Christianist Doublespeak

Tags

Syrian refugees, teanuts

The Power of the Post

Tags

political discourse, stupid people

Yeah, you’ve heard it all before. So have I, since I actually preach this message rather consistently. But alas, I forget. So, I figure you might as well.

REFRESHER COURSE ALERT!!!

Recently I got a friend request from a dude I recognized immediately as a nut. His Facebook icon was “Ted Cruz in 2016.” As I said, a nut.

Now, I should know better, but I could hardly turn down the chance to tell him he was an idiot before he unceremoniously “defriended” me could I? So I hit, the friend button and began a rather torturous journey into  lala land or the land of the not-quite-right-in-the-head folks.

I picked up a good half dozen to eight “defenders of the stupid” and proceeded to get into a number of fights immediately. As one would expect, all the trite Fox/crazy right memes came to the fore. Since most of the arguments were on gun rights, I got the usual, “guns don’t kill people”, and criminals aren’t gonna obey the laws, and variations on those themes.

After lengthy logical argument and citing of actual facts, I was confronted with the usual right wing nothingness. One guy just posted funny pictures and called me Sherry McMoron and quote, “liberish”, as if that sealed the deal on my inconsequentialism.

And the point is, that when people are “out there in the ether” there is no point in argument. They aren’t capable of arguing, except for a “you stupid troll” between burps from the beer guzzling.

When you see somebody who is absolutely clueless, beware. You think you can patiently start at A and proceed slowly and deliberately to Z and when you are finished they will smile, and say, “I get it now. Thank you, I’m going to read more carefully from now on.”

But they don’t. They say, “you stupid troll,” and scratch their nether regions, smile and the mini thrill and reach for another Budweiser.

This will always happen no matter your level of debate and logic skills. And the reason is simple, if not understood by most. It’s not you. It’s not your argument. It’s their brain.

Study after study shows that the conservative brain is a brain that lives in fear of the bad world it is surrounded by. It cannot make sense of it all, and it feels threatened. Simple answers that package their fear and put it away is what they yearn for and gravitate toward. The are frightened and they are insecure in this big world. Small and simple answers that assure them that all will be right, captures them faster than any fact or logical deduction ever could.

They will cling to what is familiar, reassuring, and safe every time over logical argumentation that leaves them feeling insecure and unsure. It is not how they want to think, it’s how their brains function. It’s called compartmentalization. It allows the victim to ignore all contrary information and when necessary isolate contradictory beliefs behind walls that keep the conflict at a minimum. (I believe in creationism, while at the same time encourage my niece to get gene therapy for her cancer diagnosis, never bringing to the fore that gene therapy is a result of evolutionary biological research.)

Eventually we all come to realize that “there is no point” in arguing with such types, but we continue, at each new juncture, and with a different right wing nut case in the cross hairs, we fall victim to trying again. And we get the same result.

Lest we be declared insane for trying to get a different result from the same activity, we have to finally admit that such is a waste of time.

EXCEPT THAT. . . .

Facebook is a unique forum. We all have friends on Facebook, and they exist in a variety of forms–relatives, old old friends we have moved far from, new friends, eternal friends, coworkers, associates, church friends, organization friends, and the list goes on to infinity. These myriads of “friends” bring forth a variety of individual talents.

I am graced with some great Facebook friends and I owe them a debt of gratitude. They have taught me so very much. Their passion, while not necessarily mine, has served to inform me on many a subject I would be unaware of without them.

I would never know how cruel and awful housing small whales and dolphins  in small tanks is, alone and without their families. I would never know about the issues regarding Monsanto, and Tyson and other vile corporate entities that endanger our health in the chase for the almighty dollar. I’ve had my theological foundation firmed, and loosened by a couple of theologians I know.

I could go on for a couple of pages. You see, I know all sorts of people in the Facebook way, and by and large, I’m enriched from the experience. The people I disagree with, remain small, but more importantly they are vehicles for dissemination.

What?

Here’s where I tie this all together. . . .

While it is unprofitable in general to get into discussions with right wing crazies en mass, isolated encounters in otherwise  friendly terrain, does serve a purpose. And that purpose is, they give one the excuse to lay out all the arguments that you can muster on an issue.

