Out of the white noise of Christian web sites come two interesting, yet opposing sites.

Jack Van Impe Ministries howls from the wasteland of late night television. He, his wife Rexella, and their faithful announcer, a deep voiced giant who playfully flirts with Rexella on the air, brings Bible prophecies to the hungry millennium maddened middle-American. His manic amphetamine style of rattling off verse and chapter from the Book of Revelations does not transfer well to the Web. However, all the dire predictions, the signs and portents, are there for a person thirsty for doom. Jesus is coming soon-perhaps today! What will you do?

The Monastery of Christ in the Desert recently made some news. By redefining the Scriptorium of Medieval Monasteries to include web design and development Christ in the Desert is at the forefront of a digital Catholic Church.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. --AC

Most religious sites are poorly done. Text stretches across the screen, annoying clip art are used for icons, and images often bloat to 100K. Not surprisingly the Satanic sites are the most interesting graphically. Images are limited in size and black is the basic background. At the Church of Satan site Anton LaVey lays out his nine Satanic Sins leading off with Stupidity. The Alter of Unholy Blasphemy offers evil as a viable alternative to Christianity's alleged Good. Unfortunately, this dichotomy of good and evil, God and Satan further establishes the modern Western religions as legitimate and absolute. Nowhere is mentioned the Ancient Goddesses or Mystery Religions. Although the Aleister Crowley site attempts to make a connection through Crowley's OTO and the Ancient Mysteries.

For that we must jump to Pagans. Wicca Web, an astoundingly awful design, list 3 pages of pagan related sites. While David Ulansey's site, which features a 92K image of David himself for no apparent reason except to scare off impatient Web scanners, goes into an interesting and lengthy history of Mithraism.

Back in the late 80's Bob Dobbs was an icon for the fringe, some of whom jumped deep into the web maelstrom, while others floundered in their scribbly xerox fanzine asylums. Although I never caught the SubGenius fever I understood its humor, but felt satire without self-parody, or cynicism, was an old joke getting stale fast.

I feel likewise for Jews for Jesus, whose two choice/two variation site service and singles registry is as absurd as Hare Krishna TV.