousands upon thousands of furry little Pixar extras rush right beneath your. If you can get one of the little buggers to actually run across your foot, it will bring you good luck. A life threatening infection I guess is just a bonus.

The rats are said to be reincarnated worshippers of Kari Mata and therefore are untouchable. They are fed milk and sweets by the monks and tourists and if you kill one, accident or not, you have to pay the temple back in the rat’s weight in silver. Which to me is a tad suspicious. I am starting to think this entire operation of unleashing thousands of rats in narrow tourist filled corridors and demanding pound after pound of silver for any of them you step upon was devised first as a marketing strategy and only second as a religious practice.

However, the idea could work on American/European soil. Omitting the novelty factor of it all, we could attract children and animal lovers with this kind of innovation. I can see it now, every church will have its own sacred animal which shall walk free inside the temple, free to interact with the parishioners. During Christmas time the church with the reindeers will be the most famous one, and Easter will belong to that one place with the bunnies. And when some of them will run out their expiration date, we throw a big barbeque and feed the homeless with it. This idea is so brilliant it’s retarded!

4. Tagata Jinja
Located in the picturesque town of Komaki, just north of Nagoya, Tagata Jinja is a Shinto shrine like many others throughout the country. Its best claim to local fame is the Honen Festival, which is said to be a centuries old celebration connected to agricultural worships of renewal and fertility. The shrine itself was built around 1500 and was in those days a place of worship for local warlords. Which is pretty darn badass in itself, I mean, I also would totally go to the same church as say Darth Vader or Rambo, but Tagata outdoes itself by being one of the few Japanese shrines which worship the penis.

Seeing as you cannot get more fertile than the penis, it was the only natural way to say thanks for a good rice crop this year, eh? On a side note, Japan is still considered the capitol of all things whacky and purely insane. Every year on March the 15th, a 2.5 m wooden penis is transported through town to enthusiastic chatter of the locals and the wild laughs of the dozens of tourist who throw at least 20 “Got wood?” jokes a minute, on average. The celebration is currently held all in good fun, with drinking and street games, but it wasn’t always like this. In the past this used to be a solemn and serious occasion. Let me repeat it: a couple of years ago, somewhere (namely Japan) there was a ceremony where people gave praise to a large wooden penis and were all serious about it. That feeling of despair you just felt in your gut, as if someone has robbed you of your fav childhood toy, is the sadness which came from realizing you were not around to see a bunch of grown men worshipping a giant woody with straight faces.

Now obviously we cannot suddenly start crucifying Jesus on a giant wooden penis… or can we? No… No! No.. we can’t… but obviously mixing in a little naughtiness with downright comedic value would work wonders for any church on a marketing level. So say, instead of the boring communion waffles, let the priest cut them into tiny little boobs. Boobs – everybody likes boobs. Boobs are also great, and funny if you let them be. I even have the perfect name for the new and improved communion waffles: Boob Waffles ©. I am going to be a rich…!

3. Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew
What does the church have against beer? It’s tasty, it’s bubbly… it’s golden? It makes you a perfect dancer, makes all women look beautiful and in the right amount makes you feel good about all the shitty things in life that are coming to get you. Why isn’t it served at schools worldwide? Politics man, damn dirty politics… oh, and the church obviously. Always going on and on about the dangers of alcohol, even setting up Alcohol Hate groups, commonly known as AA. But luckily some people are not that prejudice to the nectar of the gods. Some nations embrace the gift of beer. And some temples even make it part of themselves. Here is a Thailand Buddhist temple built from 1 500 000 recycled beer bottles:

The monks started to collect the bottles in 1984 and once they decided they had enough, the construction has begun. Any and all speculation that the plan started out as a last minute bullshit excuse fed to the monk’s prior when he uncovered the remains of their 3-day Spring Break celebration remain unconfirmed. The result so far are 20 small-scale buildings built entirely out of old beer bottles, but the monks are not stopping there. They are always planning for more, so if you can, please, send them a beer this very day. For Buddha.

