For Christ’s Sake

Jesus is the name of the man on the cross.

He sacrificed his life so that he could be boss.

He turned his blood to wine, telling us to get drunk.

His followers increased like the trail of a skunk.

His said his dad was God and that folks would obey

But Romans on the job heard his words with dismay.

Much of what he did say made some sense, it is true,

Like you’re a part of me and that I’m part of you,

Yet no one likes to hear how to live, what to do

So those who run the church twisted things with a screw

And now they’ve turned the guy into our source of fear,

A scarecrow so immense that his love they can’t hear.

If he came back today you can know one thing’s sure,

That he’d be taken out before he held the floor;

This world does not like those who give all to the poor

But the good news is that nature was born with the cure.

The answer to the riddle you seek on the phone

Lies rather in your heart, in your brain, in your bones.

 

La Mierda Loca

Right now my fridge, whose name is Dios, which means God in Spanish, is beeping out of context.  It appears to have lost its mind.  My wife Jina and I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.  Maybe it needs a doctor.  Perchance it’s crying, “Help me!  I’m freezing to death.”  Or else it wants to retire and move to the Bahamas.

The wonderful Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano has a book entitled The Upside-Down World.*  His most famous work, Open Veins of Latin America, I’ve yet to read.  He has a clean, simple style that manages complexity well with a healthy dose of irony.  I saw a clip of him being interviewed once, and although my Spanish is as rusty as a ’69 Chevy with a 396, fuely heads and a Hurst on the floor (I’m simultaneously quoting Bruce Springsteen and speaking in tongues, as I have no idea what any of that means), I did know what the following words meant:

“Este mundo es de mierda.”

Essentially, “The world’s a piece of shit.”  

So is my new smart phone, by the way.  I can’t figure out how the gosh-darned thing works.  I’d throw it against the wall if I thought it would help.  My old phone let me send text messages regardless of length; the new one is picky and doesn’t even show me the phone number of the person who’s left a message, so I have to look it up if I want to call them back instead of texting.  My wife claims it’s because the new model was put out by a different company.  Put out, indeed.  She says I have to wait until the new policy kicks in before it will start functioning properly.  But she added that I should start sending shorter messages.  I told her that was impolite, that a lot of the messages I receive are work-related.  I.D.K.  mA-B shs rght.

In yesterday’s entry I mentioned a momentous conversation we had over breakfast the other day in which she lamented that we didn’t have a baby ten years ago, back when we were both young enough so that we wouldn’t have to worry that she’d give birth to a Chimera (according to the Random House Word Menu, that’s a “flame-belching monster, part goat, part lion, and part dragon”).  Well, maybe we would have anyway.  And if we had, Jina would tell the baby, “You look just like your daddy.”

Remember the downstairs neighbors I told you about a few days ago who like to assemble and say “Hallelujah” as fast as they can over and over again until they sprain their tongues?  They’d woken me up and this time I was in a less charitable or forgiving mood, so I went downstairs and rang the doorbell.  No answer.  I rapped on the door with my knuckles.  The door opened and two women stood before me.  They looked friendly, so I decided not to wax too indignant.  I asked them semi-politely if they could stop making so much noise.  They explained that they were praying (as if that made it all right to be a public nuisance); I told them I was very sick (an exaggeration:  I had a slight cold) and needed to get some sleep (mission afterwards aborted).  I probably looked a little scary with the black eye and evil face of a foreigner from hell (and a heretic, no less).  

I asked them if they could please pray more quietly, as the racket they were generating was annoying.  At first they seemed nonplussed by my request, but at last they acquiesced.  I thanked them and went back home. 

When I mentioned the above incident to Jina, I expected her to be a bit annoyed herself–not by the neighbors, but by me for being so presumptuous and un-neighborly.  Instead, she surprised me by saying she wasn’t angry, although she was embarrassed.  She went on to say quietly that she wanted a divorce.

As the words leapt from her lips, I couldn’t help noticing how good the orange I was eating tasted.  But I thought it best not to bring it up at that moment.  Instead I asked her why, just to be polite.

She said if the neighbors’ manic hallelujah chorus got on my nerves, her own speaking in tongues must have made me likewise uncomfortable.  I said it didn’t bother me much, as I knew how important it was to her.  (In order to be sustained, brainwashing must maintain a meticulously methodical, painstaking ritual; once you get used to acting like a robot, you forget how and who you used to be and don’t mourn the loss of your humanity or the robbery of your soul–at least that’s been my experience.  If only Gregor Samsa, the man in the Franz Kafka story “The Metamorphosis” who wakes up to find he’s been transformed into a giant cockroach, had the presence of mind to find Jesus.  Then he could make his peace with the world as his sister tries to stomp him to death.)

