AVOIDING THE SQUIRRELS

“Court life with love, and tame it with discipline; be an amateur at heart, and a professional in mind.” - Eolake Stobblehouse

Well boys and girls, here we are again.  Monday morning and the world is going to hell in a hand-basket.  There are many important issues to be discussed, but the good preacher just isn’t in the damned mood.  So let’s talk about vegetarians instead.  Not that vegetarians aren’t serious.  Lord no.  You’ll never find a more serious group.  I just meant that I’m not too serious on the subject.

I better start with a disclaimer.  I was a vegetarian for about 18 months in the late 80’s.  I swear I was starving the entire fucking time.  Also some of the most important people in my life are vegetarians.  I support their choice, whether spiritual or political, even if I don’t happen to agree with it.  Intelligent people can disagree without rancor and I hope they take this sermon in the way it is intended.

One of the joys of being a paranoid nut case is that you don’t necessarily need facts to explain the world around you.  One’s mind is free to consider all sorts of entertaining possibilities without being constrained by a reality based paradigm.  (And my world is probably more interesting than yours.)  It was with this skill set that I started to think about vegetarians.  You see, diet is pretty simple to me.  Our ancestors survived because they could and did eat anything.  We are predators.  We live at the top of the food chain and I see no need to apologize for it.  I don’t think God much cares one way or the other since pretty much everybody seems to everybody else in nature.  I also don’t feel the need to follow 2000 year old superstitions about certain foods.  So I eat the things that taste good and provide efficient fuel.  End of story.

Given these clear and simple facts I’ve tried to explain why so many bright people don’t want a tasty steak.  And a few years ago I finally figured out the ONLY POSSIBLE EXPLANATION.  Cow hypnosis.  Yep.  You heard it here first.  Cows are hypnotizing people into not eating meat.  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  Once you know the facts it becomes so crystal clear.  Think about it:

* Cows have those deep brown eyes, perfect for hypnosis.

* Cultures that don’t eat beef don’t eat any meat.  Cultures that don’t eat pork still eat beef.  Pigs clearly can’t hypnotize.

* Some vegetarians still eat fish, or even chicken.  But the FIRST thing they always give up is “red meat”.

* All creatures in nature have some form of defense against being eaten.  Cows have nothing.  They’re dumb, slow, big, without weapons.  Nature wouldn’t do this to anyone, so it gave them the power to hypnotize.

* Vegetarians seem driven to convert the world.  Meat eaters, not so much.  Vegetarians have been hypnotized to do the cow’s work for them.

* Vegetarians are frequently people who’s minds are open to change and personal growth.  Therefor they might be more likely to fall prey to hypnotic suggestion.

* I could go on, but no amount of evidence will be enough for some people.

So there you have it.  Vegetarianism explained.  Next time you see a group of cows staring at you be sure you steel your mind and your resolve.  Otherwise you’ll be damning yourself to a lifetime of salads and tofu.  You’ve been warned.  Vaya con Dios.  Viva la Revolucion.

Loyal members of the flock, we are gathered here in gratitude for our annual Thanksgiving celebration.  We all know the value of gratitude.  We all know that it brings joy, service, and wisdom.  And we all know that it’s opposite, entitlement, is one of the Man’s great weapons to make you miserable and fuck up the world.  So go ahead, enjoy your turkey, stuff yourself with pie, and revel in all that is good.  Since we already know all this, let’s move on shall we?

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?  4:00 am lines outside Walmart, a store that’s open all the fucking time?  Masses fighting to get into Kmart or Macy’s in the middle of the night?  SHEEP SHEEP FUCKING SHEEP.  Okay, I need to calm down.  Deep breathing.  There we go.  Ohhhmmmmmm.  Better now.  Let’s try to discuss this calmly.