But this is an idea that no doubt everyone would want to get behind in the US. First of all – Buddhists… how many friends do you have which claim they are suddenly Buddhists? That stuff is hotter than the melted butter on my nipples, and anything Buddhist today is a sure sell. Second of all: this is the ultimate sign of recycling, and no animal gets hurt in the process . Thirdly, the building material is beer. Which means any given college dormitory has at least 5 grand temples and a few story parking garage tower just waiting to be built. All you need to do is deploy some guards each night to keep the homeless from licking the walls and you would be good to go: full house any given Sunday.

2. Baba Sheik Umar Sheb
Let us be honest for a while… I slept with my brother’s wife. Also – kids are not what they are all cracked up to be. Given the chance I am sure most parents would support my “Burn Babies for Fuel” initiative if not for those pesky “laws”. I mean, look at it this way: how often did you have your nice airplane ride ruined by a kicking and screaming toddler? How often did you feel like vomiting after an infant shat his diapers 2 feet away from your table at Burger King? How many times have you been locked up because the damn kid does not know how to stand look-out while you peddle coke? Hell… don’t you just want to throw some of those kids off of a tall building?

Well dream no more! Just hop on the next plane to India and bring your hated crotch fruit straight down to the Baba Sheik Umar Sheb temple at Solapur village, climb to the roof and hurl it a few stories down to the sound of your own laughter and tears of joy. Unfortunately a few killjoys will be down there to catch the little brat and all but that’s nothing a cola bottle full of gasoline won’t fix.

This Solapur tradition of parental negligence is said to be over 500 years old. The infants are blessed before their parents throw them off the roof secretly hoping that the sacred white cloth stretched beyond them will break and they will be able to use the brat’s college fund on a new Ferrari and a pound of blow. This exercise in shattered hopes and dreams is supposed to ensure good health. Because nothing builds your health better than base jumping without a parachute into an old bed sheet. So far, no baby has been reported as hurt.

Now, how can we make it work at our turf? We need a religious institution where parents can bring their kids and be sure the little bastards get a little hard lesson in life and pain. But it must be done in secret, and it must be humiliating. A religious institution in the West where children are humiliated and punished in secret against their will…

Nah… that would never work.

1. Wat Ban Waeng
Sculptures are cool. Some of them depict naked people. And naked people are always fun to look at, especially if they are female. So seemingly, a bunch of statues of naked people implemented in a temple in Thailand would seem the best idea in the world, right until someone comes up with that rumble pack dick-extension sex simulator game. Wat Ban Waeng is a fairly large Buddhist temple complex which also houses a large number of gardens, a huge portion of which have been set up as the places of rest for dozens of bronze statues representing the Karmic consequences of your actions, depicting Buddhist Heaven and Hell. So OK, you are walking along, you see a lot of statues with shit eating grins because they achieved Nirvana and are rubbing it in your face and then WHAM, lots of nude women! But your erection is killed as quickly as the women in the statues. Stabbed. Drowned. Tortured. Stabbed. Raped. Boiled. Stabbed. Not only women. But men, and children too. Recreated in great detail. Sorta like a Buddhist version of the Passion…

These statues are there to… scare the ever loving shit out of you and force you into a life of goodness and virtue? Best explanation I could come up with. Hell, some of the scenes depicted there… it’s like Eli Roth himself was asked to design most of these scenes:

So now, the obvious question: how do we learn from it? Luckily the Western world has a long and rich tradition of disturbing images. I say we one up their statues and implement a serried of flat screen TVs across local churches playing the most fucked up parts of the Passion on an infinite loop. With a clown laughter dubbed over them. Don’t worry, it’s not sacrilegious, it’s art. I also see Halloween parties hosted in chapels country wide. I see pig guts and blood implemented as ornaments. I see death, pain and suffering in graphic form getting people all lax in their bowels and dropping to their knees praying to their almighty and vengeful Lord. And then, we pass the collection plate!

Tagged with: Beer • Church • Skeleton • Temple

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