She asked me for the four-hundred zillionth time if I believed in Jesus.  As usual, I hedged, being coy.  

“Sometimes,” I said, so as not to hurt her feelings.  (The following morning while we were lying–not to each other, only ourselves–in bed, she asked me if I wanted to be baptized–again.  “Maybe,” I replied in a tone that said, “Hell, no.”)

She asked if I believed in the resurrection of Christ.

“Not really.”

Somehow, we managed to change the subject and move on, and suddenly everything was hunky-dory again.  I guess she figured, “Well, at least I gave it another shot.”  It’s touching, in a way, when someone goes so far out of their way to share their delusions with you.  I’m truly grateful for the attempt–failed though it was.

As usual, I haven’t written what I set out to, so I suppose I’ll have to save it for the next post.  My health woes continue to plague me, and my moods bounce up and down on a Willy Wonka-like glass elevator between heaven and hell.  But most of the time they’re lodged in purgatory.

In case I do drop dead today–which always feels like a distinct possibility these days–feel free to check out my other WordPress blog under the pseudonym Mort Hawsen (an anagram of my name, Stew Harmon), mortalchortle.  I haven’t added anything to it in a long while, but most of the contents aren’t time-sensitive anyway (poetry, short fiction, plays, etc.).  Not to toot my own horn too much, but there’s also a Simpsons parody there you might like.

If not, please don’t waste your time.

Take care, have fun, toodle-oo.

By the way, do yourself a favor and check out the interview New Yorker journalist Elizabeth Kolbert gave Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about her new book The Sixth Extinction.  Suffice it to say, the planet is absolutely fucked**, thanks to us.  (**which means we must be too–funny, I don’t feel fucked–unless I was speaking figuratively.  Maybe if I were, my heart wouldn’t be in such rough shape.)

As Dana Carvey would say in his incarnation as the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live, “Well, isn’t that special?”

* More proof that the world is upside-down in the next entry!

Unbelievable News

What’s the story with Reverend Pat Robertson?  Do you know who he is, the perennial American televangelist who looks like a very tall bat (my condolences, by the way, to the loved ones of the several million bats who died a few weeks ago in the Australian heat wave)?

The same man who once condoned the assassination of the late Venezuelan Hugo Chavez as a sound U.S. foreign policy maneuver, and later blamed Haitians for their own devastating hurricane, saying they’d brought it on themselves by practicing voodoo and inciting God’s wrath, is starting to sound, well, almost–sane.

A year ago he pitched the idea of legalizing marijuana as a way to curtail the problem of U.S. prisons overcrowded with nonviolent “offenders.”  (Maybe he should change his name from Pat to Pot.  Then he could move to Jamaica and convert to Rastafarianism.)

More recently, he’s spoken up against simian creationist Ken Ham’s claim that the earth is only 6,000 years old, saying such transparently false views just make fundamentalist Christians sound like idiots (as if they needed any help).

Could it be that Pat Robertson is–God forbid–actually evolving?

Twisted Times We Live In

Could you please let me know if there’s any justice left in the world?  Do you know what a brain worm is?  That’s when you get a catchy tune stuck in your head that takes forever to go away.  I hope this isn’t contagious, but right now my brain is being assailed by that monstrosity sung by Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore several years ago in a romantic comedy I was privileged not to see.  But they still got me with the fucking song, harpooning my amygdala.  Bastards.

The reason this particular noisome ditty has colonized the colon of my noggin (ever notice how similar the human brain looks to your intestinal tract?  Fractal geometry–in the privacy of your own bod!) is that the other day I heard a Muzak version of said atrocity (for those of you who are exceptionally masochistic, I’m sorry I can’t intensify your suffering with the name of the song; it’s something like “All I Want to Do Is Make an Ass of Myself by Proving I’m a Shameless Dilettante Who’d Better Stick to Acting Instead of Singing”) in a bookstore of all places.  I silently wondered whether the proprietors of the bookstore were bent on some kind of self-destructive mission to drive their customers away.

Or maybe I’m the only one who couldn’t dig how awesome the jingle was.

Speaking of injustice, I was sorry to read that Bradley Manning–whose new name is Chelsea (Womanning?)–is being sent up the river for thirty-five years, after already serving three.  

“Hey, at least he doesn’t have to go to prison for 125 years!”