Why?

Rather than be the usual waste of time that we have encountered in large groups, in small ones, you don’t get overwhelmed. Much like big corporations make it hard to be sued by “papering” the opposing counsel with so many requests, demands, depositions, discovery, endless motions and so forth, when six or eight people are all ganging up on you, well, most people don’t have TIME to respond properly.

Responding improperly does more harm than good.

Why does this matter?

Because in every group, there are outsiders, people who live on the fringe, reading but almost never uttering a word. They are not crazies, but they aren’t politically aware either. They are busy living their lives, and barely bump into most of the political and social issues of our day. They do however, at leisure, read posts and comments, blogs and so forth.

They are not ideologically motivated. They are bright people, normal in every sense of the world except they aren’t much interested in the body politic or how it functions. Until it waylays them personally (and many it never will), they don’t get involved.

But, they do read. They do comprehend. They do get logic, and they do check out links. They will listen to a cogent argument and if not offset by superior information going in the other direction, they will agree with you.

They won’t deliver fliers in their neighborhoods or make phone calls for a candidate, but they will vote (if not too inconvenient) and they will vote consistent with the facts as they have come to understand them.

They are your audience always.

You have to trust that they are there. They are, I assure you. Every once in a while  I get a message or email from one of them, telling me they have “lurked” for some time, and agree or have been led to agree to this idea or that.

Those are the people you are writing and talking to. They don’t have time to do the research you do, but they appreciate it. They can tell the difference between your citation to reputable sources and the other sides reliance on “common sense”.

They recognize that common sense to the right wing is akin to “what I want to believe is true because it makes me feel better.”

Your efforts are thus not offered in vain. Remember that you talk not only to who is directly before you, but all those who are within eye or earshot.

What it means for me personally, is to try to remember, (no matter how angry I often become at intransigent thinking), that calm, factual offerings are much more successful that bombast and snappy retorts that serve to explain only how loathsome the right wing fanatic can be.

So I thank all those who have taught me so much on Facebook. And I am thankful for Facebook which provides that unique platform allowing me a cornucopia  of “friends” that insure a range of opinions, talents, passions, and hard facts.

The post is powerful, more powerful than you think. So do be mindful of the audience out there, ephemeral as it may appear. This is your job. They depend on you for accurate information on an unimaginably wide source of things. Surely you can offer your services on a few of them?

Make a difference!

Collecting Dust Bunnies Among the Stars

Tags

life in the foothills, opinions, ruling the world, stupid people

You have to remember that I’ve never done this before, so excuse the oopsies and missteps. You’re not gonna do any better I just want ya to know.

This agin’ shit is pretty much play it by ear ya know. I ain’t never been here before. So if I don’t always get it right, hey, I’m a work in progress.

See I take no responsibility for all this. The world I mean. It purely sucks if you look at it all, into every nook and cranny as they say. It purely sucks.

We don’t learn from our mistakes, we don’t see the trends from multiple strands of social interaction across the globe. We mostly are oblivious. We use trite phrases to avoid thinking.

We say stupid things like, “everybody is entitled to their opinion.” What the hell does that mean? Does it literally mean that one of the hallmarks of humanity is the right to spew any sort of fermenting slop as one’s “opinion” thereby classifying it along such noted remarks as “I came, I saw, I conquered”, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” and “Mikey likes it.”

I’m supposed to accept that your “opinion” about Donald Trump being a breath of fresh air is equal to my assessment of the probability that the dark matter in the universe is sufficient to close the universe from permanent expansion? I don’t think so.

See, we have got this notion that everybody is entitled to an opinion. They are not. This is not a handout in which every newborn is checked at the door. “Yep, little Ralph has his “opinion rights” right here in his diaper. Let him go forth unto humanity to spake his piece.”

Spake his piece?

Okay, let’s get this straight.

You are entitled to inclusion in the human race on very limited standards. Basically you must have the general physical equipment of legs and arms and knees. Mostly, but hey if you are missing one or two, not a problem. If you resemble being human more than say being a salamander, you fit the bill.

