Imagine your doorbell ringing on a Saturday afternoon, and when you answer it, you see this ...



... and he hands you some pamphlets and asks you, "Have you given thought to what happens after you die?"

All Along the Watchtower
Prince goes door to door for Jehovah's Witnesses. The famously shy musician takes his beliefs on the road
By Gary Susman Gary Susman

Prince, who said in a 2001 interview that he's become a Jehovah's Witness, takes his new faith seriously. So discovered a woman named Rochelle, who told the Minneapolis-St.Paul Star Tribune that her husband answered a knock on the door to their Eden Prairie, Minn., home last Sunday to find the purple pop star proselytizing. He introduced himself by his full name, Prince Nelson, and came inside, accompanied by his bassist, former Sly and the Family Stone member Larry Graham, Rochelle told the paper.

''My first thought is 'Cool, cool, cool. He wants to use my house for a set. I'm glad! Demolish the whole thing! Start over!' Then they start in on this Jehovah's Witnesses stuff,'' Rochelle recalled. ''I said, 'You know what? You've walked into a Jewish household, and this is not something I'm interested in.' He says, Can I just finish? Then the other guy, Larry Graham, gets out his little Bible and starts reading scriptures about being Jewish and the land of Israel.''

Rochelle said Prince and Graham stayed for 25 minutes. ''Left us a pamphlet,'' Rochelle said. ''He was very kind,'' she said of Prince, who left with Graham in a ''big black truck with a woman, long dark hair in the front seat.'' (Presumably, Prince's wife, Manuela Testolini.) Curiously, they did not visit any other homes on the block. ''It was so bizarre, you would have just laughed,'' Rochelle said. After all, maybe Prince didn't know better than to try to convert a Jewish family hours before the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Still, as a Minnesota native, he should have known better than to visit people's houses and try to distract them from their TVs during a Vikings game.

I'm not really feeling "Christmas" this year, but I have been enjoying this holiday parody song by John Legend from the Stephen Colbert Christmas special, which is extra funny due to Stephen groving to the music:



I love double entendres ... "ladel" ... ready to grind" ... and my favorite part of this is when they go down the spice rack:

Allspice - you know it leaves me cold as ice!
Cinnamon - don't even think about putting that stuff in!
Kardimom - that won't let me drop my love bomb!
No cocoa, no cloves, no vanilla, no mase ...

I am posting this next one purely because I am secretly juvenille:



I also giggle whenever "Dr. Jackinoff" is paged at the hospital.

I'm not sure how I stumbled upon these life insurance ads for Thai Insurance on YouTube, but once I'd watched one, I was hooked.















Each one is like a little soap opera!

A friend of a friend recently posted a Facebook picture from an art exhibit in Toronto. (This isn't that picture, but another one I found of the same piece.)

Okay, at first I didn't realize it was a life sized piece of artwork. I actually thought it was a quirkly alarm clock or collectable statue. However, upon looking at the photo a few times, it started to look vaguely ... familiar.

I asked my friend, and then researched it myself to find out that the modern version is called "piETa", because of it's resemblance to Michelangelo's sculpture "Pieta", meaning "pity" in Greek, of Mary and Jesus after Jesus was crucified. (Legend has it that Michelangelo himself considered the multi-faith moon backdrop with double menorahs and Star of David base, but then thought, "Nah ... too much".) I do, however, question the role assignments. I feel that E.T. should have played the part of Jesus, and Yoda the part of Mary.

Here's why:

• E.T. could raise the dead (plants anyway).
• E.T. healed Elliot's cut from the circular saw.
• E.T.'s friends attempted in vain to protect him from the government, who wanted to capture and kill him.
• E.T. came back from the dead.
• E.T. was not of this world, but was sent down to Earth for a short time.
• E.T. assended to his Home (in the heavens!).
• Before leaving, reminded Elliot, "I'll be right here (pointing to Elliot's heart)" similar to Jesus' parting words, "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
• AND ... let's face it ... the outfits match up better the other way around, too.

"And Yoda treasured all these things, pondering them in his heart ..."

Despite the fact that Yoda was a wise and powerful Jedi Master who taught chosen other Jedi the ways of the Force in the Jedi Temple, and Yoda usually gave advice in such a way that the listener must look past what he is literally saying to interpret the hidden meaning, I am not convinced he makes a better Jesus than ET.

Wow ... there's a sentance I never thought I'd say ...

However, ET's similarity to Jesus is not my own discovery and apparently only a coincidence:

Other critics found religious parallels between E.T. and Jesus. Andrew Nigels described the story of E.T. as "crucifixion by military science" and "resurrection by love and faith". According to Spielberg biographer Joseph McBride, Universal Studios appealed directly to the Christian market, with a poster reminiscent of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and a logo reading "Peace". Spielberg answered that he did not intend the film to be a religious parable, joking, "If I ever went to my mother and said, 'Mom, I've made this movie that's a Christian parable,' what do you think she'd say? She has a kosher restaurant on Pico and Doheny in Los Angeles."