I might have only recently turned thirty years old this year back in the month of May, but I was a crotchety old man who was confused by the world long before I grew up to become the lame, overweight, khaki-wearing accountant who stands before you today. Although I’ve never been shy about voicing my complaints here on this blog, there has been a handful of topics that never quite made the cut simply because I figured that I was the only person cranky enough to complain about them. People who bitch online usually do so because they’re seeking a way to validate their gripes. With that being the case, what good is it to bitch about something esoteric or obscure if you’re pretty certain that nobody else will care? Case in point: Pierre Bernard’s Recliner of Rage is an amusing comedy bit premised on the futility of complaining about topics that nobody understands.

Maybe it’s the old age talking, or maybe I’ve just gotten crankier lately, but I think it’s time to speak my piece about some of those things that only seem to bother me. Here’s a warning to you, gentle reader: Your level of recognition and interest will very likely waver while reading through these bullet points. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

• Douchebags with Microphones

  Am I the only one who hates those pushy announcers at live shows who are never satisfied with the first round of applause? You know what I’m talking about:
  

  “Hey folks, how is everybody tonight? Oh come on, you can do better than that. How is everybody tonight?”

  I fucking hate those guys. I swear, they must have been one of the main contributing factors that led to the creation of the sniper rifle. Okay, that’s harsh. But at the very least, they must have been a significant contributing factor leading to the creation of the “backhanded bitch-slap”, am I right?

  

  When an announcer asks the crowd to applaud once, I usually oblige him politely. The second time he asks, I fold my arms and sigh. If the announcer is especially obnoxious, and he asks the crowd to applaud a third time, I cup my hands and begin to boo. Go work out your middle-child insecurity issues somewhere off the stage, asshole.




• The Constipated Anime Grunt
  

  Why do anime characters always sound like they’re either constipated, asthmatic, or like they’re constantly getting blown? If you have ever watched anime while listening to the original Japanese language audio track, then you might have noticed that there is basically no such thing as a silent moment in anime. Actually, come to think of it, there’s no such thing as subtlety in anime, either. Everybody is always grunting in exasperation, stammering on some half-formed thought, or gasping like they’re choking on their bipolar medication. Every moment in any given anime has been compulsively occupied by some form of verbal garbage.

  For an example of what I’m talking about, I invite you to watch the first four minutes of Young GTO, Episode 4. Take note of all the grunts, groans, gasps, moans, giggling, and gurgling noises that the voice actors make. Is everyone okay with that?

  I grant you, anime characters often have a good reason for making those crazy noises, because somebody is always suffering from a nervous breakdown, or getting their ass kicked in an anime flick. Anime characters always seem to exist between the balance of two basic operating modes: (1) Extremely violent and pissed off; or (2) Flabbergasted and overwrought with miscellaneous emotion. What the hell ever happened to that level place in between, where people react to the world on a neutral setting? For that matter, what the hell ever happened to the subtlety of silence?

  Please don’t mistake my meaning, because I actually do enjoy watching anime. I just wonder why anime directors always insist on filling in the silences with all of those irritating grunts.




• The Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away
  Star Trek: The Next Generation is an awesome show despite its numerous, trademark flaws: the sterile off-ship set designs, the tedious battle scenes shown entirely from the bridge, the terrible acting by all of the extras, and all of those ridiculous, “Oh shit, the Holodeck safety protocols are offline” episodes. But above all other gripes, the one thing that bothers me most about the show is the terrible stage direction put on display during all of those two-person, heart-to-heart dialogue scenes.
  

  Does anybody know what I’m talking about? It seems like every time two characters find themselves in the middle of a private conversation on Next Gen, one of them inevitably interrupts the flow of the scene by walking across the room, and then continuing the conversation while facing their back to the other person. It’s such a stilted, artificial maneuver that absolutely reeks of melodrama, daytime soap operas, and live community theater. My suspension of disbelief immediately vanishes every time I see it happen — and it happens way more often than it should. As a fan of the series, I find the Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away oddly insulting, because I get the feeling that I was never meant to notice the ridiculous maneuver on a conscious level. It’s as if the show’s writers and directors never gave their fans enough credit to suspect that somebody like me would one day stand up and shout, “Why the fuck do the characters keep turning away from each other like that? Is that how people communicate with each other in the 24th century? That’s completely fucking stupid.”