By the time they let him out, he’ll already be a middle-aged woman.  I can’t pretend to understand his decision to want to change his sex, although as a metaphor it makes sense.  If you had to boil things down to the main cause of the world’s problems, you could do worse than point the finger at a number of testosterone-addled men and the sinister systems that enslave them.  (For fear of being unduly persecuted, I won’t mention any names–yet.)  Manning, like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald (whose boyfriend has supposedly been imprisoned in England, apparently as an indirect way of punishing Greenwald for breaking the Snowden story to the Guardian), is being made an example of for trying to enlighten Americans about the hidden atrocities our military has been committing abroad.  He’s another prisoner of conscience, just like Daniel Ellsberg, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, or Hank Thoreau.

Amnesty International has their work cut out for them.

Do you ever read the Huffington Post?  Although it’s not my favorite website, I do enjoy scanning it sometimes, apart from (or is it because of?) all the schlocky nonsense its peppered with.  For example, was it breaking news to show their readers/viewers pictures of Mel Gibson in a wife-beater with his new hard-earned biceps?  It turns out he’s going for the early Arnold Schwarzenegger look.

As I was saying, eruptions of testosterone (or should that be ejaculations?) are all the rage these days.  And for the men’s men who make the big decisions in corporate boardrooms and in soundproof military chambers, nothing could be less manly than caring about what happens to the poor, the downtrodden, the animals.  That’s women’s stuff.  Let the little girls cry over the squirrel squashed by the Hummer on its way to run over a couple of fags holding hands in the road.  

Speaking of homophobia, which seems to be a big hit in Russia these days, did you ever see the video that Vladimir Putin released of himself, buff and shirtless on a horse, a few years ago?  (He boasts the kind of pectoral muscles that could easily degenerate into man boobs if he’s not careful; then what will people say?  “Oh, my God!  He’s turning into a woman!  We can’t have that.  Execute him!”)  

It’s funny, because for someone who hates gays as much as he claims to, he’s awfully enamored of his own body.  When Narcissus saw his reflection in the pool in the forest, did he want to get it on with himself?  And if so, wouldn’t that have made him a shirt-lifter?  Besides, is it safe for Putin to post such arousing images of himself on-line in a world teeming with gay perverts who may publicly molest him in a naked, hooting mob?

When I told my wife Jina that homosexuals are being murdered these days in Russia (although that might be a slight exaggeration), she said, “Good.”  According to her, God and Jesus, his bearded wonder of a son, hate gays as much as Putin does.  I thought you were supposed to “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”  (Not that I’m agreeing that gay sex is a sin; I wouldn’t know, and I don’t care, as it has nothing to do with me.  In other words, to quote Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind:  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”  In fact, I’m grateful to gays for at least two things:  1) they reduce the competition for available women, which may become relevant to my own life again before long; and 2) their sexual practices do nothing to increase the birth-rate in this already heavily human-infested planet.  Not that I don’t love people, but once you’ve lived in a megacity for several years, your cynicism has a lot more fodder than it otherwise would.  Too much of a good thing turns out to be a bad thing, unless you’re the only guy matriculating at an all-women’s college.)

As Bill Maher says, all of the frou-frou silliness that happens in your average church is pretty fucking gay anyway when you think about it, as is a religion (Protestantism) that has no major female protagonists in the godhead.  I prefer the ancient Greek pantheon, which at least was co-ed.  And their gods were just as fucked-up, incompetent, and degenerate as we humans.

God love ’em!

P. S.  If my wife thinks gays are going to hell, what about the people ordering Reaper and Predator drone attacks that incinerate dozens of innocent people all over the Middle East?

Drone warfare–coming to a theater near you.

Let’s hope most of us can make it through all of these deadly orgasms of machismo with our skeletons and innards intact, if not the dregs of our souls.

Thank God There Is No Heaven

(Or thank heaven there is no God.)

Aside from the loss of a pet fly I had on Christmas Day when I was nine, I’ve had little experience with death or direct exposure to the absolute exit of the flesh from the festival of consciousness.  That’s probably why I’m so glib on the topic, compulsively joking about what’s best treated with an air of solemnity or else cringing, diffident respect.  But I find it hard to respect something that makes fools of us all, even though I simultaneously celebrate the fact that no one lives forever, since it means we’re all on board the same long sweaty stuffy subway train to hell (allowing that a fortunate few have first class seats and fireproof smiles).

(Not that I believe there’s a hell after life.  For what remains of my money and my barely animated remains, my guess is that death is an erasure of all consciousness as well as all physical pleasure and pain–in other words, a mixed bag, kind of like some of the Hollywood blockbusters summer has in store for those who would go out of their way to view such extravagant fantasies, not that they’re available in stores.)

