squidbag

The American Hopeless Problem

If you're like me, (and you know you are, secretly, down in places you'd rather not acknowledge) you find yourself frequently in observation of others and thinking "Man, this guy is completely hopeless."

Whether it be some talking head floundering around for ersatz points on his conspiracy monsters map in the media or hapless motorists who seem not to understand physics, vehicles, or indeed, sitting up, you've seen them. Unspeakably rude bastards who have jaws that unhingedly jack in the hot air that spews incessantly from their putrid noise holes or morally superior pricks who wield their sceptre-cocks of half-baked ideology over anyone who is unfortunate enough to be caught in their headlight gaze, you know who they are. Ever encountered someone who is obviously in the wrong, but assumes instead that it is everyone else? Liars? Thieves? Shouting driveway shitheads? Pious and necktied doorstep religion peddlers? A person who doesn't seem to grasp societal norms of speaking, relating to others or wearing clothes? People who act like sit-com characters? Anyone who is still blowing their nose in restaurants? Reason-free martinets? Vacuous bureaucrats? Anyone with 1000 piercings? Like they walked into Blind Jack's Needle Hut and just said, "Here's money. Fuck me up." White people with dreads? Stank-ass dreads? Gibbering fuckheads just on the wander? Someone who is just extraordinarily bad at their one job; people who are essentially doorknobs, with one thing they can do, and it just means they go back and forth all fucking day? People who make you say, "Jumping Jesus at this hopeless bastard; kids, don't look." The hopeless. They are a problem for all Americans, and all of us have seen this chronic hopelessness problem. If you're like me, then you're tired of this shit.

I know what you're thinking: "Sure, there's a problem in this country and I *hate* that, but what I can I do - the situation is, by definition, hopeless. I mean, have you seen these fucking people?!?" Yes, I've seen them, and I've heard the sounds they make, and you sound like one of those hopeless bastards now, with your gibbery whine noises and blibbity blabbery. Shut your mouth, grow a spine and help me confront the problem before the big guns of the War On Hopelessness are pointed at your ass. 

That's right; the War on Hopelessness. It's very patriotic. We're going to stop having no hope, and have fucking hope instead. In fact, that's our slogan: HAVE FUCKING HOPE. We're going to hope things turn out okay, we're going to hope not to run into any desperate shitheads during our days, we're going to hope not to run out of money. We're going to have hope and fight the hopeless, bringing them around, and if they can't be brought around, we'll wade through the oceans of their gibbering froth to the islands of their incapacitated, lying drunken on bathroom floors & watching reality TV. We're going to work to make the things we hope for, and then hope for whatever the next shit on the horizon is, too. We're actually going to hope for the future, because you know why? The alternative is to end up among the hopeless, taking up space and wasting time and fucking with others.

Even if the hope turns out to be unjustified, it'll be worth it not to have been down there with the likes of them.

I'm Trying to Understand

Last month, a bunch of us found out that my daughter's Girl Scout troop leader had been lying to all of us about various things for almost two years, stealing money from the troop and using it for whatever she saw fit, and withholding information and opportunities from the girls. I am happy to say that she is now our former Girl Scout leader, and is no longer allowed around Scouting at all. I gave her multiple online opportunities to come clean about it or tell her side of the story but was roundly ignored. She won't speak to me in public, either, choosing instead to alter her schedule so we don't see each other and refusing to acknowledge my existence. It's clear that she's told her two daughters, casualties of the situation if ever such existed, to do likewise. Troop gossip is that she contends that she's done nothing wrong and is espousing a "I'm just a victim" story to anyone who will listen. 

Last week a young man who everyone says was a very pleasant guy blew up a bunch of people in Boston with a shrapnel bomb in a backpack. Apparently, this was done to defend Islam, perhaps at the suggestion of his other brother who was not as successful in life. The two men killed four people, wounded scores more, and created an atmosphere of havoc over something that not only doesn't need defending, but isn't even really a thing. Later, after being wounded in the throat and fighting police, the young man hid in a boat, and is now in hospital with a serious injury, communicating by writing, and being promised the death penalty when found guilty of what he's done. His brother is dead, and likely this upsets no one but him. 

