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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Being a Sports Fan in California Part 1 - the Sactown Kings

Being a sports fan in California is kind of like going to your prom with a cute girl who loves jesus more than you. That is to say, maybe something is going to happen, but it most likely will turn out horribly if you even try. All of this goes for every team in California except the Lakers, I guess, who seem to have some measure of success.

Firstly, no team in CA has won anything (except the lakers, of course) in the last sixteen years. The last team to win anything was the San Francisco 49ers and that happened way back in 1994 when they slaughtered the Chargers, another California team. Let me start by segmenting my disappointments into sports and then teams.

Basketball -

Basketball is by far the most disappointing sport to be a fan of in California. Like I said before, this doesn't concern the Lakers. When I think of the Lakers I put them in the same category as the Yankees. They're a team that has huge advantages to other teams. To start out with, the Lakers have more money to spread around than the average NBA franchise. Moving on - this isn't about the Lakers.

Most disappointing team goes to ............ THE SACRAMENTO KINGS

I've spent so many hours rooting for the Kings from 1998-2004. I used to watch every game that was on TV. They had so many promising seasons where they were unstoppable. Then they would face the Lakers in the playoffs and immediately choke. Their players all took turns choking hardcore.

Worst players for the Kings - Jon Berry, Jason Williams, and Chris Webber

These players may have some solid distinctions among Kings players but to me they're just shitheads. The reason these two guys (Jon Berry and Jason Williams) are garbage is the same reason that unassuming white guys will always be the best pointguards - because they play fundamental basketball and don't fuck around. Jason Williams is the quintessence of fucking around. He does this behind the back, no look pass bullshit but it does no good when the pass goes out of bounds 82% of the time. If I was William's coach I'd bench his ass with a quickness whenever he starts that shit. Sure, it looks really cool and gets the crowd excited to see amazing passes and half court shots, but when they fail the majority of the time they're simply not worth it.

Jon Berry is a waste of space. Whenever he was put into the game for the Kings I would cringe knowing that he'd just shoot three pointers and miss twenty of them in a row.

Chris Webber was a huge crybaby whenever he played. He always had this sad face when he played and he just couldn't get the job done in the playoffs (which I guess is why he was part of the Kings). And he was dating Tyra Banks during his time with the Kings. She was on the sidelines and he probably paid more attention to her than the game and it definitely showed.

The Kings won their division in 2002 and 2003 only to be soundly raped by the Lakers. One series was exemplified by this moment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKBm2kevXQk

I want to puke when I watch that clip! My love for the Kings has substantially declined with their ability to even get to the playoffs. They're absolute garbage now, they even make the Warriors look good.

In my next post I will discuss how the Warriors and the Clippers are both horse shit. Both are their own brand of horrible. Until next time.

Google attempting to read your mind

You ever notice that google is attempting to read your mind and sometimes they screw up really badly? It's usually about religious type things. You type "priest molesting boys" into the google search bar and you get a few news articles that immediately pop up in the main field. But when you look to the side, the side that pays to get their stuff on google, the links are way off. The links will say "Become a Priest NOW!" or "The Perks of being a member of the clergy". Some of those are so way off that they're on again.

What really bothers me is that google intrudes on my personal chats and stuff when I'm using their mail service, G-Mail. I'll be chatting with my friends about school or something and on the margin of the page this pops up, "WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL?" Google just needs to chill out. Maybe there's a setting in the google options where I can turn off google spying. Somebody should let me know.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Trying to be funny

Hey everyone (the two people that will read this), I wanted to tell you that I'm going to try to be somewhat funny and lighthearted from now on. My first post got pretty heavy and I ran off on quite a few tangents at the same time. I'm going to commit myself here and now to being entertaining first and foremost. You have my word on that.

Funny Funeral

The family I belong to was born from a long line of morticians. My brother told me that our cognomen, "Cappucini," my mother's maiden name, is actually the name of an order of monks that performs funerals. My cousin Mark is currently the head honcho at the local funeral home that used to be owned by his father.