This does not entitle you, however, to a soapbox and a microphone. Nor does it entitle you to open your yap whenever you wish to spout some personal preference for anything if it is swimming in a sea of “just my opinion”. Your opinion is worthless flotsam unless it is tied to this thing we call FACT.

Facebook is a collector of such human dramas masquerading as intelligent people. Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of really smart folks on Facebook, millions of them in fact. It’s just that they are jumbled up with all sorts of misbegotten refuse who have the appellation of “human” while having little in the way of grey matter.  And the latter sort continue to intervene in adult conversations with their “opinions” which contain nothing but the machinations of their six brain cells operating at half power for thirty seconds.

And of course, the rest of us who are not tied to personal preferences and the desire to hang on to every penny we’ve managed to accumulate at the expense of the continuing efficacy of the planet if that’s what it takes, have to “address” these cockamamie “theories” as if they actually made sense.

So here’s the low down bottom guppies. If you are a marginal human being, meaning that you shouted “whew” at the end of twelve long years of recesses, punctuated by football floats and sneakin’ a peek at Ms. Andrews boobs when she bent over to help you with long division, and called that “being educated” then, here’s what you must do.

Shut the FUCK up. Unless it has to do with what brand of weed killer works best on fescue, shut the FUCK up. You don’t contribute to the conversation, you embarrass it. You can’t put two coherent thoughts together. Hell, you don’t HAVE two coherent thoughts.

Stick to birthin’ babies, greasin’ axles, and giving McDonald’s a reason to exist. They created bowling alleys for you. They created comic books for you. They created Disneyland for you. MOMA? Don’t trouble your often pretty head about that. Keynesian economics versus Hayekian? Stick to those abs.

See how easy this is? You return to the stuff you do best and leave us along to puzzle out the state of the world and the solutions to all those problems you haven’t really got time to think about anyway, since you really have to decide–should Hulk be the VP nominee or Sarah for the Trump machine?

See, we want you to think about that, cuz it doesn’t matter what your answer is. It has as much chance of happening as hell oozing into your toilet and nippin’ your nuts while you count backwards from a hundred and count ammo.

I’m pretty sure that your “average Joe” is pretty content to ignore politics and religion as being boring if they really thought about it. The average Joe is pretty happy with being average. He averages through life. He works, he retires, he fishes. His wife raises kids, retires (though few recognize the difference) and knits. Their parents did the same, and probably their grandparents. They think this is swell.

The rest of us, we are never satisfied. We are terrified of getting “set in our ways”, and doing the dreary ordinary things of each age category. We yearn to know everything, the faster the better. Our routines are only set in order to get as much done each day before we tear it all apart and set up new ones so we don’t get “set in our ways.” We flit from one thing to another, gleaning a bit of knowledge each time so that as we age, we do in fact become “wise” and able to discourse on hundreds of topics with some basic understanding.

I figure it is the “rest of us” since I never have believed for one second that I was very unique. Oh unique in the obvious sense, so we all are, but unique beyond the obvious? Naw, I doubt it very much. The Internets are good for that sort of thing–lettin’ you know you are not so unique as you think.

The Internet humbles the savage beast, or takes down the arrogant a peg or two at least. And sadly it has the worst possible effect on the stupid. A computer is so simplistic in its operation that it allows the most lacking in brains to get on it and find to their amazement, that their dumb notions are shared by a segment of humanity. And that makes them feel, what they are not–SMART.

And that gums up the entire works.

Was a time when stupid people knew they were stupid.

I’m guessin’ about that, but I know one thing, nobody thinks that today.

Hell, seventeen of them are running for President.

It Was a Hell of a Ride, But, Dude, It’s Over

Tags

paternalism, power, racism, sexism, white privilege

I don’t recall as a pubescent girl, ever much thinking that I’d have rather been a boy. All that stuff in their pants looked rather homely to me as a child. As I grew older and wiser, I figured worrying that my boobs wouldn’t be “perky” enough was small potatoes versus worrying that my pecker wouldn’t pass muster either in the locker room or in a ladies vagina.

And then there was hair loss later in life, and well, I don’t pretend to know whether men obsess over chest hair or not, but it just seemed that their burdens were not worth the exchange.

