Misanthropaea

Another Year Over...

Our God Doesn't *Have* Fun

Hanging on a wall in the cafe, I have this 24X36 print I like to call The Last Coffee Break. It's a little something I threw together about three years ago:
Although it occurred to me at the time I was making this image that I was probably quietly reserving a special place in Hell for myself (as if that really matters), I am still very often a little surprised at the occasional negative reaction the thing elicits.

Submitted for your approval:  one Average Latino Mother with young daughter in tow. After they place their orders and I go about preparation of said, I overhear the daughter say--

'Mama, they have our picture!'

'Yes,' mother tells her quietly, clearly uncomfortable. 'But that's not the same one as ours.'

'Is that Jesus?'

'Yes.'

'Why is he spilling his drink?'

'I don't know. It's not very nice. Jesus wouldn't do that.'

'That's not like our Jesus,' parrots the daughter.

'No. Our Jesus would never do that. That's not our Jesus.'

Not our Jesus. Wow. Fundamentalist much? Myopic any?

I felt really badly for the daughter. How sad is it to grow up being made to think that the only real Jesus is some sombre, blood-drenched, agonised, twisted Mel Gibson horror movie figure in a ragged loin cloth and a crown of thorns, or some stern, glaring image clutching a still-beating heart freshly rent from his own chest? To think that he never once laughed or smiled or maybe had a joke at the expense of the Pharisees is selling the guy short. I mean, damn, even the Buddha laughed once in a while...

The Illogical Theological 2.0

Dear Respondent,

Comes now the Inquisitor to torture and maim; to rend and disfigure; to disembowel and burn; to castigate, humiliate, emasculate, and tickle the wobbly bits that remain all in the name of our god the father that he might truly shew his love for this poor wayward creature who so dares to crawl upon and defile the face of his divine works and leave one of those sticky slime trails that seems to never quite come off of your fingers no matter how vigorously you wipe them on your shirt.

In the next twelve days, thou hast what time ye may predetermine appropriate to the application of such cause to gather and place forth your evidence before the Tribunal. Your pathetic mewling and objections submitted to this body in the previous months have been duly noted for their considerable understanding of the Vaticinal process and therefore hath been promptly addressed and adequately dealt with by tossing them into the little basket beneath our desk and then looking round the room in a manner which befits one in feigned ignorance of a wrong. May it please the Respondent to know that Her Royal Highness and Glittering, Refulgent Centre of the Known Universe hath, no doubt through coercion and deceit and subversion, enlisted the aid of the wife of your close friend to lie on her behalf. This must certainly be as unwelcome as the introduction of sodium chloride into a large festering wound rife with infected discharge and that clear runny fluid and we can only, in our boundless mercy, extend to you our pointed finger of shame as we chortle most pleased and with much derision.

As it is written in Canonical Law, no man can put asunder what our god hath joined. It is undoubtedly then to our great and inestimable fortune that we, like Devo, are not men. We are the instruments on earth of our god's swift retribution and his desperate need to amass large and unwieldy amounts of disposable wealth at the sufferance of actual truth and the personal and financial discomfort of our flock. We thought the hats would be a give-away.

We offer you what mercy we may afford in that you have not submitted remuneration to this body since, according to our records, Sunday 26th October 1969 when you were told that it would be a sin not to sacrifice your allowance to the holy ghost lest your flabby childish frame become a brightly-glowing cinder in the bowels of everlasting Purgatory as a result of your desire to participate in the daemonic ritual of All Hallow's. Then later you would be allowed to go to Hell.

Our god thanks you, however, for playing.  Enclosed please find your decorative parting gifts of a 2.5 x 3 inch card emblazoned with a poorly rendered watercolour-painting (consistent with current religious iconography) of a fluffy sheep and an incongruous pair of giant folded hands with a non-specific and largely generalised prayer of forgiveness culled, and taken entirely out of context, from the Book of John. Also you will find a lovely, full-colour fold-out brochure describing  in detail the arduous process of annulment and our attempts to destroy you emotionally  and mentally whilst desecrating and besmirching you in the name of our saviour because She of the Brilliance of One Thousand Suns has clearly seen fit to make pecuniary remittance for indemnity whilst you, conversely, have but the truth, when it should be abundantly clear that the Truth and the Way can only be paved with monies extricated painfully from the unwilling and the undeserving.