Christmas is a giant retail scam to keep you in debt, working for the man, and away from any kind of spiritual awakening.  There is absolutely no reason on earth to buy everyone a gift once a year.  If you see something that you’d like to give a friend or family member,buy it and give it to them.  Right than.  Forced gift giving is evil.  I’ve read the bible and no where in it does Jesus say “If you love me you better buy a gameboy for your nephew”.  The wacky conservatards on the right even have this part right.  Christmas is a celebration of light, a spiritual holy day tied to the solstice, a chance for us to be reborn with the new year.  Not some great sacrifice to the god’s of retail.  And I’m not just ranting here.  I have kids and we don’t do christmas gifts.  Really.  And they’ve survived just fine.

If you’re on line before dawn in order to save a couple of bucks and buy a bunch of gifts you need to seriously examine your life.  Where are your priorities?  With Christ?  Nope.  With Joy and light and rebirth?  Hardly.  SHEEP, SHEEP, FUCKING SHEEP, SLAUGHTER THEM ALL.  No, no, calm down.  More breathing.  Go to my happy place.  Ahhhhhhhh. peace and bliss.  Now where were we?

Love is not for sale.  Your children will not love you more if you buy them some piece of crap video game.  There are 10,000 better ways to show friends that you care.  If you need to give your wife a diamond in order for her to show you physical affection then you married a whore.  Commercials are stealing your humanity.  Christmas is killing your spirit.  Each time you christmas shop a small part of your soul dies.  Stop before it’s too late.  Happy holidays!  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.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen.  Do you watch the news?  Read the papers?  And do you ponder what you see?  Really give it some thought to try to understand the DEEPER MEANING of it all?  Well, perhaps we shouldn’t.  Perhaps our lives would be better served by ignoring the news and concentrating on our own spiritual development.  Unfortunately I don’t seem to be wired that way.  And the news is pissing me off.

Sometimes the random order of stories on a newscast accidentally points to a larger truth.  Weird juxtapositions leading to even weirder conclusions.  And so it goes.  Let me show you what I mean.  Last night the nice news lady on some channel told me all about the 32% increase in Public University fees next year.  After some hand wringing, she moved on to a story about the elite rich town of Tiburon in Marin County and their decision to record the license plate numbers of EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO ENTERS THEIR CITY.  This brilliant plan will allow their police to immediately investigate every outsider if a crime is committed.  (As a quick aside, how the fuck can this possibly be legal?  Land of the free my ass.)

Here we have two seemingly unrelated stories.  Do you see the deeper pattern?  Well, I do.  And that’s why I’m the Reverend.  (And possibly because I’m crazy and paranoid.)  So here goes.  Before WW2, the GI Bill, and the affluence of the middle class, higher education used to be the privilege of the fairly rich.  It was an easy way to control the masses through ignorance.  During the last fifty years the chance to better yourself and your situation through a college degree was offered to pretty much everybody.  Rich, poor, dark or light skinned, immigrant, conservative or liberal.  Apparently this has become too much threat to the ruling squirrel elite and they are shutting it down.

The easiest way to keep people from advancing is to keep them out of school.  It’s no accident that inner city social dynamics insure that black men almost never escape through education.  And now the elite are bold enough to make it too expensive for another entire class of people.  Oh sure, in theory education will still be open.  But as Anatole France said “”The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”  And we’re letting them do it.

The official response to the protests around the fee hike was equally fascinating.  It seems that more money will be made available for student loans in order to help poorer students stay in school.  (Gee, where did that money come from?)  It’s estimated that a student using this program can expect to have about $100,000.00 in debt after graduation.  And that’s just for undergraduates.  Hope you don’t want an advanced degree.  When they used this kind of program for immigration it was called indentured servitude.  Is there much difference between “We’ll give you a ride on the boat to a better job but you’ll have to work for years to pay it off” and “We’ll get you a degree to get you a better job but…”

So let me get this straight.  The poor kids just can’t go to college any more and the middle class kids can go but will essentially be indentured servants when they graduate.  Meanwhile the rich kids still get to go to Stanford while daddy pays.  Is it any surprise that neighborhoods like Tiburon are beginning to feel like castles?  As the rich get richer and everyone else bends over to get fucked, it’s pretty clear why they’d want to keep track of who dares drive through their domain.  See, I told you these stories were connected.  The nice news lady might even have suspected it.  But what are we going to do about it?  Viva la Revolucion.  Vaya con Dios.  Amen.