I regularly receive emails from the American Family Association, a right-wing Christian group. I signed up for their mailing list some time ago because I like to know what they're up to -- and also so I could vote in their ridiculously biased polls, which tend to ask questions like, "Do you think Bush is the best president in Earth's entire 6,000 year history, or do you eat babies raw?" I always picked the "OM NOM NOM" radio button, and I'm frankly surprised that they didn't boot me off of their list after a while, but I guess they're still hoping to get through to me.

Now, in all honesty, they weren't likely to ever win me over to their viewpoints. However, recently they've adopted a tactic which is making them seem even more absurd in my eyes: innocuous word censorship. I'm not talking about "the F word," because it's a well-known fact that if children sense the presence of a swear word within 50 feet, even in written form, their heads immediately begin spinning around and you have to strap them to the bed and call for a priest. But if typing asterisks sanitizes dirty language in their minds, then fine, have a good time. It's always struck me as silly, but it's a widely accepted practice.

What's they're doing is even goofier; they've begun censoring non-swear words. Some time ago, I received an email from AFA in which, while complaining about sex education, they wrote "pen-s" rather than use the word "penis." This just made me laugh. They wanted me to believe that they had a healthy and mature understanding of sex and how it should be taught, but they couldn't type "penis" in an email being disseminated to a group of adults?

This instance stood alone for a while, and I thought that perhaps they'd realized that behaving like grown-ups could be a very rewarding pastime. Unfortunately, they've recently jumped back into this practice with both feet. The other day, I got an email cautioning me about the inroads the h-mos-xual agenda was making in popular culture; it seems that the g-ys were taking over a soap opera. I'd started to formulate a theory that perhaps it was the vowels that made these words evil, but that was shot down by their request that I sign a petition banning in-room a-ult mov-es in hotels. Don't laugh! Studies show that our society is being negatively affected by all of the p-rnography.

Honestly, this is just getting hard to read. I envision future emails from them that just look like a demented game of Hangman.

"Dear Micah: --e -omo-ex-a-s -a-e - ne- ma--o-, an- --ngo -- --- name-o."

Still, at least this keeps our children safe. Although, when it comes to understanding how forcing them to spend a lot of extra time poring over the message protects them from its contents, I've got to admit I'm drawing a blank.

Mood of the Moment: entertained
Auditory Hallucination: Eve 6 -- Tongue Tied