Ways to pass the time at a 3 hour Catholic Mass (specifically on Easter weekend).

1) Get out a notebook and a pen. Come up with a phrase for to guess in the game of hangman. Now draw a cross and title your game "Crucify Man" or "Crucify God." As the other person playing guesses wrong letters, draw in Christ limb by limb. If the Christ is fully crucified before the phrase is completed, the guesser loses.

2) Make a checklist of the 7 deadly sins along the vertical axis, and list yourself and your blasphemin' guests along the horizontal axis. Then attempt to quietly commit as many sins as you can in the next three hours. The first person to commit all seven wins. ** Bonus points in the gluttony category go to those who take communion. Bonus points of sloth for those who don't. **

3) Mark up your program with a pen until the text reads what you actually believe. "Jesus Christ was born and died on the cross for our sins and was buried. Three days later he is risen and this is the reason we celebrate Easter" becomes "Jesus Christ was born and died and we celebrate Easter." If this is the way you create dogma (crossing out disagreeable terms from books of other faith traditions) then you might be a Unitarian Universalist.

4) Openly read a book, preferrably on Buddhist Philosophy or Nazi Propaganda.

5) Think of really inappropriate things to say to your guests to make them laugh during the quiet parts. Examples:

- During the opening song, which is about the 7 days of creation: "Whoa, we ARE going to be here all night. I mean, if they are starting here, it's gonna take us a long time to get to the resurrection."

- During Communion: "If this were a real date then I'd suggest that now is when we go find a confessional booth and fool around in it."

I'm embarrassed to say some of these are the way I passed my Saturday night. It was awfully disrespectful, and I would be terribly offended at guests behaving this way in my church, but somehow that didn't stop me from making my "date" laugh hysterically as I sat down from "please stand as you are willing and able" prayer number 3 and I said to him "Good thing that one ended when it did; I almost farted in your face."