I suppose it all goes back to caves, or whatever suitable accommodations were “home” to our ancestors on the plains of Africa. Men are for the most part stronger which makes them quite useful for things that require brute strength. Ironically men who work with their hands and use their bodies as their machines are fairly looked down upon by their Madison Avenue brothers as having not “made it” in the wicked world of power and wealth today. But it was the originator most likely of men’s superior classification.

In an event, men ruled, and that is pretty much everywhere you look across the blue marble we call home. In the only parts that counted (by those same men), white men ruled all others, including men of color. And it was all seen as good and well, as evidenced even by major religious scriptures, who took it for granted that men pretty much ruled naturally and with God’s imprimatur.

Somehow, even allegedly smart white men failed to see that Jesus rather turned that cart upside down when he suggested that women were, *gasp* capable of preaching the “good news” of the coming Kingdom.

Things have gone on in that vein for some time. Well, to be honest, it has gone on through most of recorded time. I’d hazard a guess that even where women ruled it had more to do with “blood lines” than competence, and many sturdy men were gathered around such a lady to “guide” her to correct decisions.

It continues today, but the battle is now fully engaged, and white men are getting a bit nervous.

Women have always been angry, but anger needs direction and some sort of power base to be effective. Only in the 20th century do we begin to see real movement to question the paternalism that has been the history of women’s life in America and the world.

Another aspect is now apparent as well. While white men were busy running the world and making obscene amounts of money to feel “successful”, the rest of the planet was busy reproducing like rabbits. Left with so much extra time on their hands, they played in the garden of rare delights also known as ladies private parts. And the birth rate has skyrocketed and well, do the math.

Ms. Lindsey is correct. If you look around white dude, well, I can understand why you are shakin’ in your boots and clingin’ to your guns. Your days are numbered and no amount of prancing around neighborhoods with your semi-automatic penises strapped across your chest is gonna make any difference to that.

You are a not dying, but certainly about to become wheelchair ridden, mere shadows of yourselves.

Now, I don’t say this with glee necessarily. After all, I’m married to one of y’all.  I rather like him too, so I have no ill-will in general to white men, just everything mostly that they stand for.

We can all pretty much agree that you have done a lousy job of runnin’ things. I mean yeah, you build a lot of stuff, but it seems for the only purpose of blowin’ it all up eventually. You guys can’t stop arguing about whose penis is bigger and if you ever bothered to ask us, you’d know that has nothin’ much to do with it.

Yet you persist.

And our sons and daughters and well, all of us suffer for your insatiable desire for bloodshed. There just ain’t enough hills for all of ya to be kings on.

So I can get why you are so angry. And like petulant children who can’t have ice cream for breakfast, you take it out on everyone you come across.

What you all are in need of is some basic psychoanalysis. I mean your ability to blame it on anybody but yourselves is shocking. It’s the black, brown, female, immigrant, wrong religion, youth, liberal, educated, government, et ceteras into oblivion’s fault for your troubles. A white man never looks in the mirror and sees the cause of his own disaster.

Anyway, you get all out there in your twisted but fact-less minds, and become conspiracists of one sort or another. We’ve visited the FEMA camps, and gun confiscations, the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration to death. We’ve been birthered to death and delved into the drug-induced supposed gayness of the black guy in the WHITE house.

We have tried to talk sense to your sense of impending loss, we really have, but past a certain point, crazy is too crazy to hear let alone understand. You are like the child who attempts to solve his unhappiness by making public scenes of displeasure at the world.

Unfortunately, you’re methodology includes the killin’ of plenty of innocents as you strike out in anger and frustration that you can’t always be first in line and get the best cupcake.

It’s over dude.

Do the math.

You are like the king who rules over a kingdom of “others”. Once his army became “others” too, it was only a matter of time, until they learned to count. Suddenly it was lookin’ a bit grim for the king.

Some of you have taken to claiming that you are the one’s being victimized now. Oh, if only that were true. We’d surely come to your aid if it were true. But it’s not.

Nothing is more pathetic than hearing a white dude proclaim that he is being discriminated against. Dude you were born with a white penis, what more could a person want? With it came all the entitlements and assumptions that have always attached to a new born white male. There is no “stretch” to thinking of you in a new more powerful way. It’s business as usual for you.

