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Jay: LIKE, YES. IT IS, SO MUCH BETTER.

Nicholas: Do you say so, chappie?

Jay: UH HUH.

Nicholas: I will debate with you! The webs are making journalism far worse than it is.

Jay: HOWEVER COULD THAT BE, THE HEARST CHICAGO-AMERICAN, YELLOW JOURNALISM, CORPORATE OVERLORDS, YADDA YADDA. GOOGLE PLUS, BRIAN STELTER, NYU STUDENTS, PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS.

Nicholas: I WENT TO HARVARD AND I MAKE WELL INTO THE SIX FIGURES.

Jay: SOMETHING SOMETHING AJ LIEBLING.

They ramble on about their professional feelings for a while as a bunch of women continue actually working.

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J. Edward Wright, president of both The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News that he agrees several Hebrew inscriptions mention "Yahweh and his Asherah."

"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."

Scholars have found mentions of Asherah in ancient scrolls, on pottery, and even the Book of Kings, which refers to a popular entertainment of the era called "The Real Housewife of Heaven."

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Is it "news"? Is it citizen journalism? Is it entertainment? Is it just ("just") diaristic? It's sort of all of these. Basically I think of these kind of videos as barely-seen docu-diary entries. (And the truth is, usually no one does see them. They get like eight or eighteen views.)

The "most interesting" (by which I mean, most upsetting) ones are the videos where they're just fighting each other for fun (???) and literally everyone's videoing it.

But pretty much there's videos of children beating up other children being put online every single day.

Everyone enjoys a fight!

Othertimes, not so much.

Colton High School, a winner is you.

I guess this was the Internet we signed up for.

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As expected, sectarians of every faith engaged in an orgy of sacral violence against atheists, liberals, and gays-incidentally killing almost the entire membership and clergy of the Episcopal Church. In Manhattan this morning, the screams of sinners about to face their final Judge were accompanied by a live performance by Jars of Clay on the former Today Show set.

Assorted Jews and members of the Nation of Islam clashed in the streets of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. And public school teachers, interpreting the president's signal, began playing "The Passion of the Christ' on loop in classrooms as part of a religious revision to the No Child Left Behind Act.

Some observers believe Obama has reignited the worst religious violence in America since the Catholic League protested a 1991 Martin Scorsese film by burning nearly 23,000 cinephiles on a pyre. When reached for comment today, Catholic League President Bill Donahue sighed, "It's unbelievable that in the year 2010, Scorsese still lives. We'll be praying to St. Anthony hoping to find him today."

According to Shirley Dobson, chairwoman of the National Day of Prayer Taskforce, the slaughter "will cleanse the nation of the unrighteous and bring about God's favor." Dobson added, "We should thank President Obama for making this possible."

Many Church groups organized special "Wall tearing" commemorations, where believers scaled freestanding "Walls of Separation" before machine gunning and dynamiting them.

The annual outpouring of religious enthusiasm and irreligious entrails continues its divisive legacy sixty-year legacy, having been instituted by Harry Truman, the most notable theocrat in the Western World since Oliver Cromwell.

* * *

SORRY! Had to get that out of my system. Anyway, the National Day of Prayer and the attendant controversy aren't really as interesting as the above. I hardly knew we had a National Day of Prayer until the Obama White House and Fox News reminded me. After all, we already have Thanksgiving-which John Adams, in his wisdom, wanted to be a day of penance and "humiliation."

The National Day of prayer is probably the most milquetoast expression of "religion" ever invented. It is not even billed as a day to pray for the Nation, which would make some kind of sense coming from the government of a religiously pluralistic people. Instead it is a day where Evangelical and other pressure groups ask the president to issue a proclamation-it's one step up from the kind of thing your town gives to Little League coaches and admirable garbage men. In turn, we citizens may respond to the proclamation by praying to whatever for no reason in particular. You can really feel the hot child-molesty breath of theocracy on your crotch, can't you?

And yet, the National Day of Prayer is becoming something like an authentic expression of American religion now that it is controversial. Like the rest of our controversies over what it "means" to be an American it places the president as a kind of God King, and the Courts as a magisterium, interpreting our sacred American texts. Winners of these cases talk about themselves and "the American way" in the way some conservative Christians speak of being "orthodox" in belief and practice.

Depending on the occupant of the Oval Office, whole sections of the country feel as if they are no longer welcome in America-demeaning the other parts as Jesusland or as coastal liberal elitists. Every cultural preference must be endorsed or mystically embodied by the President and government in some way or the people of those preferences feel anxious.

It's why we note that the Supreme Court may no longer have Protestants on it. It is why it was important to have a first black president. It's a common attitude in ethnically and religious diverse democracies to want literal representatives of each group. But it is also dangerous for a country that sees itself as having a historical mission to the world.

If you believe America has some kind of historical purpose other than being the home of Americans, that it must serve as an example of progress and tolerance, or as the protector and promoter of free markets and "values," then inconsequential bullshit like the National Day of Prayer turns into a big important broil. Great atheists like Nietzsche would be aghast if you suggested it was worth a penny of their scorn. Great saints, reformers, or Rabbis would and should see it as a shabby insult, or a blasphemy. But "America" is at stake!

It's sad. But America's desire for a country with a purpose has made this nation as desperate for absolute authority in government as any since the fifteenth century. Goodbye nation of laws, hello nation of "values." God help us.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a contributing editor to The American Conservative. He writes from Mount Kisco, New York.

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UPDATE: Awl pal Juli Weiner did some real reporting and actually spoke to French answering machine God. You can hear it here!