My great uncle Alphonse, Red Cappucini, deceased, was a mortician for a long time in the bay area. My mother told me he started out as the only ambulance driver in contra costa county and then he moved his way up to pulling bodies from the delta. He's got quite a few interesting stories that he told me before he passed, but we'll save that for another blog. This one is about Red's funeral.

The funeral was funny, and Red would have wanted it that way. He was always a very cheerful guy, even when Mark got him a book of famous obituaries for his 90th birthday. I think that was the best thing he got that year. He looked it up and down and everybody quized him on what was displayed on certain peoples' death certificates. He was a great guy and never took himself too seriously.

Before the funeral began all of my old relatives filed in and filled the pews at the funeral home. My oldest relatives sat in the front. My grandmother and my great auntie Mary, her sister, sat right next to one another. We had to sit through a lot of moving speeches. My cousin Brian, my great uncle's grandson came up to delivery his eulogy of his grandfather. He began speaking about how Red used to give him everything he wanted as a kid, or some such thing that grandsons reflect about their grandfathers and my great aunt, confused as to who this young man speaking was, screamed as loud as she could into my grandmother's ear, "WHO'S THAT?!!!"

She said it so loud that everybody in the funeral home looked directly at them. Brian, a little startled, paused and then began speaking. My grandma said "THAT'S BRIAN!!!!!!!!" into auntie Mary's ear.

"WHO????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Auntie Mary inquired.

"THAT'S BRIAN!!!!" quoth grandma.

It's the only time in my life I went to a funeral and had a really good laugh. Everyone in the funeral home chuckled, because you're not supposed to just bust up laughing at a funeral. At the after party everybody had a really good laugh about that one.

This will only mean that I will give you more funny grandma stories. Trust me, there are a great deal more.

Auntie Mary's Later Years

This will probably be to my detriment, but what the fuck?!

In my younger and more vunerable days... I liked to pick on old people! Well I just had a little fun. I used to go over to see my grandmother about once a week and occasionally I'd go down the street to my auntie Mary and uncle Jimmy's house. At the time auntie Mary and uncle Jimmy were both in their 90's. Uncle Jimmy was so old that he was in World War 2 when he was 35 years old. He was so old that when he was about to retire, he sent a letter back to the hospital he was born at to get his birth certificate and when he got it was surprised to find that he was actually born in 1909 and not 1910, like he previously thought.

Despite being 94 years old, he still got around really well and was a horny old bastard. I heard many stories of him propositioning his filipino caretaker for sex. He never got any though. I even heard stories, from my grandmother, that he had come over one day to watch the baseball game with her and he brought a magazine clipping showing how old folks could have sex. That's some creepy shit.

But auntie Mary takes the cake. I don't think I knew her when she had any sense in her head. She was always older than the hills and had short, fire engine red hair.

I used to play this game called, "See if I can get money from uncle Jimmy." Uncle Jimmy was fucking loaded. He carried at least four grand with him at all times. His wallet was so inflated with bills that he sat down at a 45 degree angle. Whenever I'd go over to see them I'd either mow their lawn, for which my uncle would pay me $20.00 (not bad), or play "See if I can get money from uncle Jimmy."

The game was simple enough. I did it once and he gave me money so I just kept doing it. Prior to entering their house I would take out my wallet and put all the cash I had into my front pockets. When I came in I would make small talk for a long while and then I would say something like "Oh, I just got a new wallet, wanna see?" Uncle Jimmy'd say "Yeah, sure." So I'd pull out my baren wallet and he'd say "Oh you don't have any money?" and I'd say "Nope." and he'd bust out his huge wallet and thumb through an entire fucking forest of $100 dollar bills and get me a brand new $20.00 bill. That trick worked like a charm for a long time.

More amusement I used to have with them was more overt and less monetarily propelled. I used to give my friends the tour of old people. My relatives are generally pretty damned funny, but auntie Mary and uncle Jimmy were funnier than Chris Rock in his prime.