   
   

  The Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away is such a weird, unnatural maneuver. In a television show where the actors walk around wearing automobile air filters for eyeglasses, and crazy rubber prostheses glued onto their foreheads, any additional displays of outlandish theatricality are simply redundant. There’s no subtlety or subtext added to the scene by something as lame as the Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away. That maneuver is about as subtle as Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge lifting his VISOR to wink at the camera before delivering the following monologue:

  “Commander Riker, I believe this is an appropriate time to tell you something deeply personal about my past. Before I do that, however, please allow me to awkwardly walk five steps in this direction. I’ll keep my back turned to you for a while, which will enable an awesome, over-the-shoulder camera shot with my face in the foreground, and with your face slightly blurred in the background. You see, with these five steps that I am taking while walking away from you, I am providing a visually symbolic representation of my desire to ‘walk away’ from my past. Then again, I am walking away while I’m reminiscing; so am I, in fact, walking towards the past instead? I’m going to turn around now, mid-sentence, in order to face you and to add further ambiguity to the question. The past may always be behind you, but it also always faces you no matter which direction you face.”

  

  Pretty awful, right? I quoted that speech verbatim from an old Dr. Pulaski episode. Every episode centered around that bitch is total trash. Anyhow, all I mean to say is that Lieutenant Commander Data’s oft-derided poem,“Ode to Spot”, has ten times more nuance to it than all of the Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Aways combined throughout the history of the show. I love you to death, Next Gen, but your people have got to look each other in the eye a little more often in order for me to take them seriously.




• Insulting Assumptions at the Crosswalk
  

  Call me crazy, but I consider it a personal affront whenever somebody walks up from behind me and presses the crosswalk button when it’s clear that I’ve already been standing there at the street corner for a while, waiting for the “Walk” sign to turn green. I know how to cross a street, asshole. Do you believe me to be such a helpless person, that I would so passively stand on every street corner that I encounter, praying for the winds of fate to sweep you into my life each time just so that you could enable my journey forward by helping me click a befuddling, magical button? Get the fuck over yourself.

  Show me enough respect to assume that I understand the concept of a crosswalk button, and maybe I’ll spare you the intricate details about the many ways by which you can go fuck yourself.




• Bizarre Self-Censorship by The Roots

  This is an old gripe of mine from way back in the day. First of all, do we have any hip-hop fans in the house? I’m a longtime fan of hip-hop myself, and I’ve learned over the years to take the good along with the bad. Although I can think of a lot of good things to say about hip-hop music, there are also many embarrassing aspects of the genre which put me on the defensive, and which compel me to justify my reasons for listening to it. The one thing I’ve always appreciated about the hip-hop band, The Roots, is that they have never given me a reason to be embarrassed about being a fan of hip-hop. The Roots are all about consciousness, intelligence, clever lyricism, and skilled musicianship. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of their work.

  

  Even so, there is one small thing that has been bothering me about The Roots for the longest time now. On the explicit, “uncensored” version of their hit 1999 album, Things Fall Apart, The Roots have scratched out the word “bitch” from at least two of their audio tracks. That is to say, at least two songs on the album include the word “bitch” in the lyrics — and for some reason, somebody saw it fit to censor the portions of each song where that word is spoken. Now, I’m all for the eradication of misogynistic lyrics in rap songs, but I think the approach that The Roots took on their album is completely ass backwards. Why would you even include that word in your lyrics if it was your intention, down the line, to censor it out of the end product? What makes this self-censorship even more ridiculous is the fact that the album is full of all other kinds of profane words, like “shit”, “motherfucker”, and the N-word. Why is it okay to say all of those other words, but not “bitch”? I really don’t understand the point that The Roots were trying to make with all of that self-censorship.

  To hear what I’m talking about, go ahead and take a listen to the YouTube clip of the song, “Dynamite!” down below. You can hear the word “bitch” scratched out of the audio at 1:29.

  Dynamite!

  For further illustration, check out the clip below for another song from the album titled, “Don’t See Us”. The word “bitch” is scratched out at 1:13. Interestingly, the word “whore” is not censored out, and can be heard clearly just a second before, around 1:12.

  Don’t See Us

  I’ve been Googling this album for years, and it seems as though nobody else out there is complaining about the censorship inconsistencies on Things Fall Apart. I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim that I am the first person in the world to call out The Roots on the issue of self-censorship.