Today, during one of my classes at school, a young woman who was supposed to be doing a speaking presentation about anti-abortion radicals (the sort who kill people and firebomb stuff) instead decided to distribute a handout urging us to "save the babies" and then went on for six minutes about how horrible abortions are. When gently confronted by our professor about whether or not she was ever going to move on from graphic & illustrated descriptions of abortions and talk about the actual topic to which she'd been assigned, she shut down completely, ended her presentation, became disrespectful, and refused to participate further in the class. She quickly ducked out when class was over, and we had to overcome awkwardness to move forward.

I suspect that my former GS troop leader felt desparate and unappreciated, overwhelmed and sad, worked over by life. But you don't get to lie and steal from children, at one point withholding a not-insubstantial gift card from a boy with cancer. I suspect that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev loved his brother and was "radicalized" by his brother's strong faith and opinions and undue influence to the point that he was willing to do anything, including kill people. Maybe he thought it wouldn't work; maybe he thought he'd never be caught. Nothing justifies what he did. I suspect that my fellow student was - inside her mind - taking a heroic stance for the "rights of the unborn," speaking up for them when she felt people had to listen. Nothing makes hijacking a class with your subjective opinion and trying to manipulate them a good substitute for a research project.

I'm trying my damndest to understand you fucking people - but you don't make it easy.

The End is (Not) Nigh

I know you people believe stuff more or less at random, but this? This is embarrassing for us as a group. No, as a race. The human race should be collectively embarrassed over this. This would be as bad as reality TV if it didn't have a built-in expiration date stamped on it.

First off, even if you are the sort of person who believes that this symbol, or this one, or this one or this one or even this one, mean something to which you can semi-rationally or emotionally relate, you have to admit that basing a belief that the world is going to end on an ancient piece of semi-functional rock is pretty fucking thin. It's beyond thin. It's Karen Carpenter, it's Kate Moss's hipbones. I mean, I get that a lot of people want to believe in angels and demons and a coming zombie apocalypse, and that they base their "serious" beliefs on...well, on a lot less than this, but choosing to believe that the end of the world is coming because this thing doesn't have December 22nd on it is like assuming the world ends every year on December 31st at midnight because you didn't get a new calendar for Christmas. It is beyond ridiculous, and it is the behavior of people who shouldn't have privileges, knives, children, conversations, licenses or credit. 

First off, this thing is not a measuring device that should be given any credence by an advanced civilization. In this case, "advanced civilization" means any civilization who has given up worshipping corn gods, tying your wife's tongue up with barbed wire, and using heads for sport. Our measuring devices have numbers and letters on them, and if you want to argue that this is an arbitrary difference, imagine a tape measure where you had to tell someone the couch was "six snakes long." Or someone's temperature was "three pointy face guys." Extreme silliness.

Then, there's how this great mad stone bastard works. It needs two other massive stone wheels to work properly, I believe, and you only ever see this one. The "long measure" of time as calculated by the Mayans requires this disc inside of the other wheely thing, and no one's really doing that. Regardless, you can set this one in the other one and get to December 21 and no further - which is the point at which the Mayans would have re-set this thing and started counting again, you stupid, stupid people. Just a little reading and you can get right to it. I don't even really understand it and I have a better grasp on this than you do, you end of world moron, you. Additionally, it is perhaps important to realize that the Mayans didn't do leap years, and when you try mooshing that system with the one they were using, the world ended eight months ago, and you dumb motherfuckers didn't even notice.

So. What is this, really? An excuse for people to act stupid again? For people to kiss and fuck and fondle people they're not supposed to because the world's coming to an end? So they can be irresponsible and claim this was the reason? So they can spend too much on Christmas bullshit stuff? Just a "belief of the week," where, once you were done with Planet X or Ron Paul or vampires or group supremacy or religious craziness you could move on to this, believe in it until the 22nd, and then move on to "Well, I'm going to hold onto my canned goods and shotguns because the world has to end sometime."

Not soon enough, cousin. Not by a long shot.

