My God Thinks World Youth Day Is Bullshit

This evening, I decided that I would love to create a wonderfully decorative and yet representative t-shirt for my beliefs to wear around Sydney when the Pope decides to visit. I feel that this shirt not only honours him but honours the understanding of "God" which I may or may not have being the Disturbed Jew that I am.

It would say:

MY GOD THINKS WORLD YOUTH DAY IS BULLSHIT.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be all in caps either. Rather, it could resemble that of a decently written fragment sentence:

My God thinks World Youth Day is bullshit.

It could even be worded for the youth who happen to agree with me:

OMG-ish! My G*D thinks WYD is bullshit! LOL-OMG-ROFLMAO!

That one could have a blue or green pixel-y background to resemble the mobile phone generation.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen… my invisible, hypothetical, and altogether irrelevant deity happens to think that Sydney's Pope visit lasting five or six days and inappropriately titled World Youth Day is a crock of shit.

Just look at some of the things they'd like the public of Sydney to submit to…

Annoying People is Bad… except when the whole event annoys the shit out of the rest of us.

This week, the New South Wales government told the rest of us that if we were to annoy people attending this World Yuck Day, we could find ourselves in the shit.

What sort of policy is that?

This must be the living, breathing, and sexually gratified definition on "irony". We – the people of Sydney – have to endure 300 road closures, 500 clearways, over 30 bus & train stations set up for random bag searching, bus route changes, and a law that tells us if we do something that some attendees don't like, we can be fined for it.

Sure. That's bloody brilliant. Irony in a nutshell, kids.

This set of amendments actually include the following bit of text:

(1) An authorised person may direct a person within any World Youth Day declared area to cease engaging in conduct that:

    …(b) causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event

Causes annoyance or inconvenience?! Jesus fucking Christ… wait, so the whole Pope visit annoying the living crap out of the rest of us is allowed to inconvenience and annoy the hell out of the rest of us but we can't annoy them? Wait… I'm sorry… I must be missing something here.

I'm probably not because in a scene typical of how fucked up our government actually is, it gets worse.

You see, you can actually be fined for annoying them.

The Herald reported this week that a breach of this so-called law would net you a fine of $5500.

That's a nice round number, isn't it? $5500. Five-thousand, five-hundred dollars. How do you come to such a nice number? Well, I think I've got the jist of it. You take the amount of Catholic child abuse cases that will probably make it to the news around the world this year – that's probably five and a bit – and you issue each victim with a thousand bucks to shut the victim up. That's the only logic that makes sense to me.

Seriously, if I "annoy" someone attending World Youth Day, wouldn't…
A. It be entirely subjective and hardly found to be decidedly annoying on the part of a few people.
B. Easier to ignore and told in a purely Australian way to "fuck off" and let everyone else have a good time.
or,
C. Tell me that there's a pub down the road and I should act on my Australian instincts and take advantage of a nice cold one.

What the hell does issuing a fine of $5500 accomplish, aside for making people poorer for no apparent reason and collecting on that much needed revenue because the New South Wales Police can?

Oh yes… we'll be getting some nice new pens. The premium sort.

I better be hearing about some brand spankin' new microscopes with this new Pope-fueled funding.

Seriously, the whole concept of a fine based on annoying someone is one of the most childish things I've heard in a while. This whole notion changes the following situations into scenes where someone can technically be fined:

Wearing a shirt that says "Jesus is a cunt": People objecting to the shirt have no proof suggesting the contrary. For all we know, Jesus was a cunt. The Bible isn't proven to be factual and believing in it extra hard doesn't make it a hard-hitting factual text. Rather, getting someone in trouble for wearing a series of words on a shirt is very much something of an oppressive culture which seems more like the sort of thing a religious visit like World Youth Day should aim not to be seen as.

Sitting in a park reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion": We already know that some people act pretty violently when they take it that their God is seen as a delusion in other peoples lives. Would it annoy you if I walked through Hyde Park or sat on a bench and read this? It might. And if it did, could I be fined for reading?

Passing out condoms: I'm not going to pass out condoms, but it has been suggested that one of the protests might just do that. Because Catholics don't believe in condoms – because that "withdrawl method" works sooooooo well – some people might get offended by the idea that someone else is trying to save their life.

Turning up and expecting The Wiggles: I imagine that this scenario would work like this. You'd turn up and find yourself dealing with people in the crowd all excited at this whole event and then, when the Pope himself come out, you yell out – as everyone is sitting listening for the first few words…

"What the fuck is this? Where the fuck are The Wiggles? I want my fucking money back."

The part of all of this that has me concerned is this whole fining bit for being inconvenienced. What if I'm inconvenienced? Can I send a bill of fifty-five-hundred bucks to the New South Wales government for every little inconvenience I get out of the World Youth Day celebrations? That seems only fair.

Second, what the fuck is with that logo? It's awful. The last thing I want to see is a piece of architectural art like the Sydney Opera House used as the commercial lynch-pin for the Catholic Church.

Why stop there? We could make Centrepoint into Christpoint.

Yuck. A cross among the Opera House… have you – the graphic designers who created this monstrosity – no dignity?

Okay. That one is probably rhetorical.

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