  Personally, I would prefer to listen to an album without any obnoxious audio censorship scratches at all. If I wanted to hear all that noise, I could have just dialed into my local hip-hop radio station instead of listening to what was supposed to have been a polished, professionally produced album. The Roots should have either left all of the profanity on their album untouched, or they should have had a band meeting a day before entering the recording studio in order to come up with an alternate, friendlier word for “bitch”. Might I recommend the word “Pulaski” for future reference? I’m just saying.




• Terminology Inspired by the “Good Samaritan” Parable

  Is it safe to assume that most people who grew up in Westernized societies know the biblical parable that Jesus tells of the “Good Samaritan”? As the story goes, an unfortunate Jewish man gets his ass kicked by some bandits, and is left for dead along the side of a road. Two fine, upstanding Orthodox Jewish men (a priest and a Levite) pass by the injured man, but they don’t offer any help. Later on, a third man, who happens to be a Samaritan, comes along and shows the injured man an extraordinary amount of care. The point of Jesus’ parable is to illustrate the importance of showing compassion to your neighbors, which is hopefully a sentiment that we all can get behind, regardless of our beliefs. What made Jesus’ parable so provocative for its time, though, was that it portrayed a Samaritan in a positive light.

  Back in those days, Orthodox Jews and Samaritans despised each other due to their fundamental disagreements over religious doctrine. By casting a Samaritan in the role of the helpful neighbor, Jesus was making a point of showing that the qualities of kindness and human compassion are far more important than our individual beliefs in esoteric, religious dogma. I can’t help but think, though, that the spirit of Jesus’ lesson began to tarnish as soon as people started referring to this parable as the story of the “Good Samaritan”.

  

  The way I see it, the phrase, “Good Samaritan” is basically an archaic variation of a centuries-old, prejudicial slur. When Jesus originally told the story, he just referred to the guy as a “Samaritan”. Later on when people started retelling the parable, they started calling the dude a “good” Samaritan, implying that the majority of other Samaritans out there are bad people.
  

  “Samaritans? They only adhere to the Pentateuch, so they can all go eat a dick. Oh, but not that one, though. The Samaritan from that biblical parable which Jesus tells is one of the ‘good’ ones.”

  Am I being too touchy about innocent terminology? I don’t know, maybe. It just seems odd to me that in this modern day, we would chastise a person for making a remark like, “You’re a credit to your race”, all the while the phrase “Good Samaritan” has become so ingrained in the lexicon, that you could find hundreds of examples of hospitals, laws, and charitable organizations all over the world that bear that very name.

  I’m telling, you man: If, one day, I ever came across a hospital named “The Good Chinaman Medical Center”, I would flip the fuck out. I couldn’t be held responsible for the inevitable shit-storm that would follow. Like, you know. I’d probably stomp home and blog about it in a very stern tone. Or something.

As always, there’s plenty more to bitch about, but I think I’ll call it quits for now. I can only dish out so many complaints in one sitting before even I want to slap my own damn self.

So, this is what it’s like to gripe as a thirty-year-old. It’s funny, because even though nothing much has changed between twenty-nine and thirty, everything somehow seems a little more significant these days. Maybe that’s wisdom catching up to me. Ain’t that some shit?

GOD: In just a few hundred years from now, think of how backwards your civilizations will seem to your descendants.

KEVIN: Maybe you have a point. Even modern day people are still pretty gullible. Look at the second rate garbage that we consider miracles today: peanuts and potato chips shaped like Jesus; people discovering the shahadah written in Arabic on fish scale patterns, and in cracks on rocks; fuzzy rings of light that are supposedly apparitions of the Virgin Mary; fake-ass television evangelists curing afflictions on the air. It would all be laughable if it weren’t so goddamned sad. We’re all so desperate down here to find meaning in the least significant of things. What kind of Divine Plan are you playing at, God?

GOD: First of all, the television evangelists bother me, too. As for the peanuts, potato chips, fish scales, rocks, and rings of light — I guess I was being too subtle.

KEVIN: Oh come on!

GOD: You know, it’s not as if I suddenly stopped caring one day. I’ve been keeping an eye on things the whole time.

KEVIN: I’m sorry to say this, but it seems to me that you either don’t give as much of a shit about humanity as you claim to, or you simply have no more control over the outcome of events than I do. At the very least, can we agree that you simply don’t multitask very well?

GOD: I do a little more than I think you give me credit for.

KEVIN: Right, miracles are happening all the time, aren’t they? Small miracles, they call them. I guess human gullibility wasn’t exclusive to biblical times.