Secret Atheist Plan to Destroy Xmas

Some of you may have heard about Pat Robertson recently revealing the Secret Grinch Atheist Plan to Destroy Christmas and Rob the Rest of You of Happiness Because We Hate Happiness, which they were originally going to call S.G.A.P.D.C.R.R.Y.H.B.W.H.H., but that sounds like someone throwing up, kind of, and so it came to be called OPERATION MISERABLE, but it seems he found that out too, as you'll hear him drop none-to-subtle revelatory hints in that direction.

At first, the atheist "community" was all like, "Oh, shit - Pat knows the plan! He's exposed us on his important television program, despite the fact that those three words are meaningless when grouped in that order!" They ran about with their heads on fire, angry, black-hearted elves deprived of what constitutes holiday joy for people like that - wrecking that shit for everyone else. For years, they've avoided nog, presents, carols and bells for fear that shared simple enjoyment of these normal things would corrupt the plan to rob everyone else of fun. Now, it seemed as though all might be for naught, as Robertson's elite truth squad had tanked the plan.

Then a different school of thought became apparent; maybe Patty was engaging in a clever ploy to elevate the status of that oldest of Christian institutions, martyrdom. Maybe by once again dragging out the old "war on Christmas" (roasting) chestnut, he sought to whip up victimhood and false righteousness, really foment some of that old-tyme hatred of the heathen that so warms sacred hearts during the holiday season that Christians like so much that they stole it from the Romans and just wish most of the rest of world and a quarter of the US would go the fuck away and not bother them during.

But that's not REALLY what's going on here. Not really.

What's really happening is that Pat Robertson is a deep cover atheist operative embedded so well into what passes for our culture that no one even notices some of the obvious giveaways: His decidedly anti-Christian behavior, hate statements, attacks on the undeserving, minorities, weak and victimized people - I mean, seriously - just try to picture Jesus doing what Pat does every day. Does Pat have a kind word for some shunned by society? Shit, no. Pat kicks 'em while they're down, man, and if they're not down, he'll do his part to put them there. Once your eyes are open, you can never again not see the fact that Pat Robertson is a primary functioning agent of the Evil Atheist Agenda with a job to do.

And he's doing it.

Your Nightmares Are True

Deep in your atrophied and shrunken black poison pump, you knew it all along. The voices in the night, in your head, in abandoned hallways and in the back of liquor stores behind dumpsters and prostitutes told you who the hell he was, all along - and they were right.

Obama's got a pineal eye - they cover it with make-up - and he's a leader captain general of the vanguard of an invading race from beyond this dimension with perceptions that far outstrip anything a burgeoning panopticon can muster; he sees when you are sleeping/he knows when you're awake/he knows when you're a lying terrorist who needs a CIA drone up the ass. He's not American - he's quantum-American from a space dimension all around you invisible - that's how he's warping so many minds.

He's coming out of a toxic cloud of painless opium fumes and stale cigarette smoke straight out of a 1950's cathouse and he's snatching up your guns and your knives and your cudgels and your Dixie flags and your weapons so that when he comes around with his pan-racial, post-racial racist agenda - hating everyone that's not the mix he is, exactly - you're defenseless, and you have to wear the featureless grey coverall as institutional non-race mayonnaise post-consumer no property Lennon/Lenin communism kicks in under a totalitarian regime we asked for, we begged for, because we let that smooth-talking motherfucker into the White House and he didn't save us, he didn't save our country from itself, he saved it for himself, the last and most delectable treat on the tree of conquest. The government's going to get so goddamn big that you'll be able to see it standing on your neck while it's walking away in front of you and yet - it'll still seem like everything's out of control and going down the shitter because the chaos makes you seek comfort from the father figure daddy Obama.

Barack Obama's going to force abortions on everyone - he's going to do the abortions himself as the man-in-black leader of a cadre of ruthlessly efficient abortibots designed to infiltrate and make certain that everyone has a forced abortion and birth control rammed down their gullets like everyone's a fertile musket of baby-making madness and the only way to control the flow is to black bag your children in the dead of night, mandatory birth control for all sexes, forced abortions that you can write off on your taxes and the utter destruction of Christ's church here on Earth under the foot of a giant Pro-Abortion Monster wearing an Obama loincloth and talking like Tarzan but with Janene Garofalo's voice.

