AVOIDING THE SQUIRRELS

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. -Kahlil Gibran

Jesus H. Fucking Christ.  Freakin Moses and Mohammed.  I have had enough of the whole lot.  By the way, if you’re deeply religious in a god kind of way, you might want to turn to another channel.  I’m going to piss you off.  But I just can’t stand it any longer.  So here goes…

I, the Right Reverend Che Gonzo, have had it up to here with the three big monotheistic religions.  That’s right, Christianity, Islam and Judaism.  If there is a hell, every god damned one of you pious mother fuckers probably belong there.  I mean really, let’s start with the basis of your beliefs.  A big, anthropomorphic guy that just happens to look EXACTLY LIKE YOU created the universe and runs everything in it.  What are the odds?  I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that kind of arrogance.  So God is the “father” and he loves you and wants to bring you home?  This is some weird kind of Freudian shit going on here.  And I’m just getting started.

The ten commandments?  Sure they seem to be a pretty good idea.  But I haven’t noticed very many of you bothering to live by them.  There is ABSOLUTELY NO CORRELATION between monotheism and kind, moral living.  Sure, some of you do, but so what.  Good people are good people and evil fuckers are evil fuckers.  And that’s that.  Religion has ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION to moral behavior.  And you can’t argue otherwise or I’ll spend the next ten years listing evil shit done in the name of your specific god.

I understand that there’s a real danger in judging religions by the actions of a few.  Except you fuckwads do it all the time.  Right now many “good Christians” have their panties in a bunch because some Moslems want to build a community center 3 blocks away from where some other Moslem’s blew up the WTC.  Okay, by this logic we better not let Christians build their church next to playgrounds because so many priests seem to like sucking on little boys penises.  My point is that people are either good or bad, extreme or moderate, kind or cruel, based entirely on who they are, not on which temple they pray in.  But all three of these giant religions claim the moral high ground and to represent the will of god.  Bullshit squared.

Here’s something you’ll never hear a religious leader say; “Gee, I find this issue to be totally morally repugnant, but my God doesn’t agree with me so I guess I’ll go along with it.”  Nope, won’t happen.  Because ‘God’ just happens to agree with THEIR ideals and morals EVERY FUCKING TIME.  Again, what are the odds?  It’s amazing, ‘God’ is all powerful, but his very serious followers can’t even agree on whether he wants us to eat pigs?  Really?

The whole Judeo-Christian-Moslem world view is deeply fucked down to it’s very core.  The whole construct is based on the idea of ‘we’re right, we’re chosen and special, and everyone else is wrong’.  How can this philosophy help but lead to conflict, dehumanization of others, and war?  Do you want to believe in a monotheistic god?  Good.  Be my guest.  Do you want to follow the Koran or the Talmud?  More power to you.  I’ll defend those choices and your right to make them down to my dying breath.  But as soon as you start to talk about being the ‘chosen people’ or ‘the one true path’ or sending out missionaries or evangelicals to convert others you’ve crossed the line.  You’re no longer religious.  You’re arrogant, stupid and evil.

All three of the major old testament religions are constantly guilty of this.  The jews actually refer to themselves as the ‘chosen people’.  Moslems think they can kill people for drawing a picture of their prophet.  Christians, well, never mind.  You know as well as I do about missionaries and shit.  And all three of you want to make sure that everybody else follows your repressive, anti-sex, anti-joy, anti-fun, and all to often anti-kind agenda.  Even if some of us think the idea of a talking snake and a big guy in the sky is really fucking silly.  Even if we happen to believe that the spiritual part of the universe rejoices in our orgasms, our joy, and our tolerance.  So fuck you and your talking snake.