Now that my own mortality is starting to assert itself more aggressively as I deteriorate apace, I can neither ignore nor deny a certain fear of death (boo!  in both senses of the word), if only because I still haven’t accomplished an inkling of what I hope to achieve before the power shuts down, or else come close to filling the bottomless pit of insatiable greed, that which has been established by biology (bye-bye, happiness), along with civilization’s own special recipe for suffering–now with new ingredients!  (I realize now that line is not exactly a zinger, especially considering that the people who write ad copy for TV commercials don’t normally include four-syllable words when they want to give the announcer something exciting-sounding to say.)

Anyway–and anywhere but here, wherever and whoever you are–every Sunday I’m committed to reading a dictation for a group of old Korean men at my wife Jina’s church, which I think is called the Church of Latter-Day Lunatics Who’d Just as Soon Incinerate the Infidels with Flame-Throwers.  In case you couldn’t guess by that irreverent aside, I’m not in belief mode, being constitutionally incapable of such a devout disposition.  Sorry, but I just like asking questions too much.  They keep things off-balance and keep me on my toes.

So the other day–and don’t ask me how I got roped into this gig, but I’ve gotten used to it now, keeping in mind that a long marriage between two people who are preposterously inappropriate for each other grows on you like a third-degree burn.  All the infernal bickering and carping sears you to the bone, helpfully killing all the nerves so you don’t feel any pain eventually.  Ah, refreshing numbness.

As I was saying before that annoying digression, the theme of last Sunday’s gathering was the existence of heaven.  I don’t bring my script home with me out of a policy of non-attachment to things religious, so I don’t have it to refer to, but the gist of it was that heaven is a place, “just like New York, Chicago, or London.”  Or Pittsburgh.  Or Vladivostok.  Or Tokyo Disneyland.  Or, as David Byrne of Talking Heads would say, “a place where nothing, nothing ever happens.”

The gentlemen in the group politely repeated each phrase I read aloud, the oldest of the batch always trailing behind the rest as he mumbled his way across the finish line.  I was glad we didn’t have to read about the Holy Trinity anymore, but had trouble suppressing an eye-roll at the pseudo-scientific claims of the existence of heaven.  The men repeated my enthusiastic recitations, unable to detect the sarcastic undercurrent that occasionally took hold of my voice as I was possessed by the demon of incredulity (whom I favor over the devil of feverish naivete).

“Heaven is much closer than you may think.”  (That’s right–it’s here and now.)

But when I came to the part about how heaven is a place where all of the pain and suffering in life come to an end, I recalled that these men were not far from the end of life’s messy plate of spaghetti themselves, that the long and winding noodle would soon be slurped clean by omnivorous Mr. Cronus, the life-gobbling god of time.  So I had to take my invisible hat off to them for lasting as long as they have, and refrain from dispelling their cherished illusions with a Bronx cheer.  

Besides, who knows?  If I last that long myself (which I almost certainly won’t, unless my imaginary enemy God is even crueler than my wife makes him out to be), I might even end up swallowing the same plate of shit they have, and savoring it with the joyful gratitude that comes from having one’s taste buds hijacked by glad-handing fanatics.

But between you and me I damned well hope not.  I can’t afford to invest in a coffin big enough to accommodate a crucifix, and although I love reading fiction, the Holy Bible’s not exactly a page-turner (great work of literature though it is–or so I’ve heard).

And life, for all its idiocy and delicately tormenting situations that plague every day, is much too precious to waste on wishful thinking.  It’s much better to waste it surfing the Internet instead.  

Finally, does Jesus really need any more devotees?  The poor guy must already feel like the biggest social butterfly in the history of show biz.  I shall do him the understated honor of ignoring him, or at least keeping him in his proper perspective as someone who tried to make the world a better place, and in some ways succeeded, despite the unintended consequences of creating so many generations of wackos and self-righteous goofballs who cover the planet like a wet blanket on a cold dog who’s just trying to shake them off and attend to the more urgent matter of having a good time before it’s too late.

The Evolution of Evil

The funny thing about depression is that when you’re in its throes, you refuse to forgive people for the slightest things.  You allow no possibility for the positive, and negatively assess everyone you see, beginning with yourself.  Depression at its most pedestrian is a species of stupidity; believe me, i speak from experience.

You may be wondering about the ominous title I’ve chosen for this post.  You’re not the only one.  Wish I were here.  Well, since it’s Sunday and time for our Bible studies class, suffice it to say it may not be amiss to bring back the tradition of the slaying of the first-born, at least when it comes to the little boy who lives across the street from me.  Now that the spring has finally arrived, with toxic yellow dust wafting through the air (one of my students said you just get used to it; hey, I guess you can get used to cancer and lung disease too), people are spending more time outside, tearing themselves away from their computer terminals and TV screens to be alone with their smart phones.  

