Damion gets a naughty-shaped no-prize for bringing The Americans for Purity (winning the war on masturbation) to our attention. Go check it out, then come back, we'll wait.

Outraged? Can't believe we linked such stuff? HA-HA! (3rd site down). I told you mom, just because it's on the internet doesn't make it true. But don't feel bad, Damion and I both thought it was real until Joshua pointed out all the links lead to parody sites.

Unfortunately this is probably not a hoax.

Christianity's penchant for asceticism is very weird, and very old. Early Christian writing is filled with tales of naked people eating dirt, castration, and, most interesting of all, the curious practice of standing on columns for decades at a time. Even weirder was how these and other ascetics would be forced to constantly move around because enormous groups of people would gather around them in the desert, making their own practice untenable.

The first time you see the Life of Brian the crowds of people who follow him out into the desert are funny because it's silly. It becomes far funnier when you later learn that such things actually happened, and what they show is merely an exaggeration.