Early Onset of Night

Here’s a picture of me washing my son’s ass in the 90s. He’s 19 now. In those days, I was all about the moustache. Oh, and I had hair. I was going bald even then and knew it, being a fairly smart guy. Finally, I cut it all off and shaved it bald. My son was a toddler when I did it and he stood around my ankles picking up my hair and going “Uh-oh, Daddy! Uh-oh!” He was handing me my discarded locks from the bathroom floor. I will always remember that. I will always remember everything. Fatherhood gave a point to my life. There IS a reason I’m here. There’s a reason HE’S here,too….and I’m it.

Dude.

(Source: early-onset-of-night)

For Valentine’s Day, I give you parasitic Schistosoma mansoni worms, which mate for life. Much more monogamous than the humans they invade, the female Schitosoma mansoni actually resides within the male worm, in a groove on the side of his body.

You may have seen this groove featured on MTV Cribs, which is a really stupid show on a really stupid network.

The worms’ love for one another is not all rainbows and unicorns, however. Their eggs actually cause disease in humans, most commonly schistosomiasis. Symptoms of the disease include fever, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and genital sores. It’s easily treatable, but still really gross.

Remember, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

(Source: early-onset-of-night)

My grandparents, Jack and Bonnie, back in the 1940s. This kiss resulted in five children, ten grandchildren, and (so far) ten great-grandchildren. Twenty-five people owe their lives to this kiss.

Ain’t love grand?

Not only is homosexuality NOT sinful, believing it is sinful is sinful. Christ said the two greatest commandments are to love God with your whole heart and your soul and your whole mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t you love yourself enough to let yourself marry the person you yourself love?

I want to live my life in such a way that the Westboro Baptist Church pickets my funeral!

Homosexuality is Not Sinful, Even According to The Bible

This one goes out to all you fundamentalist Christians out there. Selah! I know you are all incessant readers and line up like dominoes to refute me brilliantly down at the bottom of everything I write (where no eye fears to tread but your own).

Now, I may be too narrow addressing this to just the fundamentalists out there. Many traditional Christians also fit the bill. Anyone, really, who believes that homosexuality is a sin or wrong or that, somehow, God, infinite and eternal creator and sustainer of the very Universe, is ‘against’  a tiny human behavior that harms no one. So, in other words, uneducated and ridiculous people everywhere.

Officially, the majority of Christian churches say that homosexual behavior is a sin, thus proving that the theologians behind those churches don’t understand their own Bible. This includes Catholicism, the largest and richest Christian brand, with about 50% of the world’s Christians spiritually employed in it.

Believe it or not, though, the Catholic Church has what could almost be considered a liberal outlook on homosexuality. According to the Catholic Catechism, which I have right here next to me, all giant and green, being a homosexual is not a sin….unless you act on it. So as long as you’re not a normal person, expressing love, connection, and attraction to another person, you won’t go to hell. To put it more honestly: the Pope says to keep it in your pants.

Generally, Leviticus 18:22 in the Old Testament is cited as proof that homosexuality is wrong: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

Leviticus also says that we are not supposed to let different kinds of cows graze together in the same field, which is a clear but subtle acceptance of bovine homosexuality. It also says that anyone who cheats on their spouse must be put to death. (I wonder how Dr. Laura feels about that?).

There are a whole bunch of goofball laws written down in the Old Testament that everyone ignores. Why is being bigoted toward homosexuals the one people latch onto?

The various Christian brands go through the Old Testament, picking and choosing the parts they consider cool. No one accepts the whole thing. No one. I mean, when was the last time a cheating spouse was actually put to death in keeping with the commandments of the Bible?

Using the Old Testament to determine if something is a sin is simply a matter of human and not godly opinion. It’s meaningless and certainly not ‘the word of God’. His teachings aren’t some basket of fruit for you to pick over. You either have to accept the old law in its entirety and start killing lots and lots of people or reject it in its entirety. Hand-picking the stuff you like is bogus, especially when you only pick the stuff that seems to legitimize your meanness to other people.

So the Old Testament is out.

It doesn’t matter anyway because Christ came and fulfilled it. He completed the Old Testament, so it’s done. He even said so in Matthew: “Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfill.” True, he also said about the old law: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

So what, exactly, is he saying? That it’s cool to ignore the old law because he fulfilled it, or that we are required to keep even the “least” (meaning lesser) commandments in it?