Despite his affiliation with a controversial Christian Church, he's a Muslim. A secret Muslim who manages somehow to promote the secret and shadowy agenda of Islamists everywhere while also speaking up for women's equality, gay marriage and praying - secretly - five times a day under the watchful eye of the Secret Service. He learned his Islamist ideology and secret handshake and agreed in a blood and semen pact to corrupt America for terrorism in a madrassa in a foreign country because of course, in spite of his birth certificate, which is an expert fake concocted by allies who manipulated media to create Barack Hussein Obama as a candidate in the first place - brainwashing you all - he was born somewhere else. In another fucking dimension, I know, but you don't know that, you only feel it. The big trick is, though - he doesn't believe a word of it, because he's got a personal relationship with the alien space god through his connections as the pan-dimensional messiah of hope and change. It's a good train; get on it.

He's gay, too. He's a gayesque bisexual pansexual straight guy who's just cool enough to get it on with anything that moves, and he's going to force the omnisexual agenda down the throats of all straight people everywhere like a load from a fully fluffed and hung damn ready pornstar just waiting to pump you full of hot ideological ejaculate that will disgust you all and damn you to hell and erode gender lines and whatever else you're afraid of, because that's what he is - the embodiment of all your fears, phobia made flesh, walking, talking, looking cooler than you, staying calm, cool and collected, a near-emotionless robot drone on a mission to bomb your America into dust and replace it with conspiracy Shadow America, waiting just beneath the surface - a quick left and you're there.

The media sold you a comprehensive nightmare, and you all bought in, with your hysteria and your need for change and promise of a new day - and you'll get it, cold sweating and wrapped in chintzy sheets under a steel-cold dawn and riding on the back of a mongrel demon from places you can't bear to consider. We know you believe it, and for you that's like knowing, and in the swirl of thoughts that echo in your brainpan you can't exactly nail down but you know you're in a nightmare of filth and lies and you can't figure out how this happened and you're surrounded all the time.

Your madness is real. Obama is the impossible sum of all of these things. Nightmare made flesh.

It's all under control.

Have a nice day.

MARK OF THE BEAST!

BUH-LLLAAAAARRRRRGGHHHH!

(That noise is supposed to be an Exorcist-type Mark of the Beast noise. Which I always hear like the guitar noise in this song.)

From this story found on KPLC and also in the Huffington Post (which seems more and more like USA Today everyday) Lake Charles, Louisiana idiot person, Mamie Sonnier is opposed to the hand / vein scanners at her kids' school because of The Book of the Revelation of St. John. She believes that scanning her kid's hand for so the school system can bill her for lunches will eventually lead to the Mark of the Beast because, in her words, "As a Christian, I've read the Bible, you know, go to church and stuff." And stuff. Awesome.

The part of Revelation that worries her is to be found in (and this one, I had to go look up; the things I do for you) chapter 14, verses 9 & 10, which go, more or less, "...and the third Angel followed them, [some other angels and the Lamb of God] saying with a loud voice, if any man worship the beast or his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God..." and so on, there's a lot of brimstone and suffering after that part. So Sonnier's worried about her kids drinking the wine of the wrath of God. 'Cause they're underage, I guess. She goes on to say "I know where it's going to end up coming to, the mark of beast. I'm not going to let my kids have that." But what if they want that? All the kids are getting the mark of the beast these days - it's the next big thing at Hot Topic and shit - you want your kids to be unpopular freaks, Mamie? But we know Mamie's got bigger things on her mind...

Because we know in the last days of Earth, the vanguard of the riders of the apocalypse shall be The Moss Bluff Elementary School, the violet and gold standard stretching out before the four horsemen, and that with stomachs full of lunch, the children will rise up against their parents and be scanned for the glory of the Beast who will reign in tribulation for one thousand years. Or, you know - not. I can't fathom why people like Mamie are so focused on the end times - maybe their lives suck that bad, I don't know, but you get the sense that the end of days is like a giant comic book MEANWHILE... right behind everything else they do. "Sure, I'm buying canned peas today, but the end times might come before I get to eat them." It's a strange way to live your life.

