Next: "My (6,000 year) Old Kentucky Home."

PERHAPS INSPIRED by the two dinosaurs that will be serving as its two U.S. senators in January, Kentucky has officially announced that it will spend $150 million on a vast theme park that will, among other things, insist that the planet is only 6,000 years old. It's not a new idea among the creationists, but now an entire state will try to reap the economic benefits of such logic with an emphasis on how religious education can be fun. If all goes well, it could turn out to be sort of a Serengeti with a Biblical message.

To complete the circle, Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, (which doesn't mean that much in the Bluegrass State) glowed that the new tourist attraction will be spread across 800 acres at the site of the existing Creation Museum, which already boasts of a 12-toot topiary dinosaur. More to come as the planners suggest the project has Jurassic Park in mind with a lot of other roaming creatures, benign or otherwise.

To this end consider Ark Encounter, a tourist knockoff of the USS Constitution parked all these years in Boston Harbor. Visitors, it says here, will encounter a 500-foot wooden replica of Noah's animal rights pride and joy. There will be live creatures, dwarf giraffes and maybe even another dinosaur if any are left at the movie lot.

So I'm not one to argue with the governor's optimism over a project that will open in 2014 and is expected to draw 1.6 million creationists and curiosity seekers a year. "Make no mistake about it, this is a huge deal," the Louisville-Courier Journal quoted him. You bet. Of Biblical proportions.

Oh, the financing. The collaborative developers are the for-profit Ark Encounters and a non-profit outfit called Answers in Genesis. With the governor as their cheerleader, they hope to get a lot of tax incentives that will come out taxpayer pockets. Beshear is already being challenged for wanting to stir state money into a religious pot, but he wants you to know that he is a Christian as well as a public servant.

Did I mention that the park will also have a live animal shows and a Tower of Babel, as if the daily reports from Capitol Hill aren't enough?

Unimpressed by the scope of this prayerful idea, the Courier-Journal editorialized that the governor needs a vacation. It worried that the state's chief executive is suffering from the sort of fatigue that would have him ballyhoo the theme park in the first place. It sinfully concluded that Kentucky needs an updated state motto: "Kentucky - Unbridled Laughingstock."

Whew! I'm glad that I'm not the only one who feels that way.