Walnuts, Peanuts, and Religous Nuts

I just saw Bill Maher's new film, Religulous. It was fantastic and I enjoyed it thoroughly. He did a good job portraying the absurdity of religion, all religion, in a way that was not offensive or sarcastic as to turn the people who really need to see this film off from it.

Of course I am talking about religious people. People that think they talk to Jesus or Allah. Or better yet, that God talks to them. As I grow older I find it amazing that adults actually believe in these stories. A talking snake, a virgin birth, a zombie Lord, and a burning bush seem to me like kid stories. Perhaps this is because I believed them when I was a kid. But then, you have to wonder about the adults that were teaching your Sunday school. Do they actually believe all of these things? There had to be some of the shit they were passing out as divine truth that gave them pause, right?

Teaching your child good moral values is one of the responsibilities of a parent, but can't we come up with some way to do it other than force feeding them fairy tales that could lead to many years of disillusionment and frustration when the facade begins to crack? It is almost unthinkable to me that any parent would be OK with teaching their child all the bells and whistles of their religion which always boil down to this: we are going to heaven and everyone else is going to hell.

As you grow older there comes a time when you're old enough to be told that Santa Claus is not real. Or at least inquire a bit further into it. What do you mean that he visits every house all in one night? What does he do the rest of the year, and how come I have never seen an elf? Oh, he's not real? What about Jesus?

A big one to me is the claim that the Earth is 5000 years old and was created in seven days. Now, I know people that are intelligent, rational human beings in a variety of aspects in their lives that believe this. New rule: if you are going to spit in the face of scientific discovery so you don't have to let go of your imaginary friend, then you have to give up the conveniences that scientific discovery affords us. Like cell phones, computers, electricity and the Internet. A friend of mine from high school recently corrected me when I used the rounded term "5000 years old" to refer to Earth. It's closer to 6200 years old according to scripture, he said. Well, I'll be damned.

This is the fundamental problem with religion. It causes people to be crazy and to manifest their insanity into the world we all share. It makes people believe things about themselves, their relationship with others, and their relationship with God that simply are not true. When you bring up some of the gaping holes in their story they assert that they have "faith," simultaneously implying that you do not. There is simply nothing virtuous about believing strongly in something for which there is no evidence. That's called being stubborn and thick headed. Some of the creationists say that God placed evidence, like dinosaur fossils that are millions of years old, to test their faith. That's right, God is just fucking with us. That bastard.

Some of the beliefs are more harmful than others. If you believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, ultimately that is fine. But if you believe that the book of Revelation, or the Islamic prophecies about the End Times are real, then the potential to bring real harm into this world is greatly increased. Millions of Christians would see a silver lining in a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem and point to it as one of the signs of the Second Coming of Christ. The nuclear holocaust thing, us humans can pull of without God's help which is why it is so dangerous to believe it is going to happen, or to even hasten its arrival because of our wacky fairy tales. It's seems odd to me that people can't just accept that that the future is unwritten and we as a civilization have the power to steer it in one direction or another. But all of our religions have some sort of story about how all the shit is going to go down, and people believe it. Self fulfilling prophecy, anyone?

The burden is not on the nonreligious to disprove religion. The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy cannot ultimately be disproven. Just highly unlikely. If you want to believe in a guy that lived for three days in the belly of a great fish, fine. But don't get all defensive when someone tells you that you are full of shit. Because you are.

My favorite part of the movie is when Bill interviews one of the ex-gay ministers. Ex gays are hilarious for so many reasons, and I can really appreciate the absurdity because I used to strive to be one. They don't believe in gay people and therefore are both confused and confusing. But it is fun to watch them scwerm and try to explain to Bill Maher, who does believe in gay people, their view of things. Bill just sits there and flirts with them, and they don't get it. Priceless.

True spirituality, which can be arrived at through religion but almost never is, should be commended. It can heal your body, reconcile you back to your divine nature, dissolve conflict in the world, and cook you dinner. Religion, however, is ridiculous and Bill Maher made a movie about it. Go check it out and invite one of your religious friends. It will lead to some very provocative conversations.

