One thing that the Internet has been good for is providing a medium where different groups of people can gather among like minded folks. Parents who have children with autism have groups where they can chat, answer questions and support one another, people who are fans of the television show Star Trek have places online to meet, people who have particular religious beliefs have websites where other religious folks gather, and folks without any religion can meet up with other folks who have sworn off religion. This is a positive aspect of our current Internet driven lifestyle.

 

The Internet can, and does, however, also give adversarial groups of people a backdrop on which they can attack other groups of people whose views don't match theirs. One such group calls itself Landover Baptist Church. Now, in some circles, the Landover Baptist Church is simply known as a parody. A caricature of people whose beliefs are considered Fundamental. Landover Baptist Church has a spoof website that was set up to mock and make fun of beliefs held by Christians who have very Conservative belief patterns.

 

Landover Baptist Church is the brain child of Chris Harper who, as a young man, was expelled three weeks before graduation from Liberty College, a Chrisitan college that was founded in the early 1970s by by Jerry Falwell who was also the Senior Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Harper was allegedly expelled for producing a satirical radio show which the administrators of the college found highly offensive.

The harm comes about not because Landover Baptist Church's main website is a parody of Christian values, but because the group also has a very popular forum called Landover Baptist Church Forums. Many people who consider themselves to be Christians join, not realizing that the whole thing is a mockery of them and their belief system. Every new member who joins is classified as Unsaved Trash, Under Investigation.

Women who join the forum are asked if they submit to their husband's beat discipline, they are asked if their husbands have given them permission to be posting there, and anyone who quotes a version of the Bible that is NOT the old King James Version is given an infraction for using the wrong version of the Bible. Pastor Ezekial Flint whose avatar shows a young man who doesn't look a day over 21 years old, is the usual instigator. He posts captious responses to people such as:

 

 

Please tell us about yourself. How old are you? Do you have your husband's permission to be posting here? How often does he beat discipline you?

 

Amen Brother! To withhold a Godly beating would be disrespectful to True Christian™ wives everywhere! Praise Jesus!

 

Do you really think that a bucket of unsaved scum such as yourself could EVER be considered my neighbor?

 

We rejoice in Christ's Love, and He obviously killed that boy for a reason.

 

Okay, that's just disgusting. Retardeds shouldn't commit whoredoms, and they sure as hell shouldn't procreate.

 

Jesus can forgive most anything, friend. Please feel free to share your testimony with us. Others can benefit from hearing the details of your perversions and sin.

 

Girl, you are living proof that God didn't give females an ounce of brains.

 

We will NOT allow any colored players on the team! That's all been settled. We can't afford to build them a seperate locker room, for one thing.

 

The joos would sell their own grandmother for a shiny Penny. I have no doubt at all that they will try and kill our Savior once again when He comes back to cast His terrible judgment upon the sinning...

 

You know for once I think the chinks have the right idea. There are too many queers in the fashion world anyway.

 

You ridiculous foreigner! You can't even speak American and you want to talk about being taken seriously!? Enjoy hell.

 

It is a well-known fact that most mexicans are banditos.

 

The only reason we have one wife is because of secular law. According to God, we can have as many wives as we can afford, just like any other property.

 

The forum site even has a thread written by Pastor Billy-Reuben titled: Noobs please read this before posting. To quote from the thread: ****************************************************************

Do you think we are a parody?

Perhaps you've heard that we are a joke, satire or parody, and you came to our site for a few cheap laughs or "lulz", only to find people taking everything seriously. So now you have decided to be the first to "spill the beans" and let everyone in on your "knowledge". Friend, this has been done so many times that it isn't funny any more.

When an Atheist loses a debate to a fundamentalist Christian, it is a common tactic to accuse the Christian of being a parody. The Atheist is so full of pride, that he cannot imagine being outsmarted by a dumb God-Believer, so he thinks the Christian must be an Atheist like himself who is only pretending to be Christian. This is known as Tabor's Law.

