First Church of Simba GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT The First Church has just finished reading a recently published book entitled "FCOS Sacraments For Dummies" (Hyperbole Press: ISBN 0-7868-6028-6) which purports to be a "catch all" text for those who have difficulty following or understanding the otherwise simple sacraments of the First Church. This error-ridden tome does for the First Church sacraments what "National Inquirer" does for regional news. However since there is a decided dearth of FCOS related texts on the market we find ourselves in the unenviable position of having to give official sanction to this book. The book starts off on a tenuous foot right from the introductory page which begins with: "Hazier than Los Angeles during a temperature inversion; more confusing than an all-candidates debate the First Church of Simba sacraments belong more readily on the show 'Unsolved Mysteries' than they do in the living room of an average church member. This book shall delve into these esoteric rites and shed if not understanding, at least the ability to do them by rote." The passage goes on to wax poetic about how obscure the sacraments are, concocts some odd tie-ins with Cthuluism and the illuminati and then launches into a strange lyrical chant about "things man was not meant to know". From this foreword alone one might get the impression that the sacraments are somehow difficult to perform. Nothing could be further from the truth! Folks, the FCOS sacraments are the epitome of ease to perform - it's all lined out in plain text in the front of the pamphlets that all members received in the mail shortly after joining the church. The ingredients to perform the sacraments are inexpensive and we've heard reports of very few injuries and almost *no* fatalities resulting from these sacraments. You want to talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. The first chapter of this book deals with procuring the ingredients for the sacraments. The author expresses needless alarm at the fact that almost all of the ingredients must be purchased directly through the church. He repeats the words "monopolistic", "money grubbing", "slimy" and "potentially lethal" ad nauseam in this chapter and then goes on to describe the process in which one might produce many of the key ingredients at home. If you don't have a degree in chemistry then *please* don't try any of the things suggested in this chapter. Our FCOS mystical chemists are skilled in creating these items in large, consistent batches and in spite of his allusions otherwise our prices are VERY reasonable. In chapter five he describes the "pounding back of the sacramental wine and bazooka barf" portion of the sacraments. To try and distract the reader from his obviously slim grasp of the actual ceremony he instead tries to insert some levity into the text. Consider the following passage: "...it is now that you are ready for the sacramental wine portion of the ceremony. I hope that most of you took my advice in the first chapter and purchased a few bottles of a reasonably palatable table wine. If you have decided to use the 'official' sacramental wine sold through the church then you have to go through pre-ceremony step of this portion which the church has rather cryptically labeled, 'sedementarium tremens'. What they mean by this is that you must vigorously shake up the cans of wine in order to loosen the copious amount of sediment that has caked itself on the bottom. Of course if you chose to buy the 'carbonated' version of the wine then you are well aware of the rather messy part that comes next..." Now let's set a few things straight here. Firstly there are not "copious amounts" of sediment in the bottom of our wine cans. Since we switched to a new filtering technique this spring we have managed to reduce the mineral sediments in the cans to a bare minimum. If you perform the sacraments before the expiry date on the cans you seldom need to shake them at all! Again it's all laid out in the pamphlets. Please read them before you buy this book because you may be wasting your money. Let's not even touch on chapter seven. Look, if you do what this guy suggests in this chapter then the First Church will *not* be held liable for any injuries. One can only conclude that this chapter was written as a joke, and a pretty harmful one at that. Anybody who does as he suggests with those ball-peen hammers deserves whatever happens to them! Oddly, chapter eight is astoundingly accurate in its description of the duct tape ritual. Then again he has copied it almost verbatim from our FCOS pamphlet. The only minor blunder he makes in this chapter is in his conversions from the metric measures used in the pamphlet to imperial measures. If you just remember that one meter equals about thirty-nine inches and *not* five feet as he suggests then you can save yourselves a fair bit of duct tape and garden hose, and as an added bonus you can also purchase a much shorter ladder. In conclusion, this book is entertainingly written but chock full of far too many errors to touch upon in a short review such as this. If you want to read it just for your personal amusement then do so because the style is pithy and full of wry wit. If you mean to buy it as a guide to help you through the FCOS sacraments then save your money because as the title suggest, this book is for "Dummies". Our First Church rating for this book is five Sarabis on a scale of nine. END ANNOUNCEMENT ______________________(`.-,')_____________________________________________ .-' ; Founder: First Church of Simba _.-' , `,- _ _.-' .' /._ "Danger? Ha! I walk on the wild side. .' ` _.-. / ,'._;) I LAUGH in the face of danger! Ha ha ha ha!" ( . )-| ( - Simba )`,_ ,'_,' \_;) ('_ _,'.' (___,)) TLKiaWoL .. D J Braun (simba@icenter.net) | NALA: `-:;.-' ASPLN ( http://www.icenter.net/~simba ) | HTOFL