Strange because there are other books in the Bible (and stuff) and you, Mamie, have picked the one with arguably the diciest provenance upon which to focus. The book is so weirdly written that its origins are chalked up to either hallucinogenic drugs or possibly as many as three guys named John, so they don't even really know who wrote which parts - I know that means dick to a religious right that ingests more ghostwritten pablum than Casper, but it's also the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament. In order to take it as she has, it implies the grimmest possible interpretation - throwing out allegory or a description of stuff that already happened, possibly over the span of several hundred years - in favor of regarding it as future prophecy, which is not a necessary interpretation. It's a choice. Like faith. Like not letting your kids pay for lunches with a scan because you think it's the Mark of the Fucking Beast.

You're going to believe what you want to, Mamie - I just feel bad for your kids.

(Contact the Squidbag at the above address with hate mail and requests for the LIVE from Patmos album from The Three Johns, the first century church's most revelatory triple act!)

Chick-Fil-A: Princess Party

So's I'm out driving through mall hell this morning and doing boring errands when I happen past my local Chick-Fil-A restaurant (previously mentioned here and here) which is kind of the center of my Chick-Fil-A universe, and guaranteed home of the no-homo chicken sandwich here in the 'Boro. There was nothing of note about the building or its traffic between 10 and 11 o'clock this morning, but this marquee on the sign did get my attention:

PRINCESS PARTY TUES AUG 21 5-8 PM 

This seemed like something I should know more about, and after some quick reading, I discovered that this is part of a regular thing at Chick-Fil-A, Tuesdays where they get kids in and give away dead chicken. Tonight's special thing is Super Science Night with Mr. Rich! One can only presume that Mr. Rich will go over the times when men and dinosaurs roamed the Earth eating chicken together, and then move on to how being gay is an abomination to science, which is just another facet of God's infinite love we as people have yet to properly comprehend.

Next Tuesday, though, promises serious princess fun (according to the event's Facebook page), including 

* Dress like a princess and receive a FREE Nuggets Kid's Meal (4-ct)!
* Meet your favorite storybook princess
* Mini-manicures by Pint Sized Pampering
* Disney sing-along by Bravo Performance Academy
* Decorate your own magic wands
* Goodie bags for each little princess!

First off, my favorite storybook princess is Anastasia Romanov, so I can't wait to meet her and solve the mystery at last. That'll go great with lemonade. The other thing about this that seems like it's worth exploring though is the assumption on the part of the CFA people that all of the pretty princesses who show up will be little girls. Those of us with minds not constricted by archaic thinking realize that little boys can be princesses, too. Probably especially if there's free chicken in it. And maybe bigger boys and girls, too.

I can't think of anything more potentially funnier than Chick-Fil-A Princess Night in Murfreesboro being overrun by every fabulous drag queen and lesbian I know, and then all of the ones they know, too. You know the 'Boro's not the only CFA restaurant that does this - there's lots of chances to subvert this event. Everybody done up like a pretty princess and hanging around waiting to decorate their own wand. No statements or signs, just physically making the simple point (with taffeta, make-up and feather boas) that anyone can and will be a princess, just as people can and will love those they fall in love with, and maybe, just maybe, it's time for Chick-Fil-A to catch up to the way smart evolved people think about things.

Not that I claim to be one - I just think it'd be funny as hell.

Chick-Fil-Gay II

(Getting a lot of mileage out of this graphic.)

You know, I drove past Chick-Fil-A today (as did many of you) to see a depressingly long line of cars stretching out onto the little mall road that runs in front of the restaurant. It made me want to move away. To fucking Mars.

I know that some of these people are simply there because they're pissed that anyone, for any reason, has tried to tell them where they should or should not eat lunch. These people are unthinking automatons, akin to a uni-cellular organism that jumps when you poke it, and I bet that they're a much higher percentage of the crowd there than you'd think. I'm not spending any more time on them. They just want chicken, and everyone else can fuck right off. I don't agree with them, but I'm not going to waste my time talking stuff over with them, either.