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"You really think it's boring?" I said.

L. considered. We were walking down the sidewalk, flanked by piles of disgusting, road-spattered snow twice her size. She and H. were dressed in Valentine's-appropriate dresses, their heavy jackets and chunky boots clashing wildly with the pink hearts all over their tights. We were surrounded by the pre-church bustle, that mix of reverence and irreverence — hushed voices squeezing in a few more jokes before the pipe organs starts — that was once so familiar to me.

As we climbed the steps to the front door, L. turned to me and clarified. "Not all of church is boring," she said. "There are two parts of church. The not-boring part is Sunday School. The boring part of church is when we have to sit in our seats and listen to songs."

The past five months have convinced me that, often, L. is right. Church is boring. It's not only boring, of course, but when it's boring, it's really boring.

Since I'd stopped attending church upon graduating from high school, my primary church-related pop-culture references in the past fifteen years have been in The Simpsons: the whole family in their nice clothes, Bart's hair slicked down, Marge looking embarrassed, Homer with his head thrown back, snoring. I myself have not snored in church, I don't think, but I have definitely dozed off. Even on cold winter days, the sanctuary is steamy, and the pews get a lot of direct sunlight. And the rhythm of (how to say this) non-black church preaching — "Blah blah BLAH, blah blah blah blah blah: blah blah" — sounds exactly the same as when I was a kid, and is about as lulling as speech can get.

Of course, there have been Sundays when church was invigorating: the music was great, the sermon was interesting, the verses from Job perfectly chosen for a week in which most of the congregation saw A Serious Man. There have been Sundays during which I was feeling particularly alert and aware and ready to think. This past Sunday was not one of those Sundays.

After delivering H. to the full-hour toddler playroom, L. and I sat in our customary pew, joined by our neighbor, Karen, and her daughters. It was Women's Sunday, a yearly tradition at Rock Spring UCC, in which the service is given over to the women of the church, pastoral interns and laywomen alike. The effect on the service was a little jarring, not specifically because they were all women; one of the church's three everyday ministers is a woman, though she sat Women's Sunday out. But when you hand a church service to people unaccustomed to running a church service, things can get a little amateur hour. The ordinarily quick pace of the service slowed to a crawl as women looked at each other, silently working out who was next; one flustered lay reader missed a couple of lines in the pre-offertory call and response.

A restless L. spent the first twenty minutes of the service drawing Valentines on the bulletin and kicking the seat in front of her. At Rock Spring, school-aged kids hang out in the sanctuary until the children's sermon. Then parents take them to Sunday School. We walked down the steps, L. growing more and more excited as we approached her room. "Hi, L.!" the teacher said. "We're decorating cookies today!"

L. turned to me. "Cookies!" she cried, clasping her hands in delight, a four-year-old experiencing rapture.

As I waited outside the sanctuary doors, listening for a good moment to re-enter, I could almost hear the Simpsons, shedding their dress clothes in the front hallway after another dull Lovejoy sermon. "This is the best part of the week!" Homer cries. Lisa agrees: "It's the longest possible time before more church!"

Our return to church last fall was spurred by a lot of things: a desire to meet people in our new suburban neighborhood; concerns about the moral framework our kids were growing up with; L.'s total freakout about dying. Thus far we'd barely met anyone, and it was unclear whether L. was getting anything out of the experience other than twenty minutes of frustration and some free cookies. But church had surprised me by offering me something I hadn't even known I'd wanted in my life. Not faith — not yet. Not really grace. Boredom.

Inside the sanctuary, a laywomen delivered the sermon — on "love," natch — and I sat peacefully and listened. I knew when we decided to return to church that it would sometimes be boring. What I didn't expect was how much I would come to appreciate that boredom — how much I look forward to sitting in the back pew, basking in the sun, as my eyes unfocus and the choir sings Amen. It's not the old church boredom I'm feeling, the kid-sized desperation of being stuck somewhere awful, listening to something that lasts forever, itching inside your own skin. It's more akin to relaxing thoughtfully, settling down, opening up your mind. Meditating, I guess, although I've never actually ommmmed.

The best part of returning to church so far has been that it's offered an oasis of calm in our ridiculous lives. We wake up, we hectically prepare the kids for school, we work and work and work, we pick the kids up, we put them to bed, we work some more. Even this day, Valentine's Day, my wife skipped church to continue a project. (We hired a babysitter for that afternoon, but not so we could go out for romantic dinner — so we could work.) Sometimes we get to play with our kids for a while. Sometimes we get to watch Lost. But church is one hour a week in which we don't have to write or research or pitch or network or parent or do much of anything. One hour a week in which all we have to do is think. One hour a week of sweet boredom.

When I was a kid, time going slowly felt like torture. As a grown-up — as my days and weeks and years hurtle by — I find that one creeping hour feels like a gift.

"How was Sunday School?" I asked L. when church was over. She was clutching a cookie that seemed to have been the subject of some kind of extreme-sports version of cookie-decorating; pink frosting and red sparkles and candy hearts jockeyed for space on its overcrowded surface. Sprinkles clung to the cookie's edges for dear life. H. stood next to her, anxiously awaiting some sign that her sister might share that cookie with her. I geared up for a battle, as there was no way L. would ever do so willingly.

L. broke off the tiniest possible chunk of her cookie and handed it to her sister. Pink hearts clattered on the classroom floor. "It was not boring," she said.

Previously: Prologue: "This Is A Song"

Dan Kois writes about movies and plays and books, too. Also, he has a new book out, about that Hawaiian guy with the ukulele.

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