{"id":261,"date":"2013-10-30T16:28:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T20:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godscomic\/?p=261"},"modified":"2013-10-30T16:28:58","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T20:28:58","slug":"say-it-or-go-hungry-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html","title":{"rendered":"Say it or go hungry!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight is Halloween. For those of you unfamiliar with the holiday it\u2019s a beautiful time of year where small children are encouraged to pretend to be someone else and come to the homes of strangers and ask for candy.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically the other 364 days of the year we spend telling children NOT to take candy from strangers, especially ones that have a corpse or bloody appendages on their front porch.<\/p>\n<p>Hey it\u2019s never too early to prepare kids for the phenomenon of mixed messages and confusion to all things adult as we usher them into their puberty.<\/p>\n<p>It will be a bitter sweet night for the wife and I as for the first time in 15 years we had neither our son or 11 yr old daughter to walk the blocks with as they collected enough goodies to keep dentists in business for years to come.<\/p>\n<p>(On a side note they say the Celts invented Halloween and after a little research I found out the \u201cCelt\u201d is an ancient Gallic word meaning \u201c cavity creators\u201d.)<\/p>\n<p>Our kids are with friends this time and so we will sit on the porch and wait for the kids to come up and seek to reap their reward. As much as the missus and I don\u2019t have in a lot in common generally in this one thing we were united; No one got even one tootsie roll without uttering the magic phrase, \u201cTrick or Treat\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Last year many kids would come up to us not saying a word and simply open their bags as though we were obligated to give them their desires. It\u2019s like the holiday version of teaching kids that entitlements are part of being American.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s bad enough that the holiday implied that if you don\u2019t give us candy there will be hell to pay, but now these narcissists believe even following through with the ritual of saying 3 words is too much to ask.<\/p>\n<p>As they stood there we would ask \u201cwhat do you have to say\u201d and normally the response was \u2026\u201duhhh, please?..no thank you?&#8230;even a couple \u201chappy Halloween!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It took them a few moments to get it and normally I would start it with a \u201c tri..tri\u2026trick\u2026?\u201d like I was trying to coax something legible from someone who had suffered a brain trauma and was only now realizing they weren\u2019t Scandinavian.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually they would say \u201cTrick or treat\u201d and we would feel like we had actually contributed something beautiful to society by keeping not only tradition alive, but also common courtesy. My next assignment is to try to get their parents to use their turn signals.<\/p>\n<p>A much more difficult task and one where perhaps a rotting corpse or a dancing skeleton may actually come in handy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight is Halloween. For those of you unfamiliar with the holiday it\u2019s a beautiful time of year where small children are encouraged to pretend to be someone else and come to the homes of strangers and ask for candy. Ironically the other 364 days of the year we spend telling children NOT to take candy&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Say it or go hungry! - God&#039;s Comic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Say it or go hungry! - God&#039;s Comic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tonight is Halloween. For those of you unfamiliar with the holiday it\u2019s a beautiful time of year where small children are encouraged to pretend to be someone else and come to the homes of strangers and ask for candy. Ironically the other 364 days of the year we spend telling children NOT to take candy&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God&#039;s Comic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-10-30T20:28:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brad Stine\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Say it or go hungry! - God&#039;s Comic","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Say it or go hungry! - God&#039;s Comic","og_description":"Tonight is Halloween. For those of you unfamiliar with the holiday it\u2019s a beautiful time of year where small children are encouraged to pretend to be someone else and come to the homes of strangers and ask for candy. Ironically the other 364 days of the year we spend telling children NOT to take candy&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html","og_site_name":"God&#039;s Comic","article_published_time":"2013-10-30T20:28:58+00:00","author":"Brad Stine","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html","name":"Say it or go hungry! - God&#039;s Comic","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-10-30T20:28:58+00:00","dateModified":"2013-10-30T20:28:58+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#\/schema\/person\/243d86fd9261f0ca95264b80e71e80e9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/10\/say-it-or-go-hungry-3.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Say it or go hungry!"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/","name":"God&#039;s Comic","description":"God&#039;s Comic - Brad Stine","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#\/schema\/person\/243d86fd9261f0ca95264b80e71e80e9","name":"Brad Stine","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/870\/870f4e7ff5414a60daaefcce61009a6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/870\/870f4e7ff5414a60daaefcce61009a6cx96.jpg","caption":"Brad Stine"},"description":"\"Brad Stine is on a mission \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a mission to free us all from the chains of political correctness and prevent our eventual \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwussification.' From his Nashville stronghold, Stine is mounting his crusade against these hypocrisies, all of which are explored in his highly anticipated 4th album\/DVD, aptly titled \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWUSSIFICATION!' \"You know what offends me?... Offended people,\" says Stine. A staunch supporter of first amendment rights and foe of political correctness, Stine asserts that rights should be universally applied. \"In a country with guaranteed rights to freedom of religion, its citizens are constantly trying to make faith in public spheres illegal, I am offended by that contradiction and want to talk about it as a comic.\" The strength of his conviction about our freedoms can be found in many places on WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from \"Merry Christmas Too!\" (the right to celebrate religion) to \"At Least We're Not France!\" (the responsibility to take action as a country) to \"Spank\" (the ability to discipline our children the way we see fit). What would cause the wussification of Brad Stine? \"I hope that nothing ever wussifies me to deny my own personal beliefs,\" he says. \"Brainwashed wussies have been taught that standing up for yourself and defending your personal point of view makes you a close-minded hate monger.\" Stine stops short of defending his point of view as the ONLY one, adding \"...one must also be respectful of dissenting belief while supporting their own.\" He is, after all, an inclusive figure who trains his comedy to attack ideas, not the people who embrace them. Stine's faith forces him to acknowledge the respect and dignity of all\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 even the wussies with whom he disagrees! Stine models his approach to comedy after legendary practitioners that he has known and loved over the years. Despite George Carlin's disdain for theistic beliefs, he has been a big influence on Stine. \"I always enjoyed Carlin for turning the tables on culture. He is an excellent writer that has endured for decades.\" More current comedic touchstones are Brian Reagan, Paula Poundstone, Jim Gaffigan and Monty Python, among others. Fear not, true believers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with his brand new album, Brad Stine is here to save the world from WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one politically-correct, offended person at a time!\"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/author\/bstine"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}