A Subject That May Take a While (Part 4).

The final part. I promise. This involves no questions, only a comment with supplementary follow-up. Christians have it too good. That's the comment. Here's the follow-up--80% of the U.S. population is christian. I don't know what the percentage is around the world, but I'm sure it's astronomical. If you've taken any history course you know about the Crusades and the missions that have gone all around the globe converting people from every corner into Christians. "Jesus Christ saves! You'll certainly be going to hell without us! You're indigneous faith is crude, naive and just plain wrong! Have you never heard of Jesus? Dude died FOR YOUR FUCKING SINS!!! Did Buddha do that? No. That Hindu guy? No! Jesus did it! Get in on it! Fucking redemption! YEAH!!!"
I'm sure they use more words and are far more subversive with their language, but that seems to be about the gist of it. There's no sensitivity towards other beliefs or acknowledgement that other faiths might have something to offer. For instance, I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR the other day and the discussion was about the christian right. One example given as to the persistance of christians to continually push their beliefs was a function that the government had (I'm sorry for the vagueness, but I can't remember the actual event named) and they asked a Hindu priest to come and speak at it. The interviewee, the head of the religious studies dept. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that the responsible parties within the government immediately got letters from "important" christian organizations protesting the decision to allow any religious figure other than a christian one to speak at such a function. Their argument was that, yes, other religions should be able to practice in the United States, but none should be given attention from the government other than christians. Because, you know, you can never have enough christians running around inside the government. You can look to Patrick Henry College for that. It's the first college designed solely for christian home schooled kids. What this college does is try to get these kids into government. No lie. That's their agenda. It's that easy. This school started in 2004. They have 200 students. Guess how many students they've gotten into the White House as interns? Well, 7% of the interns at the White House are from this school. That doesn't sound like a lot though. Well, that's more than any other school. Guess who has the second most amount of interns inside the White House? Fucking Georgetown. Yeah, you know, that really prestigious school.
Do they really need to keep pushing? What kind of an imperialistic mindset does it take to not stop until every single person in the world believes what you believe? Well, there was Hitler. He sought to make everyone believe the same as he. Now there's christians. There. It's out. Christians are the new Hitler. They don't like Jews. They have that in common. They're trying to take over the world. They've used violence in the past. There you go.
That's pretty much my argument. They have enough. Being christian is like rooting for the New York Yankees or Manchester United. They already have enough fans and they always win. It's no fun rooting for the guy you know is gonna win anyway. Root for Shinto, Hinduism, Buddhism, anything; just not christian. They have plenty of fans; I mean believers.
Oh, and Jesus was a Jew. Why isn't everyone just Jewish? Oh, and Jesus was an apocalyptist...I think I just made that word up. Anyway, what I mean is that Jesus believed that the final judgement was going to happen within his lifetime. Um, yeah, way to go christians. Two thousand years of fucking it up. Dude didn't even know when the end of the world was going to happen. I'm sorry, but if you're the son of God and you don't even know when the apocalypse is going to happen, are you really in the loop? Maybe his dad just didn't think he was up to the task. I don't know how else you explain the fact that he was, at the very least, 1,973 years off the mark. Yeah, your messiah is obviously the one to go with. Fucking idiots.

The World Cup is Coming!