The satanic vermin I’m referring to is about two feet tall; I’m guessing he’s probably roughly two years old–one foot of growth per year, sort of like a dandelion.  Please bear in mind that I have nothing against children in general.  I can put up with a certain amount of ungovernable young noise, having been a major generator of it myself throughout my life (though now the noise has gotten old).  But this kid makes me contemplate homicide on a less than neighborly scale.  Unseemly as it may seem to record such thoughts so shortly after the Boston tragedy, along with all the less widely-reported atrocities that have happened either before or since, his undiluted wailing and crying makes me wish I had a bow and arrow to give him something more pressing to bellyache about.

His parents appear to be AWOL; perhaps they’re trying to suffocate themselves by forcing condoms over their heads in a desperate act of penance.  Yesterday, while hanging up my laundry, my nerves still freshly raw from having been chewed out by my wife Jina, who was blessedly absent at the time, preparing her high school English students for one of their innumerable sadistic exams, this little monster was in top form, bequeathing his formidable arsenal of sorrows to the world.  Maybe he’s the reincarnation of someone slain in the My Lai massacre, or at Wounded Knee, and is therefore a bottomless repository of unending grief.  Couldn’t tell you.

Having never actually laid eyes on the perpetrator of noise pollution before, I finally saw him standing on the cluttered stairway beside the apartment building where he lives and converts his supercilious suffering into the stuff of nightmares for everyone in the vicinity.  He stood there like an Asian Charlie Brown, holding a cellphone, in profile.  At first I wasn’t even sure he was the source of all that voluminous caterwauling.  He was momentarily pensive, enjoying and, yes–sharing–a moment of silence.

Then, after pausing to refresh his budding lungs, he started carrying on again.

“Shikeuro!”  I shouted.  (That’s Korean for “noisy.”)  I wanted to add the rhetorical question, “Cheugeullae?”–which means, “Do you want to die?”–but I thought that might be going too far.  I’m not sure whether or not it would be perceived as an idle death threat by innocent bystanders, and didn’t want to make the ungentlemanly mistake of leaping from on high to dispatch the cherubic menace and vile village villain.

He looked up from his perch and saw me glaring at him from my window, and I told him in English to shut up.  Then I closed the window and was amazed that, after his prima donna’s rise in volume for having been the unwitting recipient of constructive criticism, he actually piped down for a change.  Maybe one of his parents finally murdered him or he was snuffed out in an uncharacteristically accurate drone strike.

Not that I have any right to be so optimistic.  When my wife got home after midnight and reprimanded me for not helping her out with her kindergarten class that morning, I appeared contrite to help things blow over quickly so I could go back to sleep.  She said, since I told her I have a proofreading job to do today, on the day of the Lord, I should think harder about the debt I know in God by beginning to believe in him.

I almost said, “I’ll believe in him if he kills me; then I’ll finally be free.”

But I thought better of it, not having the energy for yet another fight, or even any clean T-shirts handy to wave around as a make-shift white flag.  If Jesus did in fact die for my sins, I wish he’d have a huddle with his followers, give them a pep talk, and tell them to lighten the fuck up for a change.

If you have a dog, may he (or she) bless you.  (I may not believe in God, but I do believe in dogs.  At least we can all agree that they’re real.)

Treading Boiling Water

In a world of snake-oil salesmen and credulous dupes, skepticism may well be a virtue.  For example, I haven’t posted anything on this blog for a week, and I was having some problems with my computer earlier (a little before the last post, I think), and there’s a new, unfamiliar option under the area in which you write that’s in bright red.  It reads “Cancel Post.”  What’s up with that shit?  It’s really distracting, difficult to ignore.  I’ve lost material here before through no fault of my own.  What am I, running a fucking charity here?  I mean, for Christ’s sake!  I’d pay for the service–believe me–I value it highly, only I’m married to Ebenezer Scrooge in drag, and she keeps every Korean won I earn.

Speaking of said villain who claims to disdain Satanists even though she more than likely is one herself, last night she told me that one of our middle school students, an enthusiastic girl who’s made steady progress in her English-speaking and vocabulary-learning skills over the past year, says she sees demons, and my wife believes her!  I’m married to a fucking lunatic!

If I weren’t a total sap, I would have been out of the marriage long ago.  No matter how loudly I disdain her for embracing a world of frauds, much as she pooh-poohs the real world and is afraid that the Illuminati or Freemasons are taking it over before her paranoid eyes, she still insists I believe that her long-haired, bearded, pacifist, socialist hero who’s been re-invented as a hybrid of Chuck Norris and Pat Robertson, didn’t die nearly two thousand years ago.