   

Yours In Apathy,
Metropolitan Tribunal
Archdiocese of Atlanta Y'all

Holy Cow!

National Public Radio reported today that The Billy Graham Library was dedicated on Thursday in Charlotte, North Carolina on the sixty-three acre grounds of the Billy Graham Evangelisticexpialidocious Association's International headquarters near the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.  The 40,000-square-foot structure--the library, not the airport--is shaped like a barn and was five years in the making at a cost of $27 million.

"It features photographs, films and memorabilia highlighting Graham’s seven-decade evangelical career, and it will soon hold Graham’s personal and private papers," the report stated.

Now I am all for libraries. I worked in one for nine years. Most of those nine years didn't suck. That is for another time. I think libraries are an awesome thing, despite what Stephen Colbert says. I think people who sponsor libraries or have libraries built in their name deserve a pat on the back--even the current president when he eventually unveils the GW Bush Large Print Edition Presidential Libary of Little Golden Books & Pop-up Stories.

What I found disturbing about the Billy Graham Library, however, apart from the fact that it was designed to look like a barn, was the part of the story which went on to explain that visitors will be greeted by an animatronic cow that recites scripture along with the predetermined salutation.

I'm sorry--a cow?

Why not an animatronic Billy Graham? Or Jesus? or Buddy Christ?

And why did this cost $27 million? Who made this cow? Industrial Light and Magic? It's bad enough you've got a 40,000 square foot pole barn to make R. Buckminster Fuller spin in his grave, but a talking cow?

They could have saved millions (of dollars) by driving down to Menard's and picking up a Billy Bass or one of those idiotic singing reindeer heads on the holiday clearance rack for $14.95 and just rewired it.

That cow is going to have to do some serious evangelising to recoup that cost...

Farewell Falwell (1933-2007)

And so the Teletubbies wave a final good-bye and good-night to the voice of religious intolerance, zealous bigotry, and totalitarian ignorance as Uncle Jerry goes to meet his maker.
And  now they can rest easy.
And so can the Smurfs.
And Mister Ed.
And My Mother the Car.
And Francis the Mule.
And Proctor & Gamble.
And Spongebob.
And Rosie.
And, really, just about everyone and everything...

The Illogical Theological 1.0

In the mail the other day I got a letter from the offices of the regional Catholic Diocese letting me know that the X wants an annulment after ten years. When I stopped laughing (because I was reasonably certain this type of letter would one day come around) I sat down to research and consider my response or, rather, how to politely and in liturgically correct language say "Oh hell no!" Through the process of reading the Vatican's website and the provided links to Canon Law it occurred to me just how circular and circuitous the nature and logic of "faith" can sometimes be.
Canon 1141 clearly states: “A marriage that is ratum et consummatum can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death.” And yet, in the course of studying the issue, one finds that 97% of all annulments are granted.
That number is decreased by roughly half if the case ends up before the Holy See. Either way, however, it seems that the verdict stands diametrically opposed to Canon Law.
Although I am sure she will ultimately get what she wants (borne by statistical average), the outcome personally means very little to me with regards to "faith" (because, in case you haven't noticed by now, I renounced christianity in all of its various flavours a long long time ago), but it has everything to do with what's right and what's wrong--a somewhat more universal concept.
Annulment, insofar as the church is concerned, basically says that proper intentions and the "unitive and procreative" meaning underlying the marriage were not present on the day the vows were exchanged.  You are asked to provide witnesses to this effect, but how does one do that if no-one can know your mind but god?  And, given the fact that the X not only insisted but adamantly insisted that we get married in the Catholic church and go through copious (and often embarrassing) counselling to ensure that we both fully understood that we were entering into our union wisely and as well-informed as humanly possible, I find it strange that she would later lie to the church she holds so dear and tell them that it was all just a silly mistake and she really didn't mean it.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that she would like to quietly erase her undesirable past--like the part where she found that keeping her pants on in the presence of her co-worker, Dave, was strangely difficult, especially when Goldschlager (The Pants Opener!) was involved. Or the part where for almost six months she continued to find it difficult keeping her pants on. Or the part where she just walked out one day to spend the rest of her life with her precious tattooed side-show freak boyfriend and new-found "soul mate." Or the part where she sent everyone in her family (not me of course) a nasty, hateful letter telling them that they were responsible for all of her problems and they should all just fuck off.
So, I find that I am faced with a fairly unsavoury issue of reopening a ten-year-old wound and simply denying her request. Not because I'm being vindictive, but because I absolutely refuse to also lie just to give her piece of mind. Whoever she has as "witnesses" on her behalf are wilfully complicit in her lie but I will not compromise my stance or principles only to satisfy the spiritual needs of someone else. I know what happened, I've had to live with it, I have had to pick up the pieces and move on--but saying something didn't happen does not make it so. My moral slate doesn't need the good hosing down that hers does and I will not budge. The church is supposed to be built on a foundation of truth. So let's find out if indeed truth will out...