You can’t fathom how that is not what it is for the rest of us. We have to first convince somebody(s), that we can do the job, that we are smart enough, strong enough, carry the right emotional schema, are not unsuitably encumbered by family and obligation, and a host of other things. Women must explain that their menses won’t cause them to divulge the nuclear codes nor will “pillow talk”. Black and browns must assure that they have enough of the “cultural”requirements to govern. Remember, they weren’t “raised” the same as white dudes, which has become by their decree the cultural norm.

And since the numbers, (damn them) simple are what they are, white dudes are gonna lose no matter what. You can’t shoot it, marry it, enslave it, or stick it in a company town. It’s just gonna swallow you up.

So you lash out.

Do you realize that almost all crimes of mass murder are committed by white men? Dude, this endears you to no one. Let us know that your brains are falling out because you can’t be king any more, and we will help. If you don’t, well, the end is your demise one way or the other.

But please, stop trying to take us with you.

Whistling Through the Clover of My Mind

Tags

ironies of life, life in the foothills, lifestyle, the GOP clowns

I’m not sure when it happened exactly. I don’t recall anything especial about the day.

What day?

Oh, the day I realized that I had the answer to most everything. When I got it all figured out, and knew that the remaining puzzle pieces were all gonna fit. In my picture of the world.

It should be a national holiday, shouldn’t it? And I know, now you are grabbing a blanket, some snacks and sitting down to listen carefully as I explain the answers  to all your hearts questions.

Sarah Palin continues to bring down the IQ level of the planet simply by breathing. She interjected herself and her simpleton daughter into the Duggar fray. She uses big words of which she knows not. Pedophilia comes to mind. Sarah, coming to a supermarket opening near you.

I ponder how profoundly the world changes. I mean, one doesn’t have to be a genius when it comes to history to understand that Jews and Arabs were natural allies for a good many HUNDREDS of years before they weren’t. Jews found some safety in Arab controlled lands at least when it came to the Christians who often slaughtered entire towns of them during the Crusading years. Muslims allowed them safe haven and allowed them to practice their faith largely unhampered.

And let us not forget that Jews fled places like Spain, often ending in Muslim held lands, to avoid  Torquemada and his forced “conversions” of Jews to Christianity. Muslims fared no better.

Yet today, we have a Middle East Muslim population determined (rationally or otherwise) to eradicate “Israel from the map”. Actually I think that refers more to the physicality of the state rather than all people Jewish, but still, a hell of a turn of events wouldn’t you say?

Is it in the water? No. It is the result of trying to pretend you’re holier than thou, when you are not. That’s why the GOP continues to find itself mired in the cesspool of sexuality wrongdoing virtually ALL the time. Hastert and the Duggars are simply the latest examples. We ain’t talkin’ your garden variety adultery ya know.

Like wrap your brain around the fact, that while wringing his holy hands in shock and dismay at Clinton’s adultery with Monica, the Speaker (Newty) was busy on his third serial adultery himself (and treating his ex in the despicable manner only a man who thinks of women as disposable arm candy can).

Newt stepped down in favor of Bob Livingston, who stepped down even before he formally took the gavel, having played around with as many as four women not his wives.

And then they settled on Dennis Hastert.

Well you know how that turned out. And then there was that guy who was pantin’ after pages. And the prostitutes, and the gay liaisons. And plenty of regular old adultery. It’s not that the Dems don’t engage in bad behavior, but it seldom flies in the face of their public hypocritical stances on gay rights, and the sanctity of marriage and all that other rot.

This sign should have been posted back in the fifties and sixties to most of the mothers giving birth to people like Santorum, Carson, Trump, Cruz, Walker, and so forth and so on and so on.

If I hear one more Republican strategist talk about the “wonderful field of candidates” we have this season, I’m gonna vomit.

Seriously do you paint crazy glue on your face so as to not crack up when saying that shit?

I read this and it seems accurate. The song says, “only the good die young.” That might well be true. I’m living proof. I ain’t good by design that’s for sure. My heart leads me to places that seem to rail at inequality, injustice, and all manner of dickish wrongitude, but it’s from no desire to be good. Just how it turned out. Education is a powerful teacher.