I can’t write much this morning, as I’ve got to go see a doctor about an unrelenting pain in my chest.  My blood pressure–not the Lord–has risen in the course of this miserable and abysmal marriage, but as Sting would say in the Police song “Invisible Sun,” “I don’t even want to die just yet.”  Adds Billy Joel:  “Don’t ask me why.”

Of course, my viciously solicitous wife is probably praying for me to have a heart attack, and I’m so deeply stuck in this quagmire, like a four-eyed saber-toothed tiger in a tar pit, that I half hope she succeeds.

On that note, cheerio, folks!  I hope you’re doing comparatively well and I’d love to hear from you.  Let me know if you have any suggestions for an epitaph.  It can be lonely out here in cyberspace, especially when you’re not sure how to be sane anymore.

When Poseidon Met Christ

When Poseidon Met Christ

(based on a true story)

 

Q)  What did Poseidon say when he saw Jesus walking on the water?

A)  “Get the hell off my property or I’m calling the police!”

Q)  What did Jesus reply?

A)  “I forgive you for upholding the law.”

Q)  And what did Poseidon say to that?

A)  “Oh, it’s only you, Jesus.  Carry on.  Nice trick, by the way.  I’ll bet you can’t turn into a swan though.”

Q)  And what was the Christ’s retort?

A)  “You’re a has-been, Poseidon.  This is my sea now.”

Poseidon

If thou speakst in such a way further, thy ass is grass.

Jesus 

Why are you talking like that?

Poseidon

I’m just trying to employ a tongue thou shalt fathom.

Jesus

Lay off the Bible, dude.  Do it for my sake.  I don’t talk like that.  And I’m not a lame-ass white boy like you.

Poseidon

Thou soundst white.  Alas, it’s all Greek to me.

Jesus

What do you mean?  You are Greek.

Poseidon

Thou speakst the truth.  Hence, I diggeth all thy utterances fully.

Jesus

Well, I wish you’d talk like a regular adult.  The way you rap is frickin’ weird.

Poseidon

Thine own vernacular likewise smackst of oddity.  Mine trusty steed doth snort contemptuously at thy effrontery.

Jesus

Hey man, what are you doing with that shotgun?

Poseidon

Defending my sacred domain from trespassers and sparing thee the ignominy of thy cruel father’s plans to crucify thee.

Jesus

Thou art hip.  I dig thy gist.  Fire at will.

Poseidon

Now you’re speaking my language.  (Shoots him.)

(Jesus is blown to bits and eaten by a smorgasbord of tuna, swordfish,, and sharks.  Moments later, he reassembles himself and appears where he stood before.)

Jesus

See you in has-been heaven, Posy.

Poseidon

Wouldn’t that make thee a has-been too?

Jesus

Ask Fred Nietzsche.  I’ve got to go make and drink a shitload of wine with your brother Dionysus and his wild and crazy babes.

Poseidon

Gotcha, bro.

Jesus

Now you’re starting to sound like me.  Nice work.  By the way, while I was taking a dip a few minutes ago I spotted an extra-large mermaid making love to a white sperm whale.

Poseidon

Oh, that’s just Tina.  She and Moby-Dick have got a thing going on.

Jesus

Captain Ahab must be jealous.  She’s quite a looker.

Poseidon

Thou knowest thy shit.  That’s why the poor Quaker can’t get it up anymore.

Jesus

That must make him feel more like a Shaker.

Poseidon

If he does ought to molest that poor whale further, the briny deep shalt be his grave.

Jesus

Lighten up, dude.  He’s just suffering from a lethal back-up of testosterone lodged in his brain.

Poseidon

Perhaps I can persuade one of my Polynesian princess friends to enlighten him with her myriad feminine charms.

Jesus

Hey, could you introduce me to one too?  Since you blew me away with that shotgun I could use a massage.

Poseidon

Only if thou canst vow to reciprocate.  These delicious delirium-inducing tropical denizens are hardly shrinking violets, amigo.

Jesus

Of course, my bearded aquatic colleague.  As you may know, I’m a wicked sensitive individual and staunch defender of women’s rights.

Poseidon

I’m told the Holy Ghost, the female member of the divine love triangle, or Holy Trinity, as you call it, is woman enough to keep both you and Yahweh on your toes.

Jesus

And my mother Mary is no one to shake a remote control device at either.  Your brother Zeus had better not try any of that Leda and the Swan stuff on her if he doesn’t want his balls to wind up in his throat.

Poseidon

Doth swans have balls?