Easter Wish

On this beautiful spring morning of Easter Sunday, 8 April, as I look out from my window at the fresh, new-fallen snow being driven horizontally across my now re-frozen back yard by gale-force 17 degree bitter cold winds, I keep thinking that, at Christmas time, Wal-Mart have those irritating, four-foot-tall animatronic Santas that gyrate their mechanical hips and sing "Winter Wonderland"and  I began to wonder: Why only for Christmas? Why can't we have, for Easter, a four-foot-tall plastic cross to put in our yard with an animatronic Jesus on it who could also gyrate his mechanical hips and sing to the tune of "Winter Wonderland--"

    Oh the nails, hear them drivin
    While on the cross I am writhin
    Screaming in pain
    Blood flowin like rain
    Dying on a hill in Golgotha...

Seriously. There's a marketing niche just waiting to be filled. I don't see why we can't enjoy our Easter egg hunts and our little chocolate bunnies beneath the ruined body of the singing christian saviour to remind us all why we have such a great candy-filled holiday to celebrate anyway; to beat us over the head so we don't forget why we have chocolate in the first place, or that cool plastic multi-coloured grassy stuff and the little straw baskets to carry all the chocolate and plastic eggs in. And then we can all sit around later with our bottles of Pepto-Bismol and tell the story of how the ghost of Musafa helped out at the end and bestowed sweet candy wishes for everyone so we don't ever forget that Jesus was nailed to a stick out in the desert so we could have bunnies wrapped in foil.

Wait.

Maybe that's another story...

Homo No Mo'

"There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."

Thus Spake Ted Haggard.

At first glance this would seem to be an obvious reference to Ted having seen and enjoyed the Peter Maris epic Terror Squad but clearly he was referring to his methamphetamine-fuelled odyssey through the joys of man-love which eventually helped bring him down, Hindenburg-like, before the doe-eyed hypnotic gazes of his legion of followers.

But now, thanks to "three weeks of intensive counseling" Teddy Boy is gay-free and, just like playing with a great big Humpty Dumpty DNA Lego set, Jesus is putting him back together again.

Jesus: The Cure For Gay

It must be a welcome sigh of relief for gay people everywhere that, just like Teddy and his pals, three weeks of hanging out at some exclusive resort drinking beer, eating peanuts, reading the Bible, and watching Big Boob Bonanza, Cream Pie Dreams, Dirty Sanchez Rides Again and The Little Mermaid can make them all better.  Of course it can't do anything about fiscal responsibility, as Ted "paid...for sex over a three-year period," but then, really, who isn't bad with money?

It's absolutely sickens me to watch these televangelists--whether it's the Jim Bakkers or Jimmy Swaggarts of the world--fall from grace and then boo-hoo in front of the camera about how bad they were and how you should forgive them for their transgressions and how they'll never do it again when, in reality, if the tables were turned they would happily muscle their way to the front row of your public stoning and sell the rocks.

What Would Jesus Do?

He'd kicking your fucking ass for being a lying hypocritical douchebag turning a fast buck from bilking millions of people in his name...

Amen.