Our situation is not helped by the fact that there is some atheist satirist who does an impression of our Pastor Deacon Fred at atheist conventions. People hear about him and start rumors that they are the same person and that the real Landover Baptist Church is also just a joke. Some Atheists go so far as to vandalize our church's Wikipedia page to say that we are a satire.

 

Here is a link to the version of the Landover Baptist Church's Wikipedia article before the vandals got a hold of it.

*******************************************************************

The Wikipedia Page is a phony Wikipedia page, calling the church authentic and talking a little bit about its [quote]beliefs[/quote]. The real Wikipedia page about Landover Baptist Church comes up when a search for Landover Baptist Church is conducted in Google and that page describes the satire of the group.

From Landover Baptist Church's own website:

All content on landoverbaptist.org is protected by federal copyright laws. The Landover Baptist Church is a complete work of fiction. It is a satire/parody.

 

On one hand, the group wants the world to know that it's a parody. On the other hand, the forum leaders want people to actually believe it's a Christian group and thereby being suckered into their scheme of making Christian beliefs look ridiculous. Here is an actual quote from a forum member when told that Landover was a spoof:

 

Angela, I think you're mistaken.

Do you really think that a forum with literally hundreds of thousands of posts appears as result of a cheap gag? Come now, you're just being silly.

Our purpose is to share the Truth about God and Jesus, and what the Bible really says. Have you read the Bible, Angela?

Landover Baptist Church needs to make a choice: Are they Christians, or are they parodies of Christians? Duping sincere Christian people into believing they are of like mind is simply unforgivable.

Landover Baptist Church

Tags: landover baptist church

Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the lifeblood of Search Engine Positioning. In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google without the webmaster having to pay big money for advertising, the website has to have a large number of backlinks. Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website. The more established, high quality, and high Page Rank the website that contains the link has, the more power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position. If the website that is getting backlinks gets many High Quality and High Page Rank backlinks, the better the chance it has of being in a high position on the Search Engines.

Backlinks

Tags: backlinks

Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the lifeblood of Search Engine Positioning.  In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google without the webmaster having to pay big money for advertising, the website has to have a large number of backlinks.  Backlinks are links on  one website that lead back to another website.  The more established, high quality, and high Page Rank the website that contains the link has, the more power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position.  If the website that is getting backlinks gets many High Quality and High Page Rank backlinks, the better the chance it has of being in a high position on the Search Engines.

Backlinks

Tags: backlinks, get more backlinks, inbound links

Been away for a while, and I am not sure how this all works, so I am testing once again.  lol

Angela

The long, hot summer of 1988 came to a close and I could tell that my job at the café in Westport, along the shore of Washington State, was coming to a close as well.  The summer tourists were long gone and the locals don’t eat at waterfront restaurants; especially in the winter.  At the end of November, the boss gave us the news.  The café was closing for the winter.  We would all have to find new jobs.

     I put on a business suit and went out to apply for another job.  A very young adult, I did not have many skills, but I had worked in food service.  Because it was close to the bus station, I stopped at Jack in the Box to use the restroom.  I saw a sign on the window “Now Hiring”.  I didn’t think that I really wanted to work in fast food, but I needed a job.  I filled out an application and turned it in to a well dressed man at the front counter.  He set me up for an interview that day.  Little did I know that he was the owner; the franchise belonged to him.  I was offered a job as a crew member and I started on December 9.

     As I think back, I wonder, had I know then what I know now, would I have run the opposite direction and never looked back?   It was a wild ride, those years at Jack in the Box in Aberdeen, on the coast of the Great State of Washington.  So wild that my supervisor was fond of calling my locale The Wild, Wild West”.  I don’t know if I would have stayed, had I known.

   What I do know is that every day, I was given a measure of God’s grace sufficient to get me through that day.  And that is all I needed.

     This is my blog, in which I will be sharing my Jack in the Box story.  You may not believe all of it, but I swear to you that every word of it is true.  Each entry will tell a story.  They will not be in chronological order; they will simply be in the order in which I remember the events.  Some stories are funny.  Some are tragic.  All of them are mine.

Jack in the Box does "Cops"
Funny videos

Tags: fast food, hamburgers, jack in the box