It’s the End of the World as We Know It: Learning about FoxFaith while Suffering at the Hands of the Insomnia Banshees

When I suffer from insomnia, I listen to the BBC. May as well learn something instead of lying awake staring at the ceiling, I figure. Sometimes the soothing British accents even lull me back to sleep. Not last night. Last night was a night for learning.

I had been a good girl and went to bed around ten, but the insomnia banshees had other plans and woke me up at midnight. Cursing the bastard insomnia banshees, I switched on the BBC determined to learn stuff. I did. I learned about some nitty-gritty details concerning the recent intelligence report on Iraq (depressing), heard some stuff about Tony Blair’s last speech at the Labour Party’s conference (now that he’s leaving, he might be a bit more like Bill Clinton than George Bush), learned more about the horror show in Sudan (devastating), and kept up on my British sport (I had no idea that Chelsea had a football club and that a Bollywood star was going to be in a movie about it).

Finally at around four, I started to drift off, only to have the insomnia banshees pick that time to announce that my smoke detector’s batteries needed changing. I did not know then that an intermittent beep meant that it was time to change the batteries, and since I live on the third floor of an old New England house, I stumbled around my apartment checking things out. Satisfied that there was no fire, I read the back of my smoke detector and threw the dying nine-volt battery across the room. Wide awake again. Sigh.

The BBC’s programming turns to entertainment around four in the morning. There are different programs each weeknight, and on this one, I heard a chummy interview with Toni Collette, star of this summer's Little Miss Sunshine (hilarious) and The Night Listener (sounds like another misguided Robin Williams project). “Beauty doesn’t interest me” (or something close to that—it was the middle of the night), Collette told the interviewer. At all? I thought, remembering another interview with the Village Voice. But then she’d been talking about sexiness, and I suppose those really are two different things. I was mulling this over when the stuff of nightmare came over the airwaves.

Turns out that Rupert Murdoch, encouraged by the success of The Passion of the Christ (I so told everyone so that Mel Gibson has some anti-Semitic tendencies), has decided to go for Armageddon. He’s announced FoxFaith: Family and Christian Films. That’s right, folks. The religious right has a movie studio of their very own. Isn’t controlling all three branches of government enough? Do they really need their own movie studio? Aside from Kirk Cameron having a place to go after everyone gets left behind, is there any justifiable reason for this unholy union? Next thing you know he’s going to turn MySpace into MyReligiousRightSpace. Talk about banshees.

I’m telling you. It’s the end of the world as we know it. I don’t feel fine at all.

No wonder I can’t sleep.


The Twenty-Third Qualm
It seems as though angst about the religious right was on everyone's mind today. I received the following gem from a co-worker.

The Twenty-Third Qualm
Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.
He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.
He restoreth my fears.
He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war, I will find no exit, for thou art in office.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.
Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.
Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.
My health insurance runneth out.
Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.