Speaking of which, living well is the best revenge I’m quite sure. And once I learned that, I spent my time trying to live well, which made living well much easier I gotta say. And knowin’ that the people who dislike me the most live these narrow mean little lives, well that’s my frosting.

My husband and I chatted the other night about how in our darker days (before we met or otherwise) when one sits and daydreams about the “perfect life”, well, reality caught up with us both. We are living it now. Both of us, rather blissful, sober in our assessment, very very aware of how lucky and blessed we are.

We love where we live (it ain’t called land of Enchantment for nothin” folks). We love our home and fitting it to our needs and desires as perfectly as possible. We love our companion pets whom we are privileged to care for. Most of all we love each other. After nearly sixteen years we still are never bored, and seldom disappointed. We laugh, and almost cry occasionally at how lucky we are.

I recall my father saying very sarcastically as he sat in his chair, his life fading away before his eyes, “And they call these my golden years.”

Well, they are truly golden for me, and I wake with such anticipation and such eagerness each day, fulfilling all my dreams and hopes for how I would live and do in these years after the working was finished.

But I’d still like a spare million should you have it. I can do more.

I Never Wanted to Be Nice

Tags

life in the foothills, me me me

I mean I seriously thought about being nice, and I rejected it. It’s a lousy gig, one to be avoided unless you are a masochist or something like that. Being nice means not being authentic, unless you decide that it’s worth all that work. Cuz being nice is hard work. Not for the faint hearted. Not for the lazy.

I know a lot of nice people. Past and present. They are always smiling. It’s part of the persona. At least while in public.

It’s always saying the right thing, and worse yet, it’s actually believing it. It’s liking to be liked, and being liked by so many people that when you die, well, there really won’t be a dry eye in the house. Your funeral will be well attended.

Why is it so sad when a funeral is not well attended? It shouldn’t be. I figure it’s as good of evidence as one gets that one has lived a life of profligate self-interest. I figure Donald Trump’s funeral will be well-attended. But it’s not because he ain’t all about self-interest. It will be because people want to be seen there, nothing else. There won’t be many wet eyes at that one.

Nice means submerging one’s true feelings because it’s not polite to be cruel or dismissive of the normal but boring detris of other people’s lives. First on the scene with a box of cookies. First to offer babysitting services. First to offer to plan a wedding shower. Yech, I gots way better stuff to do than that.

But it’s not all disrespect and narcissism. I mean being un-nice is not being deliberately mean or something. It has nothing to do with being good or bad. You can be good and un-nice. Or you can be good in spite of being un-nice.

Good is striving at all times (well most of the time maybe) to do the right thing, insofar as it leads to correct factual determinations and ultimately the use of such criterion in making decisions that matter. Or something like that.

It means caring about shit deeply. And it means speaking truth to anyone who will listen and shouting at those that won’t because you are damned sure that you probably know more than most about whatever you choose to pontificate upon.

It’s self-centered but benign. Or maybe not so benign, but that’s a word that doesn’t get used nearly often enough. I try to encourage the use of more words.

Being nice requires a lot of time. And to a lazy person, that means it starts with so many negatives that it surely can’t be resurrected except for the most important of situations.  It requires a whole lot of time and effort. Too much.

You know the nice people. They are uniformly nice. And secretly you admire them sorta, but not really because you figure they are more patsy than role model. They are sorta soft people, who settled on the safe “being nice” as their claim on the universe.

Wasn’t she just nice? The nicest person I ever knew. She was so nice. Everyone liked her.

Now that is the kiss of death ain’t it? What wants to be liked by everybody? What sort of bland is required to reach that pinnacle of mediocrity?

Seriously, nice is the easy way out in life. It’s bending to everyone’s whim because it’s far easier than sorting through all the demons that whisper in the background for you to come out and have some real fun.

Being the teacher I shall always remember as my favorite is not a claim to fame. Better to make someone sit up in shocked attention, and make it their life long goal to prove you wrong. That’s an impact. That’s worthy for the reference books, or at least an entry in Bartlett’s.

I don’t mean to make light. But I do.

For I am defending me.

Because, not being nice, no one else will.