Jesus

Ever since Pop raped her, she’ll brook no argument from overly possessive male deities, not to mention mortal Viagra-dependent white-haired Frenchmen with black eyebrows.

Poseidon

Thanks for the warning.  Tell her my sisters wouldst groove most heavily to meet her.

Jesus

Thy wish is my command, escudero.  And now, my saline solution-sailing friend, I must be going.

Poseidon

Try not to kick up too much of a wake so thou disturbst not the loons.

Jesus

Wouldn’t want to make waves on “that dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.”

Poseidon

Whatever you say, Bill Yeats.

Jesus

Peace be with you, Lord of the Sea.

Poseidon

Enjoy eternal salvation yourself, Christian King of the Jews.

(Jesus considers saying “God be with you,” but at the last moment decides against the self-referential pun.)

Jesus

Incidentally, I’m a big fan of the Greek myths.

Poseidon

Have you read Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ?  It’s about you!

Jesus

But of course.  That was my first consulting job.

(They finally part when Poseidon spies Moses carving a lane through the waters.  Jesus pulls a pair of wings out of his back, waving to someone off-stage.)

Jesus

Thanks for hooking me up, Icarus!  I’ll get them back to you next Thursday!

Icarus

Just don’t do what I did and fly too close to the sun!

Jesus

What are you talking about?  I am the son!

Icarus

(rolling his eyes)  Oh, brother.

 

 

Hats Off to Hitch

Despite an endless reading load I can never seem to keep up with, yesterday I did myself a favor and bought Christopher Hitchens’ Mortality, the last thing he wrote before succumbing to esophageal cancer just shy of a year ago.  The man remained lucid and articulate enough to capture the tedium and agony of cancer treatments, including chemo and radiation therapy.

He also delves into the lonely confrontation with death without illusions, in a quiet, understated way that would almost sound detached for the formality of its erudite British tone, were it not thinly concealing the heartbreak of a man so clearly in love with life.  And yet Hitchens, like fellow late cancer victim and prodigious wit David Rakoff, has the wise humility to return the question “Why me?” with another:  “Why not me?”

The man takes responsibility for his irresponsible habits, such as drinking vast amounts of alcohol at meals and smoking little forests of cigarettes, but is consistent enough in his sybaritic values not to renounce these hobbies, so clearly and thoroughly did he enjoy them, and did they enhance his vision.

He also takes time to target his favorite adversary, religion, noting the futility of prayer, while likewise expressing gratitude to all those who prayed for his recovery, including friends of competing faiths who cajoled God to make him one of their team.  True to his word, Hitchens declined what he saw as the false consolations of faith in favor of continued presence and engagement with those he loved, along with the sacred act of writing itself.

He has the decency to describe Francis X. Collins as “one of the greatest Americans” in spite of his contempt for Collins’ beliefs, due to his respect for the man’s work on the Human Genome Project.  He also mentions Collins’ admirable embrace of Darwinian evolution as a fact, telling fundamentalists that there’s no sense in debating about it.  Collins tried to help Hitchens survive with the latest, still experimental treatments, and the patient’s willingness to undergo whatever was available testifies to his optimism and courage.

Most poignantly, Hitchens describes the wrenching loss of his voice at one point.  As an established raconteur who could regale house guests with all manner of jests and bon mots over epic feasts lovingly prepared by his wife, fellow author and film-maker Carol Blue, being prematurely silenced was a snub that burned almost as much as the threat of losing the use of his arms and hands to write, his confessed “raison d’etre.”

Hitchens points out the absurdity of a tumor’s determination to murder its victim despite its own insentience, along with the fact that the dogged and relentless parasite can’t outlive its host.

This suggests that for all its beauty and majesty, there is a savagery, a ruthlessness built into nature that makes it that much harder to be a devout pagan.  I wouldn’t go so far as to call it evil, but it’s not exactly good either.  It is what it is, and as extensions of nature ourselves we can’t seem to come up with anything better.  Nature may include barnacles, poison ivy, deer ticks, and–yes–cancer cells, but it also contains an intricacy, unrepeatable originality, and infinitely fecund variety of manifestations, if I may wax incorrigibly pretentious, that nudges even the most sluggardly couch- or mouse-potato for worship, applause, or at least an infinitesimal thumb’s up as a momentary interruption from digitally patrolling the remote control device.

Finally, the title of the book, Mortality, appearing as it does in stark white letters on a somber black cover with the author’s name underneath in grave-like gray, along with his melancholy photo on the back, might mislead someone browsing in a bookstore into thinking the slim volume is just a downer to pass by in favor of something by Joel Ostein or whatever the guy’s name is.