For my own mind, and for the mind of people the world over; some things need to be said. Soccer is amazing. This, this is my statement. The crux of my plan, my thesis, my reason for posting...my Juliet. That was too far. Well, was it? To many people, myself included, the World Cup is our romance. Perhaps that sounds a little over the top, but it's true. Is there any other sport where grown men have actually been filmed climbing fences, ready to tear the head off of an official for a spur of the moment decision? No. Have we all wanted to do that when we've been cheated on? Hell yes. Soccer is a love affair; complicated, selfish, filled with trepidation; always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I know how this sounds--ridiculous. It's not too far off base though.
I've been watching the World Cup since the summer of 1994. I was fourteen and spending everyday watching the World Cup go down on American soil for the first time ever. It was amazing. I wasn't in school and I had nothing a reasonable person would call a social life. Thus, my days were divided into two parts: watching the World Cup, and then waiting for the next day's games to begin. During halftimes, my brother and I would play soccer in our living room; clearing out the furniture and using a nerf ball to see who could score on who. Both of us imitated our favorite players and tried desperately to recreate our favorie goals and saves of the day. Trust me, you've never seen anything weirder, surreal and downright unapologetic.
My team for the World Cup was Italy--through and through. From the beginning, I was amazed by the Italian striker Roberto Baggio. He was one of the older players on the team and it wasn't a surprise that this was going to be his final World Cup. Man, he could play though. In fact, he led the team into the final match against Brazil. Now, if you know anything about soccer, you know that Brazil is the unofficial "Champion of Forever". They've won more World Cups than any other team and they play with more heart and flair than just about any European team has. In the final, Italy held their own. They kept the Brazilian's back and the game went into overtime. It was at this pointwhen my team needed me more than ever, that I stopped watching. You see, my brother was going to camp for a week. It was his first time ever doing it and I wanted to go with him to add whatever comfort I could. Needless to say, we were both pissed off. He was pissed he had to go and I was equally, if not more angry, at my own misguided sense of what being a big brother is all about (I was too supportive and never gave out too many wedgies). We had spent an entire month preparing for this moment, just to have it cut-off by...church camp. In hindsight, this may well be where my loathing of the world's religions comes from.
When I got home, I saw the highlights. Neither team had scored during overtime and that meant a penalty shootout. The absolute pinnacle of blood pressure boiling points being tested, and I missed it. Well, more to the point, Roberto Baggio missed it, by about 10 feet. He overshot the ball and it went soaring over the goal. It was over. My beloved Italian friends had lost. I felt betrayed, disappointed, heartbroken. All the things one feels when you have your heart broken by a woman. No joke. Same feeling.
Now, the World Cup is back. Once again, I am hooked. I've studied the teams. I've watched as many qualifying matches as I could. I even went to see one in Columbus, Ohio (we beat Mexico, another great team). I've ordered my hat and t-shirt. The treacherous Italians broke my heart once and I'll never go back to them, even though they knock on the door every four years or so. This time I've chosen Portugal. They're good. Not really good, not like Brazil or the Czech Republic, but they play a good game. It's two weeks away and I can't wait to see Luis Figo in his final World Cup. I want to hear the announcer say "Deco" the way I've been hearing it in my head. Christiano Ronaldo--that's a name you're hopefully going to hear a lot. I'm here for them. If they need a friend, hey, just call. I'm on my way. Need someone to yell at the telvision incessently and curse more than any sailor has ever even dreamed? I was going to do that anyway.
Starting June 9th, Portugal will officially be my new mistress and I'll treat her as such. They have my attention, my love, my unflinching faith and they can rest easy that I'll always have their back. But maybe this time I won't put everything I have into this; I've been hurt in the past (Damn you, Baggio), but I'll remain ever hopeful that this time I've found the one. If it doesn't work out though, I know I can always fall back into bed with the U.S., the tramp.*


There's actually no way in hell the U.S. is going anywhere. They'll be lucky to make it out of the first two games.

The World At Large.

I'm holding it in contempt for not opening itself fully to me. That's literally for the women of the world and metaphorically for the actual world. I know it's my own fault; I'm all too aware of that, but a grudge is what I hold none the less. I love the world. I fear it also, but mostly it's love. I want to see it. Even the dirty parts like Ghana and, I don't know, Ecuador*. I know I want to go to Tahiti. I want to go to Japan, even though I know I'll never be accepted there. I want to go to China even though I know I'll be solicited by orphaned children and prostitutes on every corner. I want to go to Englang even though it seems really boring. I want to go to Montana even though it's really flat and cold. I want to go Buenos Aires with my friend Greg even though I'm sure I'll be stabbed by a ten year old kid looking for a fix. I want to see the Andes, the Alps, the Great Wall, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, David Bowie, Natalie Portman, and The Rock. I want to be a man of the world. I want to teach kids to read in Mongolia and get a nasty foot infection that requires amputation. I don't know. I want to see where Hemingway wrote "The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber". I want to go to Cuba. Canada seems like it wouldn't be too bad. I definitely want to sleep with a mysterious woman in Vietnam. I want to romanticize delusions of marrying her even though I can't really understand the harsh and broken english she speaks. Maybe I would marry her. I'm dumb enough for that. Whimsy is what it's called. Sorry, not stupidity. I've got whimsy. I imagine it comes in handy when traveling.
Oh, and I never, ever want to go to Detroit. Nothing about that city seems appealing.
So, who's with me? Someone wanna go somewhere? Call me if you do. I'm hanging out in my room writing this and listening to records. I might get stoned and try to write a song or something.




* I actually know nothing of these places and jumped to conclusions. My bad.

THAT city

So you know THAT city; the one where people say that all they did there was drink because there was nothing left to do? I found myself staggering drunk around 5pm after the kids I was teaching left around 1pm. Then I realized the epitome of THAT town is Gorham, NH. I was at a bar dropping around 30 dollars of money I could spend on records or new shoes and yet I'm wasting my life at a place called The Red Parka Pub watching some shitty band play shitty covers slightly laughing at the seven dudes dressed up as pirates dancing. I was not a happy camper. Then I knew, I reside in THAT city. And the only thing I could think of was "Well, at least I'll have granola and yogurt for breakfast. So I got that going for me." I'll probably go hiking or running during the day which will be fun and fulfilling yet when night falls, I'll be plagued with the question that teenagers always skirt around. "What am I going to do tonight?"

