John Montgomery Presents This Week's	January 6, 2001	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	Kim John and Francis Phillip
	Illustration by Katie Miranda at The Optic Nerve
	Rash Rastafarian Rats

Got the post-holiday blues? Sick of the winter weather? Did the election fiasco get you down? Worried about that endless parade of geriatric, hand-me-down, Republican-nursing-home-resident retreads that President Snippy dug up for his cabinet? Need to get out of town?

Yeah, that's the ticket! How about a nice, peaceful, relaxing, sun-drenched vacation in the Caribbean? Maybe one of those small, idyllic islands like St. Lucia? And while you're there, take the opportunity to fill your spiritual needs by attending a church service in a cathedral. Hey mon, chicken soup for the mind, body and soul, eh?

If you needed any more proof that there's no escaping evil lunatics no matter where you go these days, you could have found it in Castries, St. Lucia this week. A group of Rastafarians, armed with machetes, cans of gasoline and blow torches, stormed into the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Immaculate Conception during Sunday services, and began calmly hacking and setting fire to anyone they could find. They killed two people, including a nun, and injured at least 12 others, including the priest celebrating the mass, who suffered a collapsed lung and third-degree burns over his body. One of the survivors called it a "scene from hell." Ordinarily, one goes to church to avoid scenes from hell.

How could a thing like that happen? I always thought Rastafarians were laid back, gange-smoking, dreadlock-wearing, Bob-Marley-listening hippies who were dedicated to peace and love. There I go again with those ethnic stereotypes. The two attackers who have been arrested, Kim John and Francis Phillip, are not of the peace and love variety. They describe themselves as prophets on a mission from God to fight corruption in the Catholic Church. That sounds a lot more like Bob Jones than Bob Marley.

Evidently living on a sunny island and smoking dope all day does not prevent you from participating in the centuries long tradition of spewing out violence and hatred while claiming that God made you do it. Kim and Francis aren't any different from moralizing pricks the world over who use religion to justify their intolerances, phobias, perversions, cruelties, deviousness and all-round Satan-like behavior. They just dance the reggae better.

Now that your Caribbean vacation has become royally screwed up, what can you look forward to? Expect Charlton Heston to show up in St. Lucia any day now to whip up support for the citizens' rights to bear machetes and blow torches. The members of the new National Machete Association will give up their weapons only when someone pries them out of their cold, gange-stained, gasoline-soaked hands.