And that brings me to the final part of my heartfelt, sacrilegious rant.  (And I hope you stayed with me, because I think it might be the most important.)  The creation story that you all agree on, the one with Adam and Eve and the Apple, actually guarantees that you’re going to get it wrong.  If you believe this story, you’re screwed, and here’s why:  According to the bible, Adam was happy in Eden until the serpent and Eve tempted him onto biting into the “fruit of knowledge”.  Upon doing so Adam became ashamed, covered his nakedness, and was kicked out of paradise.  In this delightful little story the apple represents self knowledge or self awareness.  That new found self awareness is what makes Adam start casting about for fig leaves.  Now according to church doctrines, we are all ‘born into sin’ because of the knowledge gained by Adam.  And by following the church, we can ge forgiven and returned to Paradise.  In other words, the church is telling you that self awareness, self knowledge, personal growth and actualization is a sin.  Smart is bad, stupid is good.  And if you’re good enough, contrite enough, and dumb enough, you’ll get to lose all sense of yourself.  I’m sorry, but that sounds like a shitty deal.  It flies in the face of what we KNOW to be true.  That by becoming freer, smarter, and more self aware we get to be better people, not the other way around.  Although that back-assward  world view does explain why people like Sarah Palin seem to find so many followers.

So, here are the new rules:  Everyone gets to believe whatever they want.  No one is persecuted because of their beliefs.  No one gets to apply their religious beliefs to ANYONE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES.  No one is allowed to recruit, evangelize, or have missions.  Belief systems that celebrate joy, inclusion,tolerance, and self awareness will be given preference over hate filled bullshit.  And I know these rules are right because I talked to God.  He looked just like me, and he thinks I’m always right.  What a wonderful coincidence!  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

Christmas is forced upon a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred.  G B Shaw

Merry Christmas my ass.  Already my email inbox is filling up with ‘Defend Christmas’ and ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ propaganda.  And Lord knows my television can’t seem to keep itself from imploring me to buy shit to celebrate the ‘holiday’.  So you know a rant is coming…

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here not to praise or damn Christmas, but to reclaim it with hard cold facts.  I’m going to provide you with a quick history, illuminate the ways the squirrels have fucked it up almost beyond redemption, and show you how to truly celebrate this ancient festival of passion and light.

THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH:  A few of thousand years ago people became aware of the cyclical nature of the seasons.  In the northern hemisphere this meant that the sun, that all important provider of heat and light and grower of food, spent less time in the sky throughout the fall.  In late December (on our calendar) that process reversed itself and the days got longer.  That meant spring was coming again.  Could there be a better reason for a wild party?  So most every culture celebrated with a combination of imploring the local gods, thanking the sun itself, a feeling of tremendous relief, and good old fashioned orgy of drunkenness, gluttony, and sex.  Makes sense.  Throughout the fall it’s getting colder and darker and we carefully  prepare for the worst.  When the sun turns back around we can relax and let out all that anxiety.  And fertility always means sex.  Good times.

In the 4th century the Roman Emperor converted to Christianity.  He also converted most of the Roman empire.  Not everyone was thrilled with this idea and they needed a little convincing.  As part of the negotiation he promised them that they could keep their largest pagan festival, The Saturnalia.  He declared the date of birth for Jesus to be December 25th, not because he was actually born on that date but because that was the birth date of the Mithras, a version of the Greek sun god Helios.  His birth was also witnessed by three shepherds under a north star.  In fact much of the modern story of Jesus’ birth may have been ‘borrowed’ from Mithraism.  The Mithra birthday party was the height of the 12 day Saturnalia celebration which included gift giving, drunken debauchery, feasting, and repeating ‘Ho Saturn’ three times upon meeting friends.  This last custom was eventually shortened to ‘ho ho ho’.  Sound familiar?

Over the next thousand years Christianity spread throughout Europe.  And since the tactic of pagan party adoption had worked so well, they kept at it.  The druids brought evergreens into the house around the solstice to represent the re-greening of the fields.  Germans and others hung apples and other ornaments on trees for the same reason.  The Norse burned a Yule Log.  Southern Italians forced minorities to run naked from house to house singing songs.  Many cultures had a father or prankster figure that brought gifts.  In short, Christmas became a cultural vacuum cleaner for everyone’s solstice celebrations.