At this time auntie Mary was hearing shit and seeing shit too. I'd be talking with uncle Jimmy and all of a sudden she'd say "JAMES!!! I HEAR THE CAT OUTSIDE. LET THE CAT IN!!!" Jimmy would ignore her. Once again, "JAMES!!!! THE CAT IS OUTSIDE, I CAN HEAR HER. LET THE CAT IN!" Jimmy just muttered to himself...

"DAMIT JAMES, THE POOR CAT IS OUTSIDE. LET HER IN!"

All uncle Jimmy said was "That cat died three years ago..."

We were sitting there, my friend Chris and I, and all of the sudden Chris says "MEOW!!!!"

Auntie Mary says "JAMES!!!! THE CAT IS OUTSIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Jimmy says "No she ain't, Mary."

Chris: "MEOW!!!!!!"

and on it went until we left. As you'll see from later stories, there really didn't need to be much interference for those two to be yelling at one another...

The Most Embarrassing Moment of my Life

I've had stomach pains my entire life, so I didn't think much of it when I had a stomach ache one morning before school when I was twelve. I just called my mom at work and told her that I didn't feel well and I didn't want to go to school that day. She gave me permission to stay home.
My stomach pains continued to get worse. I got very nauseous and had horrible diarrhea at the same time. I was losing fluids from every possible location. I would stop shitting just long enough to vomit and then back to shitting! I felt awful. The only time I got any sort of respite from intensely horrific pain was when I was sleeping, which I could barely achieve anyway.
When my mom came home I told her that I couldn't hold down any food and my stomach was absolutely killing me. She told me to take some medicine and take it easy and then rushed off to go bowling a few towns over.
While she was at the bowling alley I called a few times and had her paged to come up to the front. I think I told the guy who answered the phone to page her with, "Jane Patterson, your dying son is on the phone…" That must have hit a nerve because after bowling she came home and went to sleep!
I lost all hope that I would be seeing my 13th birthday and fell asleep that night expecting to wake up with my dried bloody intestines spilling from my belly onto my multicolored blanket my mom crocheted for me a year before.
I awoke at 5am with a start; my mom shook me awake saying, "We've got to get you to the emergency room." So I threw on my best gray sweatpants and t-shirt and went and got into the car. The entire ride to the hospital was hell. I couldn't get comfortable sitting up. When I got to the hospital we stood at the front desk and I suddenly realized that I had to shit really badly. I informed my mom and made my way toward the nearest restroom.
But I didn't quite make it. Imagine the most concentrated brown bile squirting from your ass involuntarily. It had absolutely no consistency to it. It was just liquid shit and it smelled like a bouquet of roses, obviously. It smelled like aged intestines and the end product of what is done with all the filth you shove down your mouth hole.
When I got into the bathroom I relieved myself as best I could, but I was already relieved before I even got to the bathroom. I cleaned up all the shit that ran down the back of my thigh into my sock. After using two full rolls of toilet tissue I flushed and went to the sink to wash up. My face was so yellow with jaundice that I thought I was Chinese or a Simpson.
I returned to my mom at the front desk and told her that I had lost control of my bowels and she just said "Oh." How the fuck do you respond to something like that?
Coincidentally it wouldn't be my mother's first run in with poo poo. She was a saint for what she put up with, not from me, but from my grandmother.
When I was around ten years old and my mom, my step-dad Felix, and I were eating Chinese food in my grandmother's kitchen. We just stopped over to say hi and to eat our food, but grandma had other plans. Unbeknownst to Felix and me, my grandmother was constipated and decided to take a laxative, one whose instructions read "Take before you fall asleep at night." Instead she took it in the middle of the day. She raced to the bathroom as fast as her grandma legs could carry her. Let me explain, my grandmother has always been really big. I could go into greater detail, but it'd probably be better if I didn't for the sake of your gastrointestinal health.
On her way to the toilet she entered the bathroom, closed the door, and shit all over the wall. She cleaned up a little with a hand towel and made her way into the kitchen, where we were eating. She poked her head in and said "Janie… I had an accident."
My poor mother had to stop eating and go clean up her mother's shit from the bathroom wall. Poor woman.
I haven't even reached the best part of the story yet. I was waiting to be seen by a doctor and they got me into a gown and had to get me to the radiology department for some X-rays. As I got into my hospital gown I realized that it was very revealing from behind, and bearing in mind my most recent dorsal problems, I knew that it wasn't going to bode well for me or my young self-esteem.
A nurse wheeled me down to the radiology department in a gurney. Arriving there, they instructed me to stand in front of a specialized led wall. The X-ray technician revealed herself from behind another wall in the X-ray room. She was a smoking hot chick of not more than 30 years. She walked over and told me that I needed to move to my right or my left a few feet so as to get a better picture of my troubled belly. Right when she placed her hand on my midsection I let loose with a copious stream of liquid feces. It looked as though I had melted desert topping emanating from my asshole.
This is one of my formative moments in life. I just remember linking my recognition of beauty in a female with my uncontrollable bowels and the look on her face saying, "It's okay, it's okay. It's perfectly all right to shit yourself in front of me."