Dirty Toothbrushes

Seattle is a sexually liberated city compared to, say, Nacogdoches, Texas. This is no more evidenced then by Dan Savage's column in The Stranger, a local newspaper. His "Savage Love" column is Ann Landers tied up, stripped down, spanked raw, and fucked hard. Only without the wrinkles and heavy aroma of moth balls.

Savage honestly has the best job in the world. He is a sex advice columnist that happens to be gay, which I suppose makes people very comfortable in writing to him some of their most kinky fantasies and naughtiest pleasures. Every week the letters that get printed seem almost too outrageous to be true. A heterosexual male is having trouble finding a woman who is comfortable strapping it on and giving it to him in the ass while he is wearing her bra and panties. A mother, snooping around in her adult daughter's house, finds a closet full of leather toys, bondage accessories, and BDSM pornography, and wonders what she should do about it. An inquisitive reader wonders what is the proper protocol for dealing with a unexpected situation involving anal sex and poop.

All of this is printed in a newspaper that is available for free at every store in the city. If you can read, you can read this. You will see women in their sixties reading it on the bus in the middle of the afternoon, and you think to yourself "I wonder what she thinks about the woman who can only have an orgasm if she smokes pot right before sex, but needs advice about how to keep her dry mouth wet for oral sex." Then, come to think of it, this woman was probably the one who wrote in.

Growing up in Lubbock, Texas, where the wind never stops blowing and periodically the sky turns the dark brown color of the city's soul, sexual deviancy is not discussed and certainly not written about in a weekly periodical. The sex education that I received in public high school would shock most of my friends that grew up in other areas of the country.

The man who was responsible for the vast majority of the sex education in the public schools of Lubbock, TX was a guy named Ed Ainsworth. Sex Ed, as he was called. Ed was a local youth pastor by day and a self appointed sex gestapo by night. I am not sure what was going through the mind of the school board on this decision, but who knows why anyone does the things they do?

Now Ed had this certain charm to him. Something that just made you never want to have sex. The core of his teaching, and what I remember to this day, was that if you had sex before you were married you were like a dirty toothbrush. You would not want to use a toothbrush that someone else had used, right? And who wants to marry a dirty toothbrush if they are passing clean ones at the dentist? So don't have sex, kids. Oh, and condoms don't work, so don't even try.

However, I would use a toothbrush that someone else had used if you washed it with soap and hot water, or if it was treated with antibiotics, or better yet if it was encased inside a condom while the other person was using it. Or if this other person was a good friend of mine and I knew where his mouth had been. In fact, looking back I suppose it is a miracle that my toothbrush and I still have an amicable relationship considering it is has been in a few mouths over the years. But, I digress. I would imagine that a column like Savage Love would not go over very well in a community like this. Or be really boring.

Dear Dan,
My wife and I were having our monthly sexual encounter when suddenly she screamed out "Oh, God, yes." I was quite startled by the outburst and particularly concerned that she broke the second commandment. How can I keep her from shaming the Lord while remaining fruitful and multiplying in the missionary position.
Hopelessly Holy and Horny

As a culture at large we are taught to be ashamed of our sexuality, but I think that this is particularly true of the South. We are constantly inundated with the idea that sex is dirty and bad and is to be saved for marriage. I am not really sure where this started, but human beings have evolved to shun everything pleasurable in the search for divine truth. This includes all forms of sex, drugs, feather boas, and RuPaul. Somehow this endeavor has left us desperately disconnected from each other, our divine nature, and even our own bodies.

This becomes apparent when you blush reading Dan Savage's column. Most of the things that are in there are not really that strange. All kinds of people have anal sex, we are just taught not to talk about it. It is not nice. You know, I would wear black lace panties and high heels while spanking my partner with wet celery if that was what he was in to. It's not really my thing, but I think its fine. It would certainly break up the monotony of the work week. Please, hold that imagine of me in your head just a moment longer... :-) Black. Lace. Panties.

It shows some cultural progress that a person like Dan Savage is able to do what he does. If some of us are willing to air our dirty laundry, maybe we eventually realize that we all have it. That we all like to get a little freaky. That it is nothing that we should be ashamed of, can actually improve your love life, allow you to discover part of what being human is all about.