GOD: You honestly think that all of the believers throughout history who bore witness to miracles merely fooled themselves?

KEVIN: What if I said yes?

GOD: Then I’d say you’re full of it.

KEVIN: If you really are God, then you can’t say things like that. It’s beneath you.

GOD: I’m tired of people presuming to know what I can or cannot, would or would not, or should or should not say.

KEVIN: That’s pretty funny.

GOD: Why?

KEVIN: I’ll tell you later.

GOD: It’s hard to keep secrets from me, you know.

KEVIN: So I’ve been told.

GOD: But you don’t believe in everything you’re told, do you?

KEVIN: Sorry God, I don’t believe in blind faith.

GOD: Neither do I.

KEVIN: Then I guess we’ve found some common ground.

GOD: An entire planet’s worth.

If I were a comic book super villain, my origin story would probably begin sometime around December 1991. I was just a nine-year-old kid back then, but there came a day many Decembers ago when I formed the presence of mind to reliably differentiate fiction from fact. I thought things through during that Christmas season, and I came to the conclusion that Santa Claus is a fraud. All these years later, I’m still not ready to forgive Santa for never having existed.

No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. This is a truth that every adult in your life has known, yet they’ve all been bullied into silence by some bizarre social norm which requires adults to deceive naive little children for as many Decembers as possible. It’s okay to grieve, child. A part of your innocence and imagination has just been shattered, and you’re left with the unsettling revelation that not only does Santa Claus not exist, but also with the knowledge that the adults you’ve known have been lying to you your entire life. You asked them in earnest to tell you the simple truth about Santa Claus, and they repaid your sincerity with whimsical double-talk and bald-faced lies. Yes, Virginia, it’s okay to cry. Adults are condescending, deceitful pricks.

Fuck Santa Claus, man. From the moment your child discovers Superman from watching television, you begin warning her that there is no such thing as the super power of flight, because you can’t bear the thought of your kid jumping off a roof with a blanket tied around her neck. When your child starts playing video games for the first time, you start reminding her that there is no such thing as a “Reset” button in real life, because every choice and action has a consequence. When your child sees you doing household cleaning chores around the house, and she then asks why you don’t just clean things up by waving a wand like Harry Potter, you sit your kid down and explain to her that magic isn’t real, and that good things come to people who work hard. Make-believe is awesome, but we place boundaries on our children’s imaginations all the time so that they don’t grow up to become ignorant people who wallow in self-delusion.

It’s not my intention to degrade the value of childhood innocence. I just happen to think that the tradition of lying to our children about Santa Claus is the biggest crock of shit of the Holiday season. Maybe I was an abnormal child growing up, but I genuinely felt embarrassed and betrayed once I realized that my parents and teachers had been lying to me about Santa Claus my entire life, and all because they figured it was “for my own good”. At the age of nine, I learned one of the shittiest lessons that a kid could ever learn: “In the end, you can trust nobody else except yourself.” Merry Fucking Christmas, overly-sensitive, nine-year-old KZ.

A couple years have passed since 1991, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that Santa Claus makes for a pretty decent mascot during the Christmas season. The myth of Jolly Old Saint Nick is a fun tale to tell, but why do so many of us consider it a child’s entitlement to be deceived every December? Some might argue that belief in the Santa Claus myth helps stimulate our children’s imaginations, and that it promotes a festive atmosphere filled with fun for the kids. I don’t deny the truth of that argument, but I do have to question its merit.

Christmas has so much more to offer than Santa Claus — so much more than the mere crassness of all that materialism and bribery for good behavior. For Christian parents, Christmas is a time to remember Jesus, and to celebrate all of the values that Jesus held in the highest esteem: love, kindness, friendship, tolerance, and faith not only in God, but faith in the common humanity that binds us to our families, friends, neighbors, and even to our enemies. Even if you’re not a Christian parent, and yet you happen to celebrate Christmas in your own secular or ecumenical way, wouldn’t your children benefit more from an emphasis on the value to be found in the season’s spirit of love, kindness, and peace, versus an emphasis on a silly story about a fat judgmental magic man who trespasses on private properties without remorse, and who spends the majority of his time stuffing his face and judging everybody?

Christmas is the time of year when we celebrate that lofty promise of peace on earth, and good will toward men. I know, that’s some corny shit. I don’t care if it’s corny, though. Every December, I look toward the stars, and I convince myself to believe — if only for a moment — that one day in the future before the end, humanity will finally get things right. I guess you could accuse me of hypocrisy for speaking out against delusions and lies, all the while I place my belief in impossible things. There’s probably some truth to that criticism. But hey, you know what? At least my delusion doesn’t make lame excuses to get your children to sit on its lap. That’s the creepiest shit ever.