HOW THE HELL DID WE GET HERE:  What we consider to be a ‘traditional christmas’ is actually pretty modern and, like every culture before us, it represents our current god, the Great and Almighty Commerce.  The current incarnation of Santa Claus found everywhere is based on the work of an illustrator named Haddon Sundblom who worked for Coca-cola.  The bright red and white were representative of their corporate colors.  Card companies and department stores have long used the holiday to bring out the shoppers.  Almost every modern christmas ritual was either designed by or promoted by a retail company.  Just like the Christians before them they’ve adopted the ancient festivals for their own purpose of conversion.  By celebrating modern Christmas you are celebrating the greatest god of our time Consumerism.

CHRISTMAS AND CHRISTIANITY:  One of the ironic things here is that Christians have been complaining about losing their stolen holiday for hundreds of years.  Early American Christian churches knew their history better than the current crop does and tried repeatedly to outlaw the holiday.  In fact the puritans succeeded in making christmas celebrations illegal it in New England for a while.  English newspapers were complaining about the over commercialism of the holiday as early as the mid 1700s.  The central conflict between Christian joy repression and solstice time revelry has always provided a tense background for the holiday.

The modern ‘War on Christmas’ crap isn’t new. the christians just keep changing sides.  Christmas was actually never a truly christian holiday and it isn’t a christian holiday now, it’s a commercial one. Of course you can choose to worship a dead jewish carpenter’s son during the celebration if you’d like.  But it’s RIDICULOUS and WRONG to insist that it defines the holiday.

CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES:  So what is a modern, relatively aware, non-christian to do?  What if you don’t want to worship at the altar of Macy’s?  What if you think Consumerism and Commercialism and Jesus are all false Gods?  Well, for the last few years I’ve tried to ignore Christmas and, much to my surprise, it didn’t go away.  So this year I’m going back to it’s roots.  An orgy of wine, gluttony, and sex.  Light and nature and fun.  Sure, a christmas tree.  Why not.  Candles, friends, and laughter.  No gifts, no Jesus, no forced somber moods.  The sun is returning and I’ll welcome it back with open arms.  And then I’m going to LA for two days followed by 5 more in Vegas.  A true old fashioned, traditional Bacchanalia.  Chasing around pretty girls while I’m fueled by rum, cigars and big thick steaks.  Ho ho ho indeed.  MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.  Amen

“We don’t see things as they are… We see things as we are.” - Anais Nin

Okay, brothers and sisters.  Just a quick thought today.  Since I am a Reverend and you are my faithful, if imaginary, flock you probably deserve to know my thoughts on religion.  So here goes.  Regardless of a belief in God, any and all religions are institutions of man and therefor flawed.  Every church represents the thoughts and order of the time of it’s birth.  That’s why the catholic church is set up along medieval lines.  Religious people rarely make that distinction in order to adopt the privileges of the divine for themselves.  They commit the sin of hubris, showing themselves for the self centered scum suckers they are.  True spirituality is manifest in only ONE way, joyful kindness to others.  Any other expression is selfish, ego driven, manipulative bullshit.

We are all divine.  The universe is manifest in all of us equally.  If the universe is infinite, we can all be the center.  Anyone who represents that they have the ear of God, or knows what God thinks, or volunteers to interpret God’s will should be immediately tarred and feathered.  Or at least treated with scorn.  Because he is implying that he is holier than you, and that is evil.  Kick him in the nuts.  Now let’s go out and blow some shit up.  Viva la revolucion.  Amen.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.” - Helen Keller

Sermonize sermonize sermonize.  Ahh, the life of the hard working Reverend.  Doing God’s work, having a few snacks, and trying to get the attention of a cruel and uncaring world.  Or maybe just trying to find something young, cute and snuggly to play hide the sausage with.  Anyway where was I?  Oh yes, doubt.  Well, let’s talk about that some more.  It’s a rich vein.

