42

I am 42.  Kurt Vonnegut was 42 when he finally published Slaughterhouse Five, one of my favorite books.  42 is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  42 is the approximate angle at which an rainbow appears! 42 is the number with which god created the universe in Kabbalah.  Jackie Robinson wore number 42, and he was a stud.

42 is the last interesting number.

Is my life supposed to be so fucking lame?  I am choosing to be in a marriage I can't stand.   My husband is a large child, who wants to act like if you ignore something long enough it goes away. My kids totally railroad me into doing shit for them all the time.  They can't even pick their dirty laundry up off the floor, because they (subconsciously) know that I hate clutter, so I will pick it up.  I love my job, but I'm fairly sure that people have the totally wrong impression of who I really am, simply because I'm introverted., so they think I'm anti-social  AND .. I'm pretty sure the squirrels in my yard are emissaries of the devil, because they just LOOK at me when I walk outside rather than scurrying away.  (Just a theory.)

I can't even leave this shithole called Nebraska during summer break, because I'm poor as shit.  I can't afford anything, but my husband is currently out clothes shopping with my son, then off to a nice dinner, and then to a 3-D movie (aren't those like $15?!).  Why doesn't he buy some groceries instead (fucking asshole).  (Sorry, that was an organic anger, and I refuse to backspace/delete my feelings.)  Or buy grass seed for the gigantic rut he digs out beside our driveway with his car wheels?  (That shit is EXPENSIVE!!  Don't buy a house.)  Or fix the water spout in the backyard (which he started to fix and then totally fucked up and left broken).

Is this blogging supposed to make me feel good by writing my feelings down?  Because it's not working.

Shut it down.

Killing in the Name of ...

According to Urban Dictionary, BLASPHEMY is defined as “running into church on Sunday and screaming, ‘Jesus Christ is a fake, and you’re all going to hell!’”

According the regular dictionary, BLASPHEMY is defined as the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God.

BLASPHEMY is all capital letters because apparently BLASPHEMY is really bad.  I don’t mean “I-ate-candy-instead-of-dinner” bad; I mean “I-AM-GOING-TO-BE-EXECUTED” bad.  (Different things.) 

Once again, I find myself reading The New York Times and wanting to have a proper freak-out about the state of humanity.  People are dumb as shit.  Truly, utterly, basely, inexcusably, pedantically ignorant.  Let me elaborate:  In Bangladesh (this time – I only single this country out because their radicals are currently splashed across my newspaper) Islamist (of course) fundamentalists (shocking, I know) are demanding the passage of an anti-blasphemy (sorry, BLASPHEMY) law.  They are demanding an amendment to their constitution which would ban intermingling between men and women and punish by execution Bangladeshi bloggers accused of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad. 

Are you fucking kidding me?  

Not only are these jackholes backward, unenlightened cavemen, they are trying to impose their stupidity on the masses of other people in their country.  These fundamentalists are so ignorant, in fact, that they forgot the pillars of their religion.  Not one of those five pillars mentions beating people to death in the middle of the street because they disagree with you.  Actually, none of those pillars talk about separating men and women, either.  And I’m fairly sure blogging wasn’t a thing back in the day, so execution of people with an opinion would also probably not be favored by Allah.

Here’s the deal:  Christopher Hitchens was absolutely right when he said that religion poisons everything.   People take a simple concept like The Golden Rule and fucking pervert it and legislate it and package it up with an inspirational prophet at the helm, and … voila!  People who think they’re better than everyone else start dictating how everyone must act.  Ethics without thought.  Morality fueled by fear.  Critical judgment thrown out the window in favor of dogma and prudishness. 

I, for one, am sick of it.

Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead, but what most people ignore is the second part of that sentence from The Antichrist, which is:  “God is dead, and we have killed him.”  Indeed.  If there is a God, man (via religion) does everything in his power to harness that power, impose it on other people, and thus repudiate all the teachings of their prophet.  It’s sickening.  No church should have ANY power, because that church is simply a BUILDING which houses God.  That’s it.  It’s a PLACE. 

Let me put my feelings as succinctly as I can:  RELIGION SUCKS.  How’s that for blasphemy?  Do I have to insult your god for it to be blasphemy?  How about this:  if god is real, he/she would flush these fundamentalist killers down the fucking toilet.  IF your god condones such anti-human, misogynistic, childish, homophobic, murderous action, then your god sucks. 

The greatest thing about that last sentence is that it doesn’t matter.  People can make all the asinine, ridiculous, prohibitive laws they want, and people will still be people at the end of the day.  In other words, making stupid laws doesn’t make people less stupid.  If god wants to smite me, he or SHE will.  It’s none of your fucking business.  Get a job, contribute to the economy, and shut the fuck up.  Pray to whatever god suits you, and stop trying to enforce your bullshit on other people. 

Specifically, I want to take aim at the Muslim extremists who make their women cover up their bodies “to protect and respect “ them.  Over and over I hear that, in order for men not to be tempted, women should cover up.  “Not to be tempted”?!  Are you a 12-year-old boy?  Do you have a mental retardation that would stop you from attacking a woman because her ankles are visible?  Or are you simply unemployed and/or feeling unsatisfied with your life, so you need “a cause” to “fight for”?  Are you serious in saying that men cannot control themselves in the presence of flesh?  And if so, what does that say about the intelligence and morality of your men??

This whole ideology of religion and punishment for sins is simply embarrassing.  WHY is it necessary to impose religious ideology on other people?  WHY is it so hard to believe that life is what it is, and there is no afterlife to kill and die for?  WHY do the churches in my area feel it necessary to market their “product” via glossy, expensive fliers espousing their desire to save my soul?

Some of us do not require “saving”.  We do not need Jesus/Muhammad/Xenu/Buddha/Joseph Smith to lead the way to behaving well.  We get it.  Leave us alone. 

One last thing:  you can take your fatwas and shove them up your ass.  They mean nothing.  And if Allah is there, the killers will burn in hell for all eternity for killing in the name of rage rather than god.  

So many thoughts, and so little time.

I don't know how the intellectuals of the past did it.  Yes I do, that was a lie, sorry.  They were able to sit around and write without interference from another job.  Their JOB was to write.  If that was my job, I would be proliferate, seriously.  I have so many words racing around in my head, that it makes me dizzy,  I write novels and essays and screenplays in my head every day and all night long (while I'm busy not sleeping).  The problem is that I can't keep those thoughts in my head long enough to write them down.  OR ... they're gone before I wake up the next day.  It's grossly unfair that an entire opus can appear to me in the wee hours of the morning, but I don't have the mental strength to get up and write it out, not do I have the memory to sustain the ideas into the waking hours.

Oh well.

What's a girl to do but keep on teaching ideas which most people ignore and writing a blog which no one reads?

And then the pity stops and we move on to the writing.  When Stephen King tells me to carve out a space for myself and spend 10 hours a day writing, I want to punch him in his freakish mouth.  Who the fuck can do that?  (Published authors, who can sit around, that's who.)  I don't have time.  But here's the real deal:  maybe I don't have the ability to do anything.  Maybe I'm just lying to myself so I feel better.

Okay, so this isn't helping, I'm signing off.