Sometimes I think that I would like to try my hand at being a sex advice columnist. At least it would never get boring. I mean, what exactly are the qualifications? I have had sex and seen porn. I also have a degree in political science, and we all know that politicians have dirty adulterous sex in public bathrooms. In fact, I think "How to give and receive a blow job through a glory hole 101" was a class I had to take to get my degree. Or at least it should be in order to prepare you for the political world. So, if any of you out there have any kinky sex questions or hot fetishes you would like for me to comment on, send them my way. I think I could at least do as well as Dan Savage. And it will give me something to talk about while I am not talking about politics before the election. Whatdaya say, let's share our dirty toothbrushes with each other.

Taking the Temp Road

Ah, Seattle in October. The city is bustling with energy and aliveness as its citizens squeeze the very most out of the last of the sunny days. Tales of the season of cold, wet grayness that will soon be upon us I try to ignore and stay present. It is nice, now.

I am at work, looking out the window onto the busy street with the space needle perched above the billboard advertising Smart Cars. Closing the downtown store can be slow, and I cannot seem to pick up a wireless network anywhere. So, here I am; with Microsoft Word as my canvass and a blank page before me.

It is kind of an odd twist of events that I am even forced to use Word as my entertainment for the afternoon. I rarely use Word because it has been almost two years since I have written a research paper. Most of my writing is done online, it various emails or blogs. It is odd because this morning I had to take one of those online assessment exams for a temp agency to reveal how computer (il)literate I am. I scored an 82% on the Microsoft Word portion. Microsoft Excel was a little scarier—73%. I am not really a spreadsheet kind of guy. I am really not sure what all this is to determine. In real life, there is a help menu that tells you exactly how to do whatever function you might be unsure of, and being able to find the information you need is a much more valuable resource than already knowing it.

So, the test—the first I have taken in while—humbly put me in my place as a mediocre computer user. So, sorry if this post is mediocre. I don’t know how to make it otherwise.

The whole purpose of this exercise in jumping through the white man’s hoops is to hopefully get my foot in the door at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is a relatively new non-profit organization started by some guy who is apparently famous around here. Whatever. I am pretty sure that he invented the spreadsheet that an absolute genius can only effectively operate 73% of the time. Good one, dude.

However, his Foundation intrigues me. They are at the forefront in the battle against global malaria. They have dozens of projects, both domestic and international, that deal with poverty and sustainable futures for those at the losing end of globalization. When I moved up here, I had a desire to work for a non-profit that crusaded for a cause I could feel good about waking up in the morning to fight for. This one definitely fits the bill. However, it is hard to get a job there. If you did not graduate from an Ivy League school, or have twenty five years of experience managing a non-profit, pretty much all positions are temp to hire. Hence, my appointment with the temp agency tomorrow.

While I enjoy my job at Uptown Espresso, I have been pulling shots of espresso for yuppies for years. Granted the yuppies here are more intriguing and more generous than the people I used to serve down in Texas. But, it’s the same shit and eventually it is time to move on. I notice that my body no longer takes too kindly to waking up at 4:30 am. In my younger days I could close the bars down at midnight, catch four hours of shut eye, get to work (still drunk) and work the whole shift without batting an eye. Now, I would sleep till noon and not even hear my alarm or the phone calls trying to rouse me.

Something a bit more adult, a bit more 9 to 5 with benefits, sick days, vacations, and a 401 (k), has an alluring appeal that is hard to place, but certainly present. While I still plan on socializing into the wee hours on the weekends, a ten o’clock bed time during the week sounds pretty good. But alas, when your work schedule is all over the place, so are you. I wonder if I will miss the days of very little responsibility, late nights, early mornings, answering to no one except myself, and if I will return back to this land after a stint in the “real world;” only real because that is what our wage slave society requires its citizens to believe to continue thriving.

It is all a new adventure, and I am up for the challenge. Come what may, as they say. Ultimately I just appreciate living somewhere new, somewhere larger, gayer, more liberal, less intellectually challenged. A blue state, close to Canada for a quick getaway if the shit hits the fan, or if I need health care. Let us all tip our glasses to what the future holds and enjoy the last few weeks of autumn before everything dies and we all go into hibernation.

Craig and His List

I love Craigslist. You can buy everything on Craigslist, and you can sell the same shit back to people. Its like going to the flea market in your underwear, or completely naked if you like. Or while pooping, as Sarah Silverman does.