The Most Painful

In my life I have been fortunate enough to have a wide variety of injuries, a few of which were very serious, and others not so serious. When I was twelve my appendix burst. Almost exactly one year later I broke my right wrist. My radius (the long bone, on your thumb's side that connects your carpals with your humerus) was broken twice and the ulna (the long bone, on your pinky's side that connects your carpals to your humerus) was broken twice and near my carpals, broke out of my skin. My arm was in a Z-shape with my hand being at the top left of the Z and my elbow being at the bottom right.

I broke my arm the same way most kids my age broke their bones in the past and continue to break bones in the future: skateboarding. I was never that good at skateboarding or even decent; I couldn't even land a kickflip,though once I landed a heelflip, but only once. The day I broke my arm was the same day that my sister had her high school graduation party. During the party I snuck off with some of my friends and ended up skateboarding a few miles away from home.

It's actually kind of embarrassing how I broke my arm. One would like to pontificate and say, "It was my own fault. I shouldn't have grinded that huge rail that nobody else wanted to try. I guess this is the price I pay for being braver than everybody." The reality was that I was grinding a rail that was less than 6'' off the ground and lost my balance and fell backwards and extended both arms to cushion my fall.

I panicked when I got up. My arm was completely limp. I had no idea what I should do. Luckily there were a few adults watching us from their garage. They called an ambulance for me and they also called my mom, who was laid up from her recent hysterectomy.

When the ambulance arrived, the two EMTs didn't bother setting my arm, they just put it in a little cardboard splint and tied it around my neck for support. A few moments after they arrived, my sister and her boyfriend (now husband), Christian, and my mom's boyfriend Tim showed up and took me in my grandfather's old 1984 Ford LTD, white with maroon interior, to the emergency room.

Tim explained my situation to the lady behind the front desk. She instructed us to take a seat. They didn't take my injury too seriously because it was wrapped and I didn't make a sound for a few hours. We were there for four hours and each time I said "Owwww," my mom's boyfriend would instruct me to "not be such a pussy."

I thought I was doing pretty well. I had a compound fracture, broken in four places and all I said was "oww" occasionally. Not to mention the fact that I was thirteen.

When I was finally seen by a doctor, they brought me into the X-ray room in a wheelchair and took a few pictures of it. When they wheeled me out the doctor explained that my arm was "pretty bad" and that it would require surgery.

A few hours later my arm was all put back together and placed inside a hard white container. The worst part was that my summer school started the next day and you were only allowed to miss two days before being kicked out of the summer school program.

I missed two days and returned to school on the third and was actually the first person in my class to complete the course, all the while using my left hand to write.