Second, I'm sure there are a few hundred carloads of people around who think that they're supporting the 1st Amendment rights of the founders, the Cathys. They're wrong, of course; if the 1st Amendment was really the reason they were there, then you'd also see them at Klan rallies and gatherings of the Westboro Baptist Church. Come to think of it, maybe you do. They're also mixed up in thinking that spending money is a form of free speech, but you can't blame them for that; the Supreme Court's been telling them that's true for years now. Of course they're confused.

The third group of folks there in support of a major food service corporation are the Bible-thumping Huckabee clones who are "defending traditional marriage," and their primary (loudest) argument is that the Cathys can give their money (which they donate to several organizations that fight against gay marriage, person who lives under a rock) to whomever they want, and why the hell would you boycott someone for spending their money how they want to? There's a secondary argument, but they don't say that one as loudly; they're icked out by gay people and don't want them to get married.

Two things here (theoretical Chick-Fil-A supporter who would never have read this far down on my blog): the first one is that the rationale of your opposition is wrapped in your initial question, you thick, thick person. It's fine if Mr. Cathy wants to rail against gay marriage because he's intellectually challenged and gets his rules for living from a 2000 year old book designed to control people. It's even fine if he wants to use the profits from his corporation to spread inequality in our country where everyone is supposed to be equal. Repugnant, but fine. It's NOT fine for me to support it, given that I so strongly disagree with his dumb ass, and it's NOT fine for people who are supporting him to pretend like they're doing anything else other than backing a movement for institutionalized inequality. These people who bullshit themselves into thinking they're not supporting Cathy's Crusade? Delusional, disrespectful, disgusting and just so prideful, haughty and puffed up with the confidence of the zealot.

Which brings me to my main point: Apparently, you don't realize that we - the people who oppose you on this issue - are CONSTANTLY ENGAGING IN THE ART OF TOLERANCE by not yelling and screaming at you, by not explaining the issue to your bashed-out brains on the sidewalk, by not burning down Chick-Fil-A billboards and cackling roadside at what you mistakenly believe is your righteous anger. We have emotional reactions, too - we're not ruled by them as you are, and we don't follow through on them until they rob others of their rights. Therein lies the motherfucking rub, friend.

I know you think that we are all crunchy free-love people who don't understand tradition, discipline or rules. I have seen you bounce-label us as "hateful" like a Jedi mind trick, and we try our best to bring our signs, not buy the chicken, and take the high road as you make fun of us for missing out on your shit sandwiches and supporting other humans and their love and relationships, when love and relationships between humans are ALL THAT MATTERS. Just keep in mind - tolerance is not a natural activity for some of us - we are gritting our teeth and trying very hard not to smack and school you until you shut up and grow up.

Having Kids & Hitting Kids

Recently, this was posted on The Facebook where I could see it (I'm sure it's been around for a while, it's just that I'm just now seeing it), and I made the mistake of attempting to become involved in a discussion about it without first realizing that there would be no discussion, simply people who want to hit their kids half-assedly justifying their positions.

Argument one for spanking: "I got beat as a kid and I turned out okay." Well.  You turned out as a droning punk who needs to use a proxy to belittle other people on Facebook and who thinks it's okay to hit kids, apparently, so that's debatable at best. If you want to raise kid-hitting assholes, then go forth and spank, I guess.

Argument two for spanking: The Biblical One, which I have previously mentioned that I will no longer respect or refute, because it is a waste of time and a disservice to breath and life to pretend that people who are using a 2000-year-old aphorism of dubious origin as a parenting guide are using compassion or thought to raise their kids, so fuck them in the spanked ass with a switch, I haven't got time for their invisible friend justification.