In closing, Santa Claus can go F himself in the A.

Merry Christmas, kids.

I can’t wait for the days to be revered as a prophet, a shadow of a savior who led the way for the ones seeking refuge from the bleak, savoring the opportunity to exchange bewilderment for certainty, hardship for providence, protection from human nature, natural change, estrangement from rationality, a forfeiture to Fate. I can’t wait for those words of admiration. How loyally they’ll bend their brittle wills, formed from malleable shells of fervent understanding. Setting a revolution in motion from a distance, in the name of faceless Certainty, a deity of my design, who shall be praised loudly and with the softness of clasped and swollen hands, and the hardness of a saber.

Amen I say to you. I can’t wait.

KEVIN: Of course.

GOD: Just a moment ago, you told me that God should let His children live their own lives.

KEVIN: In an ideal universe, even the most aloof and irresponsible deity would take at least some measures to stop his children from hating and killing each other.

GOD: The funny thing about ideals is that they can differ so greatly depending on the dreamer. Sometimes, not even the dreamer himself can agree with his own ideals.

KEVIN: I see where this is going. You think I’m asking for too much. I shouldn’t gripe about the apathy of God if I truly valued humanity’s free will. You breathed life into our frail little bodies, gave us minds of our own, built us a playground, and then set us free. Well you know what? With all due respect, I’m not impressed. I just don’t understand the point of all of this.

Life on earth, you know? I mean, what the hell?

If what they say is true, then there’s a Heaven somewhere. It’s a place where you supposedly feel no pain. Death is nothing to fear in Heaven because you’ve already suffered enough and died for the final time. But what’s the point of pain, and what’s the point of death if we’re all truly destined for eternal bliss? People like to justify our mortality by claiming that God wants to teach us lessons that we’d never learn without first experiencing pain. Others try to convince you that God expects us to prove our worth before we can claim our right to stop the suffering. Still others conjecture that the physical and metaphysical universe is fragmented, and living a perfectly virtuous life will reconnect you to the greater whole. And the theories continue. To tell you the truth, I’ve never heard an explanation that satisfied me.

The more I think about suffering, the more I wonder why I can’t let go of that vision of the ideal universe in which God is both unconditionally loving, and unconditionally just. Why do we accept these assertions without questioning them? What proof do we really have of God’s infallibility? How in the hell are we supposed to be sure that God is more than just a sadist in the sky? The simple truth is we suffer by design. I wish I could understand the wisdom in this kind of creation.

GOD: I have faith that one day you will.

KEVIN: When do you suppose that will be? And since when did you conduct your affairs on the insistence of faith?

GOD: Oh, kid, you really do have a lot more to learn about me, don’t you?

KEVIN: I guess it was too much to expect a straightforward answer. I should have learned by now to just stop asking.

GOD: But where’s the fun in that?

The man approached me from behind, and I heard him say, “Hey bro, do you know the area well?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “Kind of.”

“Oh, that’s great, bro. Hey can I ask you a question? Are you Christian?”

I groaned inwardly. “Kind of.”

“‘Kind of?’ What’s that mean?”

There’s a great deal of reasons why I would only consider myself “kind of” Christian. I mean for starters, I’m not totally convinced anymore that Jesus “saved us from our sins” and earned humanity the right to go to Heaven through his self-sacrifice. Why did it require some archaic bloodletting ritual to appease God before He opened the gates of Heaven? And for that matter, didn’t God Himself send Jesus down to Earth? So does that mean God appeased Himself through the creation of Jesus? And if that’s the case, why the hell did God deem it necessary to kill His son at all if He could have simply opened the gates of Heaven on His own without anybody’s permission? Oh sure, there’s Adam and Eve’s Original Sin, but that’s a ludicrously petty reason for an infallible deity to hold a centuries-old grudge, if you ask me. And the problem is somebody was asking me, but he was more concerned with indoctrinating me than listening to what I really had to say.

“I mean yes, I am a Christian.” It was a desperate answer. Maybe he’d go away if he figured we were already on the same side.

“Oh that’s cool, bro. Hey look, do you have time to come with me? I’d like to pray with you.”

At that point, I started to wonder how many severed heads this guy kept in the trunk of his car.