You might think that this was the most painful thing that ever happened to me. It wasn't. I think I was in shock the whole time and hardly felt anything in my arm.

As a side note, and sort of a continuation of the story of my scar collection, I want to mention something else. When I was around five years old I had a huge rash that was enveloping my entire chest and belly. I almost resembled a burn victim with the red and bloody bumps all over me. My mom took me to doctors, dermatologists, pediatric specialists, etc. and no one could come up with an answer as to what I had.

One day I had a doctor's appointment, that if I knew what I was in for, I wouldn't have went along so easily. My mother and I entered the doctor's office and I took my place on the table with the flimsy paper over it. I took off my shirt as instructed and I noticed that two nurses came into the room. The doctor told me to lay, face up on the table. When I did so the nurses and my mom held me by my arms and legs as the doctor proceeded to cut two bloody red bumps off of my left shoulder.

Despite these two stories, there still exists one more, and far more painful story that I have to tell. A summer afternoon had my friend and me in a field in my home town, investigating an abandoned truck. It looked like all the truck needed was a battery. We disconnected the battery in my '91 Mercury Cougar and walked it over to the truck and connected it. All we succeeded in doing was draining my battery. I called Christian to come out and help jump my car. While we were waiting for him we investigated the lot a little more.

We found a lawn mower which had no wheels. I lifted it up. Dissatisfied, I let it drop. It landed right on my right big toenail. It hurt a little at first. The pain just continued to grow until that night. After I drove Will home I went back home myself, my foot throbbing the entire way. I tried to go to sleep, but the pain kept waking me up. I knew what I had to do. I took a needle from my mom's sewing box and a light I had and closed the door behind me on my way into the bathroom. I fired up the lighter and held it under the needle until I was satisfied that it was good enough. With all my strength I pressed the needle down into my big toenail.

By now my toenail was about to pop off from all the blood that was building up pressure underneath. It was the most intense stabbing pain I have ever had. I tried as hard as I could, but nothing would pierce my toenail. I finally told my mom the next morning that I needed to see a doctor.

She brought me down to the hospital and when the doctor came into the room he told me exactly what he was going to do: "Locally anesthetize and burn a few holes in my big toenail with a cautery." That sounded delightful to me and I couldn't wait to begin. He plugged my toe with a few shots of numbing medicine and asked me "Do you know what a cautery is?" I said "A close group of friends?" (Coterie) and he said "I guess you're right, but not that kind of cautery."

When he brought it out I watched the whole procedure without flinching. It was so great. When my toe was finally numbed I felt so great not having that pain. The doctor quickly burned four or five holes into my toenail and said, "okay, you might want to turn away for this part." I said, "No thank you." He gave me a moment to reconsider and I didn't. He grabbed my toe with his gloved hand and squeezed. The blood flowed out through the holes and it felt fantastic. All the pressure cleared out from under my toenail and I felt great again.

Later on that night I pulled my toenail off with some pliers. I just had to soak my foot in warm water and epsom salt each night. In time I developed an ingrown toenail. I went back to the hospital to get it fixed, but that really didn't do anything for me. Since then my wife fixed it for me.

Canine Destiny

Firstly, before I begin exploring the anecdotes of my own life I would like to say that this story is in no way intended to be a sad expression of my childhood. It is supposed to be a funny story though it has a rather depressing ending. I am reminded of this story periodically by black and white dogs and softly furry white rabbits. And shortly you will see why.

When I was a young boy, about seven years womb-removed, my mom bought a dog. Not just any dog, mind you, but a female Alaskan Malamute that we named Sierra after the sometimes snowcapped western mountain range. Sierra was a playful dog that quickly became much larger and stronger than me. I remember sitting on her back and having her race me around my backyard like a pony. Everyone yelled at me to stop "riding the dog" but it was too much fun and, being a little troublemaker, I couldn't resist.