That's it. That's what they've got; these two arguments are the two horns on the bullhead of kid-whacking rationale as espoused by people who are apparently dumbfucked in the skull parts enough to be outwitted by children.  Seriously, as I mentioned in the Facebook thread, the day that I can't outthink my kids, they're raised. These are the people who hit their kids because they want to, and connections between that ritualized humiliation and adult erotic spanking be damned. They don't care that there's no proof that it really works, they've got the Bible and a ridiculous "I'm okay," argument, and that's all they need.  Two things: the pain and humiliation cocktail of traditional spanking is fucked up; physical correction is largely unnecessary and should be relegated to whacks to stop them hurting themselves (swatting a kid's hand away from knives and fire, for example) and genial, not-hard, expected cuffs around the back of the head. Corrections without the punishment, so they do right because they're supposed to and not because they're afraid of you.

I got switched, belted, paddled and spanked.  I was smacked in the face by authority more than once, too, because I had (have) a very big fucking mouth. You know what happens when someone bigger and older than you hits you?  It changes your relationship to them forever. You internalize a giant "fuck you" for them and anyone else who thinks they can bully you into correct behavior, and that expresses itself in as many ways as there are children. Spanking: another example of traditions being used by those who can't think their way out of anything.

While dealing with these people who you wish didn't have children, I happened upon another ongoing discussion between childless people tired of justifying why they don't have children. Wow. I didn't even know that this was a thing, but there was a whole opinion piece in the Times and everything.

Okay, if you're one of the people that I know and you don't have kids?  I don't care. I don't care why or anything. It's totally up to you, seriously. Great if you have 'em, great if you don't. I mean, I'm glad somebody's having some; we need as many evolutionary chances as we can get, but I cannot fathom wanting to be involved in someone else's personal affairs like that.  "Whassmatta, Melman?  Prong busted?  Where's a passel of rugrats leaping out of your wife's cub-hatch?"  I hate people on both sides of this one, though: You've got your invasive, noisy prick asking you about your personal decisions, and then you've got people defending their rationales.  If you say anything other than "noneya" when asked why you don't have kids, you walked into the trap. Enjoy the trap, stay a while.

Fuck.  Just when I think the wheel-spinners have wasted all the oxygen they can...

An Obsolete System

Now I'm really going to test my popularity.

Relatively recently (when one properly considers the shelf life of a web meme) we've all had a good laugh at this nutball to the left who chose to mutilate his skin with a Bible verse (maybe) prohibiting homosexuality while ignoring (presumably) the verse a bit on down the road about not getting tattoos. Yes, very funny; he's ignorant. I knew that when he put his ink on television. Or when he put on a shirt without sleeves. Or got a tattoo of a Bible verse. Really, the clues are all over.

What I'm unsure of, at the end of the day, is why the rest of you find this funny. Is it just that he's a homophobe and also ignorant, and the two ignorant qualities together prove out your worldview? Is it that he's probably a hypocrite and we're prone to believe hypocrisy runs, generally, in Christians and/or homophobes? Is it the ridiculousness of the Bible itself, with its 2000 year old rules and codes of conduct, often self-contradictory and irrelevant to modern day experiences?  As you might have guessed, it's this last one I'm going to laser focus on, making a larger point that you can leave now if you've already heard.

I recently became aware that gay Christians fight with straight Christians (and, I would assume, gay Jews with straight Jews) over the interpretations of the verses in Leviticus dealing with socio-sexual mores, things like homosexuality and fucking sheep.  (The next time you wonder, by the way, how homophobes - who do this often in arguments - make the jump from one of those behaviors to the other, look no further than Leviticus - those things are right near one another.) The argument centers around the above verse, Lev. 18:22, and also Lev. 20:13, and whether the pair of them together forbid the practice of homosexuality, or simply restrict homosexual unions under certain circumstances that would have had more relevance to earlier followers of Moses.  Not even that is quite accurate, however, as the Book of Leviticus evolved over the course of 1500 years or so, so who knows how these verses may have been toyed with between the time they were supposedly vomited out of the mouth of YHWH in the year Dot and one and half to two millennia later.  Regardless, let's break it down.