“No, I’d rather not.”

He looked at me with exaggerated indignation, as if I’d just told him I enjoyed punching babies in the face. “Why not? Aren’t you Christian?”

“Look, I don’t feel like being hassled right now. I don’t want to pray with you, okay?”

“Why not? Aren’t you Christian, though?”

“I have no interest in having a discussion about God with some stranger in a bookstore. I know what I believe, and I know what I don’t believe. I don’t need you to tell me how wrong I am.”

“Aren’t you Christian?”

“I guess I’m not.”

His face hardened. “At least it came out of your mouth.”

He walked away. Immediately, somewhere off in the distance, I heard a cock crow as if to commemorate my denial of Christ. I’m no saint, Lord knows, but I felt an odd sort of kinship with the apostle Peter at that moment.

I didn’t mind the fact that this dude thought he was trying to save my soul. What did bother me about the whole confrontation was the guy’s smug condescension. Since when does being Christian equate to being willing to have your personal beliefs challenged by every phony jackass who calls you “bro?” The last thing I need is somebody judging me to my face and telling me that I’m a godless sinner. The last thing the world needs right now is one more pompous ass who is so “full of God,” that he doesn’t realize just how full of shit he really is. If we’re ever going to push things forward in this lifetime, the answer is to find common ground amongst all of our differences, not flattening the landscape into a homogenous mass.

My evangelical brothers and sisters, I implore you: The next time you decide to act on your desire to save somebody’s soul, consider doing it from afar for once, through the power of prayer. And should you decide to ignore my plea and to strike up a loaded conversation with some troubled soul, consider the fact that you are not the only people on this planet who believe that their opinions are worth a damn. We’re all just people with similar sins. Try and remember that, and maybe we’ll finally get somewhere.

PS: Don’t none of you ever fucking call me “bro” again, okay? I’m not your bro. Jesus hates Creed, Nickelback, terrorists, rapists, axe murderers, and every lame motherfucker who thinks he can sell somebody religion by talking bro-to-bro. I may be godless, but at least I had the good sense to stop calling people “bro” by the time I got out of high school. “Aren’t you Christian?” Fuck off, bro.

KEVIN: So that’s it, then? Your answer is a vague and useless vindication of all things divine? Shiva, Yahweh, Bismillah, it’s all the same, right? Looks like the countless scores of quibbling religious denominations and sects have been fighting over nothing all along. Gold stars for everybody!

GOD: One of the most tragic constants in human history is your talent for oversimplification.

KEVIN: Forgive me, but aren’t you the one claiming that all roads lead to a single path? Isn’t that an oversimplification?

GOD: More like a simple statement of the facts. That’s not to say that all roads are as direct or straightforward as others, but none of them are entirely devoid of direction. Those people who would oversimplify, however, are often the ones who have the easiest time justifying violence and hatred in the name of God. It was never my intention that diversity would lead to such division.

KEVIN: Division is one of the things we do best. It’s a rule of nature. The truth is, humans strive on segregation, and resentment, and prejudice.

By default, we’re sectioned off by continents — but beyond that point, the rest of our divisions are voluntary. Within those huge masses of land that we call continents, we draw borders for individual countries. Some countries get along with each other and form international councils, while most others just sulk in the corner by themselves and mutter threats. Within our countries, we have states, and counties, and cities. And despite all of that propagandized nationalism and cultural identity bullshit, citizens of a country make plenty of reasons to hate each other when it comes to polarizing entities like partisan politics or professional sports. All of that national unity stuff melts away when you’re too busy bitching about the opposing party or screaming death threats at the visiting team. It’s all just fuel for pointless rivalry.

The divisions flow from top to bottom and permeate pretty much every aspect of our lives. I’m not trying to sound like a pseudo-socialist here, but humanity has more diversity than it knows what to do with it. Different skin colors, ethnic origins, governmental philosophies, religious doctrines, sexual orientation–there’s a wealth of reasons to senselessly hate each other. We are all self-transcending beings crammed into a common living space, so it’s inevitable that disagreements would arise. And what better way is there to win an argument than to kill everybody who contradicts you? I’m still trying to decide whether suicide bombers are stubborn brutes who refuse to change with the times, or if they’re actually the next step in human evolution.

GOD: A little fatalistic, don’t you think?

KEVIN: If I were you, I’d worry less about one guy’s pessimism and focus more on the fact that people are blowing themselves up to impress you. How do you reconcile your claims of caring about the world with your apparent lack of intervention?