Maybe something productive will happen. Maybe I'll meet the person of my dreams. Maybe I'll see a movie that I've never seen before. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be excited about living in college dorm like shithole. The shithole where people are pouring beers on themselves in the hallways and beer pong is being played until 2 in the morning. The one where everyone laughs a little too loudly and keeps checking their watch.

A Subject That May Take a While (Part 3).

It's been a while, but I've been trying to actually find out about this stuff before I post it. I didn't learn much, but I was looking for the answer to two different questions. First, can christians, who study the bible and use its teachings as a kind of moral compass, also believe in evolution? I thought the answer to this was obvious, in an odd sort of way; of course christians can believe in evolution, despite the fact that it makes them normous hypocrits. I liked this thought. It gave christians at large some kind of process for rational thought while also making them seem unable to even accept their own beliefs as wholly true. It would seem that I am wrong.
I've always known that the bible is supposed to not be taken literally, but apparently it's also true that christians see the creation story as just that; a story. When it comes down to it, christians (I'm citing my father here) seem to be of the belief that God didn't create the world in seven days as the bible says. Instead he says that many christians believe in evolution, but also see the human body as full of connections and functions that are beyond simple evolution. Thus, the divine touch of God.
The other question I put to my dad is one that is a personal issue I've had with christianity for a long time--the "Father" thing. I'm no scholar, but it's always seemed plain that the basic idea of God, being in the masculine form, is rubish. By looking at the basic makeup of the sexes, both male and female, it would appear that the roles should be reversed. To put it more plainly, if man is made in the image of God, and God is the creator, then why would God give the enormous gift of human creation to the female instead of the male of the species? The roles are reversed here. Instead of males being the sex given the gift of creation, it has been seen throughout the last, oh, couple thousands of years, that men are far more prone to destruction than creation. When I asked my dad about this, he gave me the answer that christians don't actually put a male or female face on God. Culturally, he said, God has been placed in the masculine, though few people of the christian faith believe that God is of one sex or the other.
This brings up more questions though. Okay, christians don't believe that God is male. That's fair. I don't believe it, but whatever. If christians don't believe that God is male though, then why is it "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit"? Why is the masculine form "God", used instead of the feminine "Goddess"? Why does the bible use the masculine as well, if God is only culturally masculine? I'm not sure. I'd like to know. Is there any debate within the church to change these inconsistencies? Since we're now much more enlightened than we have been in past, when the gospels were written, will the cultural domination that men have held for centuries possibly be challenged. I seriously doubt it. It has been more than 3 or 4 thousand years since women were able to occupy a much more elevated position in society. A position that put them in much greater charge of the gathering of food and the tending to fields, to household inventions and the domesticating of animals. Now, women worship at the altar of a male God, just like everyone else instead of the Gods who occupied the same space as the Goddesses. Once again, I don't get it.

Kids Say the Darndest Things Part One

On a Hike with fifth graders:

Me: Tuckerman's Ravine is only 200 yards away.
11 yr old girl wih pigtails: (under her breath) is that supposed to be fascinating?

(I'm handing out trail mix appropriately on the trail)
11 yr old Derek: This trail mix is 1910-style.

In the classroom while kids make a pangea flipbook:
some kid whose name I forget: Do you, like, dig Ms. White? You dig her! You TOTALLY dig her!!!
me: I've never spoken to Ms. White in my life.

The girls liked to pull the girls hair a lot.
Anthony: Make them stop pulling my hair.
Me: You shouldn't have grown it that long.

From the classroom, different instructor; same age:

Casey the Instructor: I'm talking about map and compasses. blah blah blah
(girl raises hand) Yes?
Girl: My grandmother's never made me pancakes.

oh yea, people get drunk in the mountains. a lot.
but bars are different here. they have curtains. The bars up here remind me of the scene in any movie where the crazy killer is calmly drinking a beer scoping out some young thang before he, you know, seduces her, kills her, and then throws her into the river. These are the bars where these people chill.

it's rained for four days straight.

send movies.

Creepy Tuesday.

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A Subject That May Take a While (Part 2).