I’m afraid I’m going to have start this sermon with some very disturbing news.  I hate to be the one who has tell you this, but it’s true and you should know.  You’re going to die.  And pretty soon.  Couple score years at most.  And NOBODY knows what happens next.  Worm food or 71 virgins?  Paradise or burning damnation or just a whole lot of nothin?  And it gets worse.  A few short years after that no one will remember you or anything you did.  The average American school kid has no fucking clue who Ghandi and Hiltler were, so what kind of chance do you have?  I know.  It sucks.  But there it is.  Wow, what a downer.

Okay, so now that we got that over with let’s see what the fucking squirrels are up to.  Whoa, what a surprise!  They’re lying to you.  They think you don’t know this and that you’ll believe them when they tell you otherwise.  Oops, I guess I spoiled that scam.

Let’s look at the denial around this most profound fact of life.  That it ends.  The government, social mommies, advertisers, and religion use your fear of death and doubt about what comes next to manipulate you all the time.  Here’s how they do it.  Forewarned is forearmed.

The Government- The world is full of scary people who want to kill YOU right now.  Just give us all the power and we’ll protect you.  We can keep you from dying by blowing up Arabs!  Fear of death is the entire basis for our foreign policy and defense strategy.  But all the missiles in the world won’t make you live forever.  Sure, being blown up by a car bomber would suck, but that’s probably not how you’re going to die.  So making BIG decisions based on that fear is just silly. Of course we should protect our country from real invaders.  But there aren’t any at the moment and trying to protect your life that way denies that it’s going to end anyway,

Social Mommies- If you smoke you’ll die.  If you don’t wear a helmet or a seat belt you’ll die.  If you eat red meat you’ll die.  If you have sex you’ll die.  Every one of these fucking things implies that if you wrap yourself in bubble wrap and eat berries you’ll live forever.  You won’t.  Luck and genetics are the big players.  The rest of these things will just hedge your bets.  I’m sure some of these things are good ideas, but the message is a lie.  I guess “wear a helmet and statistically you might live a little bit longer” isn’t an effective tool.  Any time some squirrel is trying to scare me into behaving I immediately want to ride my motorcycle without a helmet while drinking and smoking a cigar.  But then I’m kind of an asshole.

Advertisers- More of the same.  Use our product or take our drug and you’ll live forever.  Wrong.  And feeble.  Don’t buy any product that tries to subtly use this message.

Religion- I’m not sure I even have to expound much here.  Too obvious.  Figure it out for yourself.  I’ve done a fair amount of work with the seriously ill.  It changes your perspective and serves as a good reminder.

I’d like to close today with a true story.  The names have been left the same because I don’t give a fuck.  I once had a great employee and friend by the name of Nick.  Nick was gay and like a lot of gay men in the late 80’s, he had AIDS.  Although he has since passed, he lived successfully with the disease for many years and had a wicked sense of humor.  For a long time I was the only one at work that knew of his condition, but he finally allowed it to become common knowledge.  At the company Xmas party that year the Vice President, a neanderthal named Mike, heard about Nick’s disease and called Nick over.  He proclaimed loudly how sorry he was that Nick was going to die.  You could have heard a pin drop.  Nick didn’t miss a beat.  He put his arm around Mike and, with a tear in his voice, said “I’m sorry to tell you Mike, but you should know.  You’re going to die to.  Maybe even before me.  I just know what I’ll probably die of, and you don’t”.  Mike started to get mad, and I loudly announced that if someone didn’t get that “dumbass” out of my sight I was going to beat the shit out of him.  Besides being a quick example of why I’m unemployable by normal people, it’s a great lesson.  Nick was right.  And the punch line is that Nick outlived Mike by a couple of years.  Mike had a fatal stroke in his early 50’s.  So don’t be a dumbass.  It’ll kill you.  Vaya con Dios.  Viva La Revolucion.  Amen.