GOD: As senseless as this will sound to you, humanity has all of the necessary tools that it needs to live in peace.

KEVIN: What am I, a deist? Do you expect me to accept that as an adequate answer?

GOD: You fault me for my lack of intervention?

KEVIN: Of course.

GOD: Just a moment ago, you told me that God should let His children live their own lives.

KEVIN: In an ideal universe, even the most aloof and irresponsible deity would take at least some measures to stop his children from hating and killing each other.

GOD: The funny thing about ideals is that they can differ so greatly depending on the dreamer. Sometimes, not even the dreamer himself can agree with his own ideals.

A reader named Darren found my blog and left a critical comment about my inclination to judge. I wrote him a short and civil letter, explaining that while it’s true that I was being judgmental, I didn’t think my complaints were entirely unwarranted. It’s one thing to be conservative and religious, but it’s quite another thing to force those views onto your adult granddaughter and severely limit her autonomy as a result. In response, Darren had this to say:

While my comment was snarky, you *are* being judgmental. If grandma were insistent of some things that *you* like, but your girlfriend doesn’t, would you be as judgmental? My guess is that it’s grandma’s conservatism you don’t like.

There’s a cost to everything. That’s the cost of living with grandma, who, as you pointed out, is doing a lot of good things for your girlfriend. If the emotional cost of living with grandma becomes too high for your girlfriend, well, there’s always Kevin’s house

As you’ll learn if you drop by my blog, RightOnTheLeftCoast (mostly about education since I’m a teacher), I’m a big fan of *personal* responsibility. We make our choices, and we alone are responsible for the consequences of those choices.

I started to reflect on the tone of the previous post, and I realized that Darren made some valid points. The root of my resentment has more to do with Connie’s conservatism than I’d care to admit. Additionally, Connie is being wonderfully generous with her money and time, so that vindicates her insistence on setting some house rules. There is–and ought to be–a “cost” of living with grandma. In the end, the cost is probably well worth Diana’s while, but I still reserve my right to object when I think grandma is abusing that inherent imbalance of power. But Darren, your point is noted. I shouldn’t forget that, on the whole, Connie has been selflessly kind. Sometimes, though, I just wish she’d realize that the world has changed a bit since 1955.

But I have to admit something. In the short two weeks that Diana has been living with Connie, I’ve grown to resent that woman. To preface my point, it might be helpful to know that Connie is a right wing, religious conservative, “moral majority” kind of lady that locks her television set to the Fox News Channel all day long. That in itself is no reason to dislike anybody, because everybody is entitled to an opinion. But what upsets me about Connie is the fact that she rigidly forces her repressive morality onto Diana and treats her granddaughter as if she were nine years old.

For some inexplicable reason, Connie thinks that computers are the Antichrist. I shit you not. She actually refers to them as the fucking “Antichrist.” Apparently she got that idea from the Book of Revelations. It is because of this questionable religious assertion that Connie has decreed that Diana is limited to using her computer for no more than ten minutes a day. Never mind the fact that Connie keeps a computer of her own in the study, and that she uses it to read her email in increments of hours per day.

Then there’s the curfew thing. Diana is not allowed to stay out any later than 8pm. Her bedtime is 9pm. I suppose 9 is a reasonable time to sleep when you’re forbidden from watching anything else besides the Fox News Channel. I understand that this curfew thing is a product of a generation gap, but I have a hard time believing that Connie never stayed out past 8pm when she was in her early twenties.

As if limiting Diana’s freedom weren’t enough, Connie can’t help but think the worst about people. Yesterday, Diana’s former roommate, Gabe, went over to the house to help set up Diana’s computer. When Diana wasn’t looking, Connie took Gabe aside and asked him about me. Why do I hardly visit Diana? Why does it seem like I never have time for her? I say I’m busy with law school, but I can’t be that busy. I must be cheating on Diana with another girl. Thankfully Gabe had a friend that went through law school, and he told her all about the hell that is the life of a 1L. Upon hearing Gabe’s explanation, Connie just looked at him and calmly said, “I didn’t know it was that hard.”

You’re absolutely right, Connie. This whole academic spin story is just a cover. How busy could I be? It’s only fucking law school. When I say I’m doing homework for my Torts class, I really mean I’m doing a tart in the backseat of my Chevy. I make your granddaughter happy, so I must be scum. And I am scum, Connie. But at least I don’t sodomize Sri Lankan flamingos with my pentagram-encrusted cane the way that you do every Tuesday. See, Connie? I can make unfounded accusations, too.