Why believe in the bible so enthusiastically? Once again the "blindness" issue comes into play here. People (I guess) become so enthusiastic about their faith that it automatically translates into believeing every word dropped in the bible. That's not the way it should be at all. People have proven that parts of the bible are one hundred percent fiction. Until 1440 there wasn't such a thing as a printing press so everyone had to write the entirety of the bible by hand. Why don't people make sizable room for error here? Instead, every word is clung to like the last sheet of toilet paper when you have food poinsoning. Everything is important , everything is true. This book has been in the hands of scholars, kings, apprentices, and everyone in-between. Of course errors have been made and of course some stories were made up.
Perhaps the most popular story that has been proven to be fictitious is the story of a woman being brought before Jesus by several men. The men say the woman has committed adultery and by Roman law she must be stoned. Jesus looks on the woman and says to the men, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Bullshit. That story was never in the bible for the first, I don't know, 1000 years or so. Yeah, I understand how it's a great lesson for us all to learn, but that doesn't mean that it has to be held up as a glowing example of the truth that christianity has to offer. It's a story. One that didn't happen.
Aside from the parables in the bible, the gospels themselves are inconsistent. These are different people (the disciples) giving their own accounts of things they have seen. It's all perspective and most of the viewpoints they have will more than likely not mesh with another disciple just through the simple of idea of different people interpreting events differently. They have different pasts that impact how they all take in current experiences in their lives. Luke, for one, has a completely different account of what happens as Jesus is cruxified. The other disciples tal;k of him being in intense pain and having a hard time dealing with it. Luke makes it seem like Jesus was treating cruxifiction as some kind of Corona commercial. Just chilllin', dropping lyrical gold while, you know, he has nails going through his hands and feet, his legs are broken, he hasn't eaten or had anything to drink since his ass was strung up, and let's not forget that some asshole stabbed him in the side for good measure. I don't care if you are the son of God and you know all about the whole "gonna raise from the dead plan", you aren't gonna say shit other than "Fuck Rome" and "I wish I had some water and wasn't on a stick".
Once again, while typing this I'm becoming increasingly aware of how uninformed I am since I can't really conjure anything else to discuss. I'm gonna go get a hot dog and a couple of beers and watch TV. Oh, and thanks for dying for my sins, Jesus.

I Changed the Game.

It has been remade. It is now better. Slicker. More efficient. It is, in actuality, none of these things. Though I did change it. Remember the base system for getting a girl? You know, first base is kissing, second base is touching a boob and so on. Well, that system is dated. We don't need it anymore. By now, those of us who have wanted to have sex have had it. For some of you, maybe even a lot. So, the game needed to be changed. I have now updated it, thus making it once again a system that we seek to reach the pinnacle of. With brief explanations included, here we go:

First Base: Fingerbanging. Honestly, I don't much care for this word (especially in print), but it gets my point across and also verbally let's you know how this is going to play out with all other bases. Handjobs would be the substitute for women here.

Seond base: Blowjob. No doubt about it, what used to be third base is now second. Copping a feel is easy; getting a girl to suck your dick is sometimes not. There are, on occasion, the rare breed who jump into this head first (pun!), but most girls aren't so into the idea, with good reason. The penis is nothing but a tangle of engorged veins not unlike what Tetsuo starts to resemble towards the end of "Akira". Thankfully we have a fleshy covering so all that grossness isn't openly exposed. Once again the substitute for women is somewhat obvious--eating pussy. Ask me to do it and it's all but done, but some dudes are apparently still stuck in the eighth grade and pussies scare them. Fucking idiots.

Third base: Here's where we start to really play ball (pun!). A girl let's you come on her. Having a girl take a shot in the mouth can also be put into this category. Honestly, I'd much rather come ON a girl than IN her mouth, but that's just my personal preference for degrading women. Seriously though, if a girl let's you come on her, she A.) has truly begun to trust and love you and is willing to let you get away with this kind of sick shit, or B.) she was gonna let you do it anyway because she likes it. 95% of women are in the former. Find a woman into the latter and you better never let her go. For women, this category is somewhat tricky. It may not be something you enjoy, but it shows a boy he can't have his cake and eat it to. Stick your finger up his ass. Like I said, you may not want to do this, but c;mon, dude just shot a load on your chest! Man up and fucking plug him up! At first the guy is going to be wholly against this idea, but then he's going to think "Well, I did just come on her chest" and he'll take it. He has to. He may not admit it, but he's well aware he's still winning as far as this trade-off is concerned.

Homerun!: Anal. Vagina is old hat. Been there. Done that. It's time to finish the job. It's somewhat like the version of The Punisher with Thomas Jane that came out a couple of years back. Yeah, he could have just killed the guy who murdered his whole family, but we've seen that before; just like we've had vaginal sex before. Instead, Tom Jane fucking kills his entire family! Whoa! Wife? Dead. Two kids? FUCKING DEAD! Not only that, but he tricks the bastard into killing his best friend. You definitely don't see that everyday. Just...like...anal.