The funny thing about Malamutes - I don't know if it was specific to Sierra - is they seem to talk. I think Sierra could say "I love you" but in a very Scooby-Doo sort of way. Every time my family would assemble for dinner near the sliding door to the backyard, Sierra would stand close by and howl like mad. If you made eye contact with her and tried to talk to her, she would mimic the rough sounds of your voice.

That dog was a beast, but she was always nothing but a lady to me. I remember having a few of my friends come over to see her and she would playfully pounce on them with her front paws, knock them down onto my sun-washed deck, and, grasping the back of their shirts with her mouth, she would drag them around until an adult came to extricate the screaming child from the jaws of the savage animal. She never did that to me though. She was a great dog, but, looking back at the situation now, she was definitely not an ideal dog for a small boy.

My family moved with Sierra to Knightsen, California, a small farming town far removed from nearly everything except dirt and boredom. We lived on a dried up old almond orchard with dead and neglected trees spread out over even intervals covering some forty acres. The dog loved living out there. She could run up and down, make all the noise she wanted, and, of course, mercilessly destroy smaller creatures like squirrels, gophers, and the occasional shy raccoon.

One day our neighbors, who lived very close to our house, came over to report some unfortunate news. In the darkness of night one of their lambs had either been ravaged by a werewolf or killed by our mirthful Sierra. The poor dark red/snow white creature was missing large chunks of itself in various different places. My brother Neal had to bury the lamb and my mother had to pay for its gruesome death.

And do you know what that fucking dog did after that? She dug up the lamb and chewed it. So Neal buried it again. And once more Sierra dug the lamb up and gnawed at its carcass. He finally ended up just chaining the dog to the dead lamb just to teach her a lesson, but she kept eating it. You could hear the chains lightly clank themselves together and the sound of a lonely ravenous dog moan out to be unchained. She wasn't locked up for long, though. I think we couldn't bear to have her constrained for an entire day.

That pattern didn't end with only one lamb. Sierra got another one before we had to leave Knightsen. It's really a good thing that the stupid dog didn't get shot trying to murder our neighbor's livestock. I would have been heartbroken.

Before we left I made my mom buy me another animal: the cutest long eared white rabbit you ever saw. I named him Sonic, after the popular video game hedgehog. Sonic lived in his cage, licked his salt lick, and drank from his upside down water bottle like a good little rabbit and never really made much trouble. Of course we never even thought of letting the rabbit out of his cage when Sierra was around, that would be absolute foolishness.

So, after the death of the lambs, Sierra, Sonic, and my family moved back to our small house in Antioch where Sierra, together with Sonic, shared the backyard. There was a rabbit hutch in the yard that, judging by the color of the wood, was made of the same lumber as the faded deck. This was Sonic's rabbit apartment. The hutch was rudimentary at best, a simple structure of two by fours, chicken wire, and a six inch piece of wood to that latched on the front to hold the large swinging door shut.

I would go visit Sierra and Sonic nearly every day. They were great and loving animals and devoured my attention whenever I saw them.

One day as I returned home from school I went out to see Sierra and Sonic in their shared space and was absolutely shocked at what I discovered. "SIERRA! SIERRA!" I called, but she wasn't in our small backyard. "SIERRA!!!! SIERRA!!!!!!" I screamed. Then I noticed that the Sonic's apartment door was wide open and he was gone too. Upon closer inspection of the rest of the back yard, I noticed that both animals were indeed long gone and the only remnants of both of them were patches of soft white hair strewn around the thirsty dry ground.

I asked my mom what happened to the dog and the bunny and she said very simply, "Sierra ate Sonic so I took her to the pound." So that was it: I lost two of my quadrupedal friends in one short afternoon.


I wonder what happened to Sierra after she was institutionalized. I bet she was adopted by some family that fell in love with her gentle and poofy exterior. I doubt the adopting family would suspect that that dog had tasted blood more than once. I think when you tally it all up, Sierra killed two lambs, one rabbit, and at least one hundred slender, scurrying squirrels. She may have been a monster; she may have been related to Stephen King's "Cujo" in some strong way, but she was mine. She was my bloodthirsty, hardcore killing machine if only for a short while. To this day when I see a big fluffy black and white dog pass me by in the street, three words always immediately force their way into my head: "RRYE RRRUV RRRRHOOOO!!!!!!!!!"