In the 1769 KJV, linked to above, it's pretty unequivocal - gay male sex is not okay and if you do it and get caught, you ought to be put to death. (Lesbians aren't mentioned, which probably explains why the book isn't more popular.) The previous English translation says pretty much the same thing, just with more vowels in it. The New American Standard gets even more direct, changing "mankind" and "womankind" to simply "male" and "female."  Pretty much every other well-selling English version of the Bible does likewise - it's one of the reasons that people who buy the Bible purchase it in the first place, so it kind of needs to be in there. Even my scholarly and relatively reasonable Shocken translation of the Pentateuch has it as "With a male you are not to lie (after the manner of) lying with a woman, it is an abomination!" Not a lot of budge room there.

It's at this point most people do one of two things when arguing this issue; Either contextual and societal arguments come out of their sheathes, edges sharpened with cogent ideas about restrictions on the behaviors of earlier societies and pointed with facts about rituals and daily activities from the time(s) when this book was written, and the argument moves into a point about how what might have been intended by this passage was relevant then and is no longer, or how the thing is being misinterpreted.  I, for one, have always found it hard to believe that anyone concerned with society would have intended for folks to work that hard to figure out the rules. The second approach is to point out the ridiculousness of the Book of the Sons of Levi, with its prohibitions on 'Mom' tattoos, shrimp cocktail, 70's clothing and pantsuits, thus rendering the whole book contemptuous and silly, pushing it to the back burner of arguments.

I can never understand why this tactic never goes any further, evolving into the suggestion I'd like to make now: ABANDON THE BOOK. Let it go.  It's not important.  Really, it's not.  Preserved as a historical record of dubious authorship, fine, but as a rule book for living one's life?  No reason at all for that, and I'll tell you why.

Most people who believe in a higher power of any kind believe so in a proof vacuum.  They don't need proof, because their faith is an emotional response to the events of their life, or the product of the life of their minds.  They don't need to prove, they simply know in their hearts that there is a God, a goddess, a factor, a force, a presence, something else beyond them and what they logically prove out. There is nothing to be said about someone else's emotional response - it simply is, and on its own, cannot be said to be inappropriate or not. Most people who have a framework for the important issues of right and wrong arrive at them the same way.  "I'm not going to do that because it's not right." You don't need a book of rules and stories to get there.  Your relationship with God (or whatever) has nothing to fucking do with the book in the hotel nightstand. If the ritual and the text of it is satisfying to you, fine. If the book puts pretty well a feeling you already had, great - but don't let it push you around, and for fuck's sake don't quote from it to back up arguments.  From this point forward, I shall cease to hear arguments from ancient rule books; you're either convinced in your heart that it's right and can elucidate that clearly in your own words, or you shut the hell up. (And no quoting Carlin's "own words" bit at me, either.)

Your belief, no matter how all-encompassing it is to you, does not exist outside of your head & heart, and it's when you attempt to make it exist (as opposed to simply exemplifying it) that we as people run into all manner of troubles.  Trying to fit the square pegs of Levitican law into the round holes of 21st century society DOES NOT WORK, which is why a lot of us don't bother. I doubt it worked then, except to make poeple feel bad. You cannot and should not impose your beliefs on other people - we share enough commonality to get by.  Have your belief.  Live your life by it. Understand though, that faith is a choice and a process, and not everyone has done it like you did it, or needs to or wants to, or will, and that your faith does not grant moral authority, absolute truth, or even the right to have an opinion about someone else's actions, provided that you're not directly affected.

Belief and faith and internally knowing what's right to do ought to be enough. Leading by example is the best way of inspiring others. Having a personal relationship with a creator/god/guide is an emotional necessity for many, and fosters all kinds of behavior, good and bad, making it on par with everything else.  Getting bogged down in the rules and laws put forth for restricting freedoms of people that others believed needed to be controlled is intellectual immaturity and mental suicide. It's asking to have problems because instead of listening to your heart and learning to explain in words and deeds what's there, you've co-opted what someone else put down and said, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." That's not thinking, that's not caring, that's not trying, and that's not loving - it's not even living.

Ditch the book. It's a crutch. Think and feel for yourself. Doing what's right is the hard part. Trust me, I know. Let's work on that.