My dear friend Katie recently had a brilliant idea that some art student should really take up as their Master's Thesis: build an entire house and furnish the inside of it with stuff that you collect from the "free" section of the website. Just today I found bricks, cinder blocks, wood from someone's recent fence replacement, a microwave, a toilet and bathroom sink, dry wall with slight water damage (no biggie), and a cat scratching post...all for free. Come pick the shit up and it's yours. I imagine that it would not take you very long to collect all the amenities needed to build a complete house. Febreeze the rugs and the couches and you are good to go.

I could not imagine moving across the country without Craigslist. The house that I sublet in the first month I was in Seattle I found on Craigslist. It turned out to be a great little room for cheap in an area of town that I am so thankful that I now longer live it. It wasn't a bad part of town, just a little heavy on the frat parties.

I met my current roommate, Rachel, on Craigslist when I posted an ad regarding my need for housing for the three of us beginning in September. She responded to the ad and the rest is history. I now have a new friend whom I have very much enjoyed coming into my life, and I get to live in a house that is larger than my parent's house in a wonderful neighborhood. Thanks Craigslist!

However, Craigslist is also a microcosm of the universe. A mini online representation of the world around us. The best thing about Craigslist, and the place where this is most apparent, is the "relationship" section. It is the perfect example of the difference between men and women, and the difference between heteros and homos when it comes to want they want from a relationship sparked from Craigslist at 2 in the morning. If you are ever curious about how disgusting some gay men can be, go on the men seeking men section of the website. Be aware that you are about to wander into unfamiliar territory. It is absolutely astounding how many men will just post a picture of their penis, flaccid or erect, with a tag line like "need a hot bottom to suck me dry." Watch the fuck out!

Only a small minority of men have a good looking penis. And these are not the men posting pictures of their penis on Craigslist. Most do not have the type of member that would ever be molded into marble to grace the walls of a European Cathedral. They are curvy, or stumpy, or too pink, or shaped funny, or...well, you get the idea. However, the world is full of people that will take their camera phone, snap a quick shot of their cock with a circumcision job done by a drunk rabbi, and post it online for the world to see.

The men seeking women do not do this. They simply do not. Perhaps they know that a woman does not want to know what their penis looks like before they know what their face looks like. You will not find a single post in the hetero section that even closely resembles what 95% of the ads in the homo section look like. Straights use Craigslist to potentially meet a long term partner that shares similar interests. The gays on Craigslist just need you to have a mouth and painfully low standards. It's embarrassing, and I am ashamed to be lumped in with them even if the comparison is in kind and not degree.

My favorite part of Craigslist is the missed connections. "Saw you today at the Starbucks on 4th and Pine. We exchanged glances a few times and I wanted to talk to you, but you were on your phone with a family member. If you see this ad, I would like to take you out for coffee sometime. My treat. You: a beautiful dark skinned beauty wearing a muscle tee. Me: a olive skinned Mediterranean in casual business attire. Tell me the color shirt I was wearing and consider it a date." I always wonder if serendipity ever brings these two people together again.

I want a missed connection...bad. I check missed connections every couple of days just to see. I also find that I make eye contact with perfect strangers I think are hot just to see if it will lead to my first missed connection on Craigslist. When I get one, I will be sure to let everyone know about it, and part of my life will be complete. Now, I don't even need my missed connection to go anywhere. In fact, a person that would write a missed connection is probably at a level of desperation that I am not willing to let into my life, but still. I want one.

Craigslist is a wonderful thing. It's a classified for life. Anything you need can be found there. You can spend hours finding your new roommate, buying a car, getting a job, building a free house, selling your stuff, or looking at penises. What did we ever do without it?

In other news, I made the commitment after my "Conventional Sex" entry not to blog about politics again until after the election. I am going to keep my word but I want you all to know that it is fucking killing me. Sarah Palin is crazy as shit and I can't unleash. The economy is in shambles, and the McCain campaign actual said with a straight face today that Obama is in bed with terrorists. So, I am paying attention, and I have a lot of witty and informed opinions about it, but I am going to practice abstinence. It's safer. I am so ready for Nov 4th to get here.