And yet, for all the suffering poor Christopher Hitchens had to go through in the last year and a half of his life, and for the feeling that we survivors were cheated and robbed of further work from a writer in his prime (let alone the gulf his absence must leave for his wife and three children, the youngest of whom is only two years old), it pays to remember that every time you read the work of a great, departed writer, you bring that person back to life.

The carefully chosen words of the man, who had a mind that could withstand heroic degrees of self-destruction, even if his body couldn’t, live on in the minds of his readers.  The act of reading as a prelude to writing is akin to a kind of literary communion.  By picking up a book by an author who’s no longer living, reading it, and carrying on the tradition in your own unique voice, you help create a kind of immortality, however imperfect, however temporary.  

And so, Christopher, there is a heaven after all, and you’re still in it in some sense, and it’s right here.  How does it feel to be reincarnated? 

Terrifying Bullshit

A few blog posts ago, I promised to convey the reason why I had to embark on an involuntary Internet fast for two weeks.  Here it is.  At first my wife Jina told me the reason she’d deprived us of access to the ever-flowing gems that wind through the river of the global electronic community was to save money.  I balked at first, snorted, huffed, and puffed with protuberant eyeballs, like a smoker who’d just wheezed up ten flights of stairs.

(Actually, at first I did and said nothing, accustomed as I am to a position of solemn defeat in the marriage.  The righteous indignation didn’t kick in until ten days into the fast, when she told me she wasn’t planning to restore our wireless access.)

It turned out her self-imposed exile from the land of sedentary surfers had nothing to do with saving money, but was the result of her wellspring of paranoia about forces beyond her influence and control–namely, those taking place in her own brain.  I’d like to say that Jina has a vivid imagination, but that would be an inaccurate statement, since the bugaboos that possess her are not of her own devising.  

She’s afraid, you see, that the Freemasons are taking over the world (which is why she doesn’t want me buying coffee from a certain global chain, despite my biological need for caffeine).  Not only that, but she’s obsessed–and that’s not too strong a word–with something called the Verichip, which she insists that the U. S. government intends to compel every U. S. citizen to have inserted subcutaneously in his or her wrist as a way to harness us all like remote-controlled hot rods.

Now, don’t ask me what surfing the Internet has to do with human-implanted computer chips that would give secretive government agencies God-like power over the populace, turning all of us Yankees into virtual marionettes.  She backed up her assertion that we shouldn’t restore our Internet privileges by saying that Julian Assange said the govt. is spying on everyone in cyberspace.

Since I didn’t want to have the permanent impression of the edge of a frying pan in the side of my face, I didn’t point out that her mind is already controlled by outside forces, namely the goddamned church she gives so much time, money, and mental and spiritual energy to, a church that is made of mortal men and women, regardless of how much some of these sacred clowns may claim to know about the whims of Sir God Almighty, Esq.  

On the other hand, as Woody Allen said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.”

You’ve probably read about the N. S. A.’s vast spy complex in Utah, Stellar Wind, which is still under construction but will be ready for action in September 2013.  Slouch that I am, I’ve yet to read former CIA man James Bamford’s piece on it from March of this year on Wired Magazine’s website, but I took a glance at it yesterday, and it’s a doozy.  I did watch an interview Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! gave to several people who’d been heckled by the feds for exercising their First Amendment rights, one of whom is a friend and colleague of the beleaguered Mr. Assange.  That was at around the same time the article came out.

Anyway, in case you haven’t heard, Stellar Wind is in a building that’s one mile square.  It will have the capacity to observe and store every American’s email exchanges, cell phone conversations, credit card data, book store purchases, etc.  

Whereas the Verichip is, according to my wife, a Trojan Horse for Satan, and a harbinger of that passage in the Book of Revelations that alludes to the mark of the beast (666, for all you Omen fans, also the prefix of my former boss’s telephone number), at least the choice to have one inserted into your person is–for the time being (dramatic cello interlude, please)–voluntary.  I doubt, however, a bunch of concerned U. S. citizens got on the horn to the N. S. A. and said, “You know, boys, I’m worried that we all have too much privacy.  Do you think you could take what little we have left away from us?”

Arrested without a trial, spied on by drones the size of mosquitoes, followed by snoopy cameras wherever we go, eavesdropped on whenever we go on line–

Golly gee whizzaroonie, doncha feel safer already?  What kind of a world do these people want us to live in anyway?  A big shuddering ball of fear?  Doesn’t sound like much fun to me.  Throw away your cameras and guns and have a party, folks.  Dr. Dionysus’ orders.  Jesus said he’d bring some wine.