Recently I have discovered a new website called Examiner.com. The idea seems to be that for each of a list of cities, and for each of a list of topics, someone can apply to be the city-topic “examiner.” So, for instance, you might be the Seattle Meditation & Angels Examiner or the Jackson Womens Style Examiner or the Hartford Manga and Anime Examiner or even the [nationwide] Adam Lambert Examiner.
You may be asking yourself why someone would want to be an “examiner” rather than, say, writing his own blog. And the answer appears to be that writing as an “examiner” gets you included in Google News.
This means that my “air france luck” alert brings me back “news” sources like the Rochester Christian Living Examiner, informing me that
Long before we were even born, God appointed us a certain number of days on earth, and when he calls us home, we’re going.
It means that my “h1n1 rationality” alert brings me back the Salt Lake Spirituality Examiner, insisting that germ-related prohibitions on touching your churchmates represent “[t]he age-old battle between science or fact and religion or belief.”
It means that my “religion chuck-e-cheese” alert gets me the DC Women’s Relationship Examiner, advising that religion “is one of those really tricky things” and that religious differences should be resolved in favor of whoever “feels stronger.”
And it means my “moon menstrual permission” alert gets me the SF Astrology Examiner complaining that the scientists behind a lunar probe didn’t “talk to the moon” or “[a]sk her permission” before crash-landing their orbiter.
How these are more “news”-worthy than my Ten Stupid Things Smart Christians Believe or my How to Teach Kids about God and Genocide or my Religious Joke to End all Religious Jokes is a bit beyond me.
Nonetheless, if I need to start espousing predestination, advocating pandemic-facilitating practices, describing religion as “tricky,” or appearing bat-shit insane in order to qualify as “news,” I can do that. I mean, “god has trickily appointed that (when I’m not sneezing on my friends or lecturing pigeons about economics) I will do that.”