Thursday, April 22, 2010

First Entry: What do I do now?

I'm a little confused on how exactly I should begin. I want this to reflect what I am passionate about, so it’s probably best that I begin describing what I’m makes me most passionate.


I am a fan of sports like MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), baseball, football, and basketball. I don’t particularly care for hockey, golf, tennis, croquet, or soccer. I also enjoy comedy, writing, and movies. One great pastime of mine is making fun of everyone and everything. It has often gotten me in trouble with family and friends but it’s something I can’t seem to turn off. If a joke is there, I’ll open my big mouth and it will definitely fall out.


Aside from sports, funny anecdotes, and making fun of things, there’s really not much to me. I’m not that attached to anything, really. I’m an atheist and as such I don’t believe in a whole lot of order in the world other than what human beings create. I believe much of what religions (every religion) try to force on people is either completely self evident or just an unexamined line of half truths.


Generally speaking, half truths and misdirections always piss me off, but religion is particularly stacked in this category. One of my favorite examples of the glaring half truths of religion is the old worn out platitude that goes something like this: “god helps those who help themselves.” As a side note, you’ll notice that I did not capitalize the word “god.” That’s because I don’t believe in the concept of god and if I’m not going to be roped into the whole believing in the concept thing, I’m not going to capitalize the word either! Going back to the quote, which is not in the bible, but is a common thought in many religious minds, it seems to say that if you want help, help yourself, and at the same time god will help you.


It’s very unclear what the hell this means. It could mean don’t rely on god (which I like), or it could mean god only helps those who are willing to work for their own benefit. To me it seems like this quote, which again isn’t in the bible and most religious zealots will fight me on this and say how dumb I am for using this as my first example of religious stupidity because it’s not actually espoused by any church, is a fundamental flaw in religion. Religion minimizes the individual human life and promotes the ethereal world that has never accomplished shit. Religion convinces people that there is an unseen force that propels them to greatness and that there is some unknown plan for every person.


The biggest manifestation of this is when people accept awards, give speeches after important milestones in their careers, or get overly sentimental for any reason. Among these my favorite is the award acceptance speech that begins like this, “First off, I’d like to thank GOD and JESUS for this award. Without them I couldn’t have done it. Also, I’d like to thank my mom, my producer. Thank you.” To me it seems like god or jesus didn’t write the song that got the artist a gold record or a grammy or what have you, it was the artist who wrote the song. Another thing about those moments that makes them so funny is they’re often incongruous with the lessons of god. The all time best is when a fighter has just obliterated his opponent, giving him black eyes, maybe a huge cut on his face somewhere, blood dripping down his face, eyes swelled shut, and the first thing the fighter does is thank god for it. I’m confused why they’re thanking god. Is god the personal helper of shitty rap artists and people who walk a fine line between athlete and criminal? Did Jesus ever say “I want a good clean fight. Obey my commands at all times. Go back to your corners and fight on my command”?


Don’t get me wrong, I love MMA and its fighters, though some piss me off to no end. I’ll get to all that later on. It just seems like religion is filled with inconsistencies, most of which are explained away by the mysterious concept of faith. To me, faith is the final word in religion. It suspends disbelief just long enough to make you forget about disbelief entirely. The argument of faith is the church’s way of saying “stop asking questions and believe what we tell you.” It’s like when you’re a child and you pester somebody so much that they give you that look, you know, the “I will beat your ass if you don’t shut up” look. To me those looks have always been a challenge to keep on doing what I have been doing. I don’t believe what others tell me just because they say I should. I need to - and I think others should feel the same way - learn the facts and make my own decision instead of swallowing whatever message is being rammed down my throat.