Well, if he fulfilled it, then the point is mute. If it’s the other one, though, then we all suck because even the most devout Christians only keep the parts of the Old Testament that suit them.

Before we all start playing REM’s Losing My Religion, consider this: Denying someone the right to marry is not Christian, and certainly not American.

Mitt Romney, whose true beliefs on any matter depend entirely on whatever group of people he’s trying to sell himself to, has this to say about gay marriage: “I believe that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.”

It’s a mean guy wearing a nice guy’s mask position: It’s ok if you’re gay. It’s totally YOUR thing. Just don’t marry the person you love and we’re cool. The problem with this is that according to virtually all brands of Christianity, sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful. Homosexuality is still ‘wrong’, it still has incorrect and selfish theology dogging it and has been rendered into common fornication.

The people who are opposed to gay marriage, and by extension, gayness itself have no excuse. They are bigots and bigots alone. They can’t use their special book to justify their hate, even according to the special book itself. They have no one to thank but themselves. They take the Lord’s name in vain and feel righteous about it it.

Yes, they take the Lord’s name in vain. Most people believe incorrectly that this commandment is about cussing, but it’s not. It’s about using God for yourself, for your own vain (personal) ends. They hold the Bible in the air and use it like a bitch to bolster their own prejudices and bigotry and hate and that is vanity, all is vanity.

The teachings of Christ are plain enough: love and forgiveness, tolerance and healing, acceptance and rebellion. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing more needed. Add what you will to it, it still won’t be from the Christ. It will come from your own (black?) heart.

Jesus Christ is the origin of the word ‘Christian’. Perhaps we should pray about that a bit more.

Today’s Christians tend to be followers, accepting of the notion that religion is just a box built by someone else into which they must stuff their spirit. They are naive and willingly line up like lemmings where ever told.  They have a casual ignorance that tells them the Beast will come in the obvious guise of science or secularism or liberality. They cannot conceive of the Father of Lies actually lying to them.

Sinclair Lewis said that when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross. When the Beast comes to the world, you can bet your sweet ass he will be thumping the Bible and preaching a hate disguised as love.

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COUPLES WHO COHABITATE ARE HAPPIER THAN MARRIEDS

We’ve heard that married people are happier, but according to a new study, that might be a bunch of hooey.

In terms of health, self-esteem, and psychological well-being, marriage offers little benefit over simply living together without wedding rings, the study found.

“Being in a romantic relationship, irrespective of the legal form, does provide some benefits,” says study researcher Joseph Lowry, an associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology. “We just can’t say what exactly.”

The findings also suggest that cohabitation was the better option over marriage. Study participants agree.

“Simply living together offers all the positives without any of the negatives,” says Justin Elders, 29, who has cohabitated with his girlfriend Leslie for the past two years. “I get regular sex, someone to do the dishes, and never have to meet her parents.”

Kari Inger, 25, echoes a similar sentiment. “I’ve been living with Tom for almost a year, but I know that anytime I get bored with him or find someone richer, I’m gone in a matter of hours without a messy divorce.”

“It’s great being in a committed relationship,” says Laina Wilkes, 31, who has lived with her boyfriend Derek for over three years. “But it’s especially great because that commitment is on my terms. As soon as Derek gets fat from drinking all his stupid ‘craft’ beer and laying on his ass watching sports, I can pack my bags and go. I’m free to find someone better, someone who maybe does a fucking sit-up once in awhile.”

Many previous studies looking at the benefits of marriage have focused on comparing married couples with single people, which, according to Lowry, is invalid due to the fact that single people are as miserable as people in relationships. “They’re just more honest about it. Humans are hardwired to think that whatever their life is like at the moment sucks hairy hog balls. It’s the grass is always greener syndrome. Single people want to be married, married people want to be single.”

Eric Rodriguez, 40, who will be celebrating his fifteenth wedding anniversary this June, agrees. “It’s gotten to the point where I fantasize about having my own apartment. The wife’ll come home and explode at me because of all the jizz on the classifieds, screaming ‘How am I gonna find the yard sales now?! How am I gonna find the yard sales now?!’ It’s a total nightmare. Please, for the love of God, shoot me in the face.”

In general, people who are married claim to be happier than when they were single or just living together, but that’s only because their spouses are in the room “If you take them aside,” said Lowry, “their eyes fill with tears and they beg for rescue.”