Well, maybe not nobody. But not a lot of some bodies.

Few.

One other.

I’m a good person. I don’t pull the wings off flies. I don’t taunt little children, not pinch dogs to make them squeal. I think of global things that matter to lives in deep corners of the world and I tell people to think about them too.

I don’t steal or lie or commit adultery. I don’t commit treason, nor do I harbor hateful beliefs about fellow humans without strong evidence. If I do have the evidence, I’m surely not too polite to tell you. I figure you should know. It’s important to know who’s who.

Good is different from nice. Way different. And if you don’t know the difference, well, I ain’t got the time to explain it. And you might just be too stupid to get it anyhow. I have few illusions.

Illusions?

Figments of facts, floating by. Snatch one or two and make a statement. Let them all float by and you are living in suburbia serving the Merikan dream and largely brain-dead.

Who speaks of all this stuff?

It’s so much easier to play in your own puddle  but so much more fun to comment on the dirty water in your neighbor’s.

I don’t smile at clerks in stores all the time. Nice people do that. How can nice people be defined properly if I don’t help to anchor the alternative? So I don’t smile. And if they say one of those stupid things, like “did you find everything?” I’m likely to respond with a “now that is some sort of stupid question isn’t it? Either I gave up looking for “everything” or I did find everything, or I’m too lazy to care.

I point out stupid well. It’s a gift.

It’s lonely here in the gut section of humanity. Being the speaker of the obvious truth rather than pointing out how lovely your crappy dress looks with those shoes when they look hideous. Don’t get me wrong.

I’m not nice enough to not bother telling you that that crappy dress looks hideous with those shoes, because  why is it my job to care how you look? I enjoy a joke too ya know.

Mostly not being nice allows me to enjoy all the stuff I want to, without bothering to note the inconsistency in my commonly held positions on just about anything. Oh I bother now and then, and strike the old cognitive dissonance bell a time or two. But being good means never having to say you’re sorry. (Surely I did not lift that from Love Story?)

I’m almost sure I said everything. It’s hard to know, when you’re fighting writer’s block and feeling all Hemingwayish. No I did not mean that I’m fondling a shotgun or anything. Death wishes bore the shit out of me, and I find such people tedious.

I’m almost through grieving for Robin Williams. Almost.

Can you almost hear the sarcasm?

Can you almost wish this were over? No, my ego says no.

Almost.

We participate, (with a certain shamefacedness) in SoCS.

 

 

I Likey, You More Better, Capisce?

Tags

Catholic Church, faith my style, Humor

When all else fails, I can always talk about myself. It’s my favorite subject after all. Okay, like three dozen people just ran off to call in this story to their editors. . . .hot off the presses, Sherry is gonna talk about herself. Cheeky? Arrogant? Full of self? Oh yeah, all that.

Who does she think she is?

I said it before. Like her, or not, there are few other alternatives. She ain’t tepid oolong or Earl Grey.

She is me, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that you probably got that.

I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof.

Or not. Mostly not.

If I were an animal which one would I be?

Polar bear mama?

Ponder that with your swayt tea. Yeah, we get that down here in New Mexico. I frankly hate that stuff. Sugar in tea? Are you mad?

People make me wonder. I mean take Bobby Jiggles Jindal. That man has no more chance of winning the GOP nomination than I do of winning a best in show at Madison Square Garden. Yet he twattles on.

Twattle, is a word conceived in sexual confusion. A cross between cunt and flapping lips of the face. See? Now you get it.

It’s a hell of a thing when your spiritual guru is a gang banger.

Well, not really, but sorta.

Yesterday I was a sittin’ in the pew when I noticed a young man with the usual accoutrements of style. . .ear-ring, sleeves cut out of the t-shirt. jeans, sneakers. He was sittin’ a few pews to the front of me.

Which made it convenient to watch.

So instead of concentrating on my own sinful self, I was bemused by this young man’s spiritual methodology. A very long time on the kneeler. No singing of entrance hymns. No murmuring of the “profession of faith” which is such a convoluted rattling of various Council pronunciations as to be indecipherable to all but the most religiously stringent of the faithful.

