This Is My Pizza, Which Shall Be Given Up For You

Next year, a new township in Florida will be incorporated. This gives me a headache primarily because I'm not sure if Florida is a place for which a population influx is such a swell idea. However, when more thoroughly considered, this new town makes me sick for altogether different reasons. The new town, which will be called Ave Maria, intends to enforce strict Catholic policies, including bans on contraceptives, pornography, erections, and self-esteem. Who, you may be wondering, came up with such a perversion of the Aristotelian idea? Who else but the guy who originated Domino's Pizza, Tom Monaghan? Of course! Anybody with a rudimentary practical knowledge of how to make a shitty pizza makes my short list of dream urban developers and planners. To my further dismay, the town will be the site of the first new Catholic University in the States in forty years. It would be wise of me to note at this point that this idea alone does not bother me. To the contrary, if it were not for my 14-year Catholic education I would not be in possession of either my incomprehensible intellect or my smug superiority. However, some of the text being generated by the higher-ups in this new school is more than disturbing, citing America's "catastrophic cultural collapse" as well as the "virtual collapse of Europe" as components of the current state of our faithless hemisphere. I don't know where these people have been, but at no point in my life have I felt more suffocated by the morality of others than in the past 5 years. Not even in fourth grade when I got screamed at for having a lucky rabbit's foot or for bringing a Stephen King book to class. Or the time my dad broke all of my Marilyn Manson CDs (hi dad). Not even during the longest, hottest, most incense-choked renditions of the Stations of the Cross did I ever feel like maybe we were all in an assload of trouble with the rest of the world. I'm sure the prospective citizens of Ave Maria would love to work together to restore our great nation to the strength of McCarthy and the prudence of Torquemada, but I would not quite pinpoint their general absence in Western society as "cultural collapse", because, unfortunately, I find their absence a bit too absent for my liking. And for that matter, what the fuck is a "virtual collapse"? Is that like when Jesus died but like didn't really die or something? Because I thought that was a good thing. Or wait. I'm confused. Seriously, though, if the formation of the European Union and its currency's outperformance of America's own is a "virtual collapse", doesn't that just basically mean that you should take your head out of your ass? Aside from just my personal objections to this idea, there are some constitutional ones as well, such as what will happen when this goomba actually tries to enforce THE BIBLE AS CODIFIED LAW. "Hi, welcome to Ave Maria! Here are your chastity belt and broadsword. Be sure to thrash the hell out of your wife and children, heck, even kill them if God asks you to, and never forget to smear lamb's blood on your doorframe lest the Angel of Death claim your firstborn!" And for all you animal lovers out there, Ave Maria's zoning on the edge of the Everglades infringes upon the natural territory of the already endangered Florida Panther. Anybody want to guess who broke ground on this project? I'll give you a hint: depending on who you ask, his brother is or is not the president of the United States of America. Now, I realize the value organized religion has for the world, just not anywhere near its systems of real laws. And it is certainly not for me. If you, dear reader, have any decency or passion for the progression of mankind, you will take up arms and join me in my seige of Ave Maria, Florida. We shall annex the burg in the name of Frank Zappa, and we will have a killer luau/coronation ceremony, for I shall be named Megahedotron 5, ruler of all that kicks ass. Then again, I will probably just never go to Florida again. I mean, I wasn't going to anyway, right? Right.