The researchers emphasized that that they are not saying that marriage is irrelevant. “That would be controversial and likely to anger all the people who have been raised on Disney and romantic comedies. But, yeah, marriage is irrelevant.”

The study is published in this months’s issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

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This is Eric. He’s dead. —part 2 (read part 1)

You’re probably wondering how I met a guy like Eric. I mean, there aren’t too many guys like him in the whole universe, especially ones still roaming free, completely unincarcerated. Obviously since you’re reading this, I must feel compelled to write about him. Or vice versa. Millions of people have been written about, most of them fake, a few real, but in my opinion nary a word should have been said about the vast majority of them. Eric is an exception, though. Big time.

Eric is just one of those friends you’ve always had, ever since you can remember. I met him in 5th or 6th grade, way back in the mists of time, long, long ago. Back then he was all about killing things, neighborhood cats especially, but pretty much whatever he could get his hands on. I’d follow along, disgusted and fascinated, unable to look away. In high school we drifted apart. He became a loner and in the manner of loners, always by himself. We’d talk at school sometimes, but never really hung out anymore.

After high school, he went off to college and I became an alcoholic. I busied myself with working dead-end jobs, getting DUIs, and kicking around the same shit town I’d always kicked around in. I didn’t see Eric for years and years, had no idea what he majored in, didn’t know if he got one of those careers like the people on tv have, nothing. For all I knew he was a fucking congressman or something.

Then one day he just showed back up. I was living in a camper at the time and there came a knock on the tinfoil door. It’s been downhill ever since.

We became roommates for a while, but that didn’t last long. Eric needed his own house, you see. He needed privacy, a place with, as he said, “a basement with thick cinder block walls and a good locking door.” A place where he could practice death in peace.

That was five years ago and I’m still a drunk and Eric is still a weirdo. Also, I suspect, a registered sex offender.

Anyhoo, this marriage is going to take place next month, on the full moon, under what he hopes are cloudless skies, in Rose Hill Cemetery, and, no, I’m not looking forward to it. Sure, I’m happy for him and his future missus. The universe is a cold dark place, full of meaninglessness and absurdity. If you can a find a person to love, hang onto them like grim death. But I don’t even know how to marry anyone. Sure, I’ve seen it done on tv. I know you start with DEARLY BELOVED and end with YOU MAY NOW KISS THE BRIDE, but what goes on in the middle? Remember, this is Eric we’re talking about. He’s about as far from conventional as you can get and still be in the same dimension.

And where the hell do you find a somber robe?

This is Eric. He’s dead.

Ok, not really, but he looks dead, doesn’t he? Eric has always been fascinated with death. He thinks about it constantly, talks about it to anyone who’ll listen. When he has a spare moment, like in this picture, he pretends he’s dead, tries to not breathe, ignores the beating of his own heart. He imagines the cells that make up his body popping and spewing their guts forth in putrefaction.

Eric is a very fucked up dude. Seriously. He’s deeply weird, but somehow has managed to get a girl to agree to marry him. In a graveyard. By me.

Oh, me? Yeah.

One time, about 10 years ago, I sent five bucks to the American Fellowship Church and they ordained me as a minister. I did it for a gag, but now Eric wants me to marry him and his woman under a full moon in a graveyard.

I gotta get, like, a somber robe or something.

Another thing about Eric you probably don’t know: he collects skulls. Human skulls. He’s got eleven of them at this point, only one of which he stole from a grave. These skulls will be present at the wedding. They will be the witnesses, in addition to the two live people required legally.

Eric and his bride will be, according to Eric, “Shrooming hardcore, dude,” so I plan to be sober as a judge and well armed. I gotta get, like, a handgun or something. All I have are these shotguns—not exactly subtle.

I can see it now: “Here comes Preacher Mike in his somber robe with his trusty Mossberg over his shoulder.” It just won’t do. We will have a hard enough time coming up with two legal witnesses as it is: “Shrooms? A graveyard? Human skulls? A shotgun-wielding preacher? Um, yeah, I think I’m busy that night.”

Sorry, Eric.

I haven’t met the wife-to-be, but she must be some special lady. He says she’s really smart and “came around to my way of thinking pretty quick.” That’s why, according to Eric, she didn’t have to stay down in the basement “as long as the others.”

It’s great when two people find each other in love, don’t you think? Be right back—playing some Barry White.