When that Gloria came along, oh good grief. It’s so badly written as to leave a normal believer astounded that given the whole of the Roman Catholic Church, no better rendition can be rendered but this? A squawky, akin to the Star Spangled Banner inability to keep the tune, sort of music that is painful to the ears and the senses.

My gangbanger, stands stoicly.

Mostly he sits with his head down, as if he’s there to beg atonement for a laundry list of crimes too numerous to mention. “Sorry God, but I shot somebody in a drive-by, and then celebrated with some blow, while threatening the mama of my baby for not having my dinner ready.” In the next breath, more sinful conduct is extruded.

Is any of this real? Oh probably not at all. The dude is probably a pediatrician, just out in his hoodie regalia which helps him calm down from the high intensity life of savior of children.

I jest?

Mostly.

It provided a handy excuse for not paying attention as Father explained all about the Holy Spirit and how we neglect it in our prayers.

Is that true for you too?

Do you pray to Jesus or the Father or the Holy Spirit? All the same yet different as they say.

Is it reasonable that Christian theology must be so convoluted? I suspect it works for theologians who like to think of themselves as pretty smart folks. And they are for the most part. Least they sound that way.

So, I’m sittin’ in the pew, figurin’ this guy is really doin’ it right. Most people don’t if you noticed. They are rushin’ around front to back, always with the obligatory bow to acknowledge that Jesus is layin’ on the altar, while we are talkin’ to our neighbor in the pew about a meat sale at the Carniceria.

So, I’m not talkin’, just praying me some Rosary until the bells ring and they remind everyone to shut the phones off. And I’m watching my mentor. I watch him with his own style of reverence, again on that kneeler when most everybody else is standing, because  the whole consecration thing is something to be knelt about.

And I wonder what the hell am I doing here?

Trying to recapture what once I had, yet which has so thoroughly departed. The devotion, the intensity, the It fuckin’ matters syndrome, it seems ephemeral after all this. Yet, I turn attention back. Jesus, I am not worthy to have you “under my roof” which is another of those John Paul/Benedict changes that is just change for change’s sake.

And he goes up for communion, but he is ahead of me, and I don’t realize until I get back to my seat, conveniently marked by my purse (what do men do to find their seat again?), that he has gone.

Guru man, you are of that ilk, (which I have never been) of those who in the confusion of people traipsing from pew to communion and back again, against the backdrop of a couple of hundred faces, working out their salvation with a wafer and sip, chooses to keep walking to the back and out the doors. Done! Got what I came for. Jesus is digesting in my belly and I’m roaring off in my Mazda to new Saturday night adventures.

I’m a bit chagrined by this turn of events. I wanted him to remain pious to the last second. Maybe be one of those stalwart types who continues laboriously to sing the closing hymn while people jostle  to get by and into the aisle, seeking the fastest route of escape past the priest who is taking a stand outside hoping to catch every last hand as it passes.

Alas, he has escaped and I’m chagrined, yet I’ve spent exactly three minutes of the sixty actually contemplating my own salvation. I don’t account all that bunk for much actually. I am, as they say, more of a Matthew 25 person. Get on with feeding the hungry and tending to the sick.

My spiritual guru seems made of common clay after all.

I sigh.

Whatever I’m here for, I seem to find. Not sure what exactly that is. But I feel better about everything somehow.

I don’t find it makes me kinder to stupid drivers though. I still yell at them from the safety of my car seat, taking satisfaction in the fact that I’m not stellar driver, but I am damn well better than that!

And I put it all aside, as I do every Saturday evening. Done! Mass obligation met. No need to think about that until next Saturday.

Which reminds me of the old guy at the pool, who apologized so deeply and long for not being able to sign my petition to open the pool at 8 because as he said, he could never come early, since he’s at Mass every morning. Alex, who recites the Rosary while he walks the water channel, did sign. No morning mass for him.

Too much piety for me. Except when I was in formation to be a nun.

Oh that’s news to you?

Fancy that. I prolly should yak about that sometime.

But not today. I don’t like to brag, unless I have a captive audience. God I know, I’m such a bitch. Which makes you even madder doesn’t it?

Remember this: happiness is the best revenge.

We participate occasionally and poorly in SoCS.