I recognize that this isn’t an attractive side to me. I don’t like being judgmental and acidic. I originally intended to lay out my feelings with maturity and balance. But this is the way it came out, and I don’t have much of an inclination to change it. I try to live my life with compassion. I don’t hate Connie. And even though I’m the resident agnostic in this sick little arrangement, I’ll have to do my part to be as much like Christ as I can be. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Judge not, lest you be judged. Support the woman you love while she endures the greatest test of her life. This move was about her, after all. I’m just a spectator with a vested interested. I love Diana, and I know she’s in store for plenty of hardship. She’s seen hardship before, and she’s stood tall with the help of friends. This time around, I’ll do my part to keep her standing.

In 1 Kings 3:16-28, you’ll find one of the most retold stories of the Hebrew Scriptures (otherwise known as the Old Testament). The syntax of the story varies depending on which version of the Bible you’re holding, but the gist of the story always remains the same. According to the New American Catholic Bible, the story goes something like this:

16: [T]wo harlots came to the king and stood before him.
17: One woman said: “By your leave, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth in the house while she was present.
18: On the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth.
19: This woman’s son died during the night; she smothered him by lying on him.
20: Later that night she got up and took my son from my side, as I, your handmaid, was sleeping. Then she laid him in her bosom, after she had laid her dead child in my bosom.
21: I rose in the morning to nurse my child, and I found him dead. But when I examined him in the morning light, I saw it was not the son whom I had borne.”

22: The other woman answered, “It is not so! The living one is my son, the dead one is your child, the living one is mine!” Thus they argued before the king.

23: Then the king said: “One woman claims, ‘This, the living one, is my child, and the dead one is yours.’ The other answers, ‘No! The dead one is your child; the living one is mine.’”
24: The King continued, “Get me a sword.” When they brought the sword before him,
25: he said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to one woman and half to the other.”
26: The woman whose son it was, in the anguish she felt for it, said to the king, “Please, my lord, give her the living child–please do not kill it!” The other, however, said, “It shall be neither mine nor yours. Divide it!”
27: The king then answered, “Give the first one the living child! By no means kill it, for she is the mother.”

28: When all Israel heard the judgment the king had given, they were in awe of him, because they saw that the king had in him the wisdom of God for giving judgment.

This is the passage cited by Christians and Jews alike when they speak of the wisdom of King Solomon. Am I the only one who has a problem with this? God told the king to make a threat on an infant’s life in order to solve a custody dispute? Good thinking, KS. Cut the little bastard in half. It’s a well-known fact that babies can learn to live without functional digestive systems. I know, King Solomon was most likely trying to get a rise out of the real mother, but did he really have to go to such an extreme? If you ask me, the king sounds more sadistic than noble. What benevolent monarch threatens to murder a child in front of a parent? (Well, you know, excluding that practical joke God pulled on Abraham and Isaac back in Chapter 22 of Genesis.)

I do admit that King Solomon’s threat on the kid’s life amounts to a shrewd tactical decision on his part, but I think the author of the book of 1 Kings might be embellishing to the point of hyperbole. For example, if you were a con-woman trying to commit a state-sanctioned kidnapping, why in God’s name would you encourage your king to kill the kid whom you’re trying to obtain? “He’s my kid, I love him very much, but I’d gladly cut him in half to spite this chick standing next to me.” Right. And then there’s that line about all of Israel being in “awe” of King Solomon after hearing about this historical judgment. If that’s not a shining endorsement for masturbation in the Jewish and Christian faiths, then I don’t know what is.

From where I stand, the story of King Solomon depicts an arbitrator getting extremely lucky after making a risky decision. The whole thing borders on recklessness. If he had actually cut the kid in half, he would have been regarded as a tyrant. If both of the women had cried out in equal despair, Solomon would have ended up looking like a sadistic, ineffectual ass. But luckily for the king, the lying woman reacted to Solomon’s bluff in the worst possible way. We’re left, therefore, with two possibilities: (1) The author of the story exaggerated some of the facts, presumably for King Solomon’s benefit; or (2) The events played out exactly how they were recorded, and thus it can be said that King Solomon merely outsmarted a dimwit. In all candor, neither alternative is very flattering.

Sorry Solomon. You may have been a great man, but that baby-chopping story doesn’t impress me.