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12 NOV 03: ATTENTION-GETTERS

The Georgia Baptist Convention finished its annual meeting at the Civic Center Tuesday night. Unlike previous years, this year's statewide conference didn't get much attention. Maybe if they had burned federal court rulings on the Ten Commandments in the parking lot....

We heard a complaint Tuesday that the Georgia Baptist Convention in Columbus wasn't being covered enough by The Mass Media. Considering some of the divisive issues at recent meetings, a lot of Baptists probably don't mind being left to themselves for a change.

(And let's face it - things are a lot more interesting when Baptists holler and shout at something other than the devil.)

The complainer said Columbus reporters only care about how much money the Georgia Baptist Convention brings to town, and NOT the religious topics at the meeting. That's strange -- because we've heard ministers on the radio claim Jesus talked about money more than any other subject.

In a way, though, this complainer may have a point. The weekend conference of Jehovah's Witnesses at the Civic Center last July seemed to attract a lot more publicity that the Georgia Baptist Convention did. But there's a good explanation for this. Many people expected the Witnesses to act like robots or weirdos.

(And another thing: Jehovah's Witnesses tend to have private church services. Many Baptists are on TV or radio every weekend - so we've heard that message already.)

Instant Message to Mount Pleasant Baptist Church (city unknown): Your bus in the Civic Center parking lot had a thought-provoking slogan on the back - "Keep the main thing the main thing." Did you drive that bus to Main Street Village, to see how shoppers would react?

Meanwhile, a smaller group attempted to gain The Mass Media's attention Tuesday. A parent reported her son was playing "Taps" at sunset at a cemetery, and wanted TV coverage of it. Well, Tuesday WAS Veterans Day -- but maybe the family needed to be more creative. Have the boy play "Taps" at the Mansour's liquidation sale.

LOTTO MILLIONAIRE UPDATE: Spain's Interior Ministry (the REAL one) responded to our e-mail fraud question
Tuesday. It responded, of course, in Spanish. If the staff could read my English message, why couldn't they reply the same way?

Thanks to a wonderful web site providing free translations, I can show you what Spain's Interior Ministry actually wrote:

Receipt to its message is accused and we communicate that we have given transfer of the same one to the competent Unit of our Department, so that they have knowledge of the matter exposed.

We take advantage of the occasion to greet him attentively and we remain at your service for any information that desire relative al Department of the Interior.

"Greet him attentively?" Does this mean you'll shake the suspect's hand, before putting the handcuffs on him?

Meanwhile, Dr. Tomson Powell wrote us AGAIN Tuesday - to admit he sent us the wrong e-mail address for the Spanish Interior Ministry. Trouble is, the only correction was to add a number "1" to the address, which is still based at Lycos. So where did our first reply go - some cyber-café in Nigeria?

BLOG UPDATE: We didn't realize until Tuesday that the horror movie "2001 Maniacs" being filmed at Westville has Travis Tritt among its stars. Boy, did Tritt become a country music has-been in a hurry....