prayers to Baal

By the millions this year, during the days immediately following Thanksgiving, otherwise self-respecting Americans of all religious backgrounds, socio-economic strata, and ethnic heritages will dutifully bow before god Baal, the ancient deity of wasteful excess. Featured prominently in the Christian bible's old testament, Baal seduced the children of Israel while they were waiting for Moses to return from the Mount Sinai; within a short time they went from considerate and caring individuals to rapacious, lustful, and greedy cunts hellbent on grabbing, stuffing, wanting, needing, taking. Intended to be taken more as a metaphor than as an historical event, the seduction of the faithful by Baal was so great, and so extensive, that it caused Moses to ruin the first copy of the ten commandments, whereupon he slunk back up the mountain to obtain – from his jealous and spiteful god YHWH – another set.

The seduction continues this year during the celebrations of excessive and unnecessary consumption referred to in the press as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Once again, otherwise considerate individuals will shake off the cruel yoke of frugal moderation in order to buy slightly-newer copies of things they already have, purchase gifts for distant relatives who wanted something else entirely, and generally act as if they were total fucking jerks while racking up personal debt on their credit cards and mortgaging their children's future in order to buy television sets slightly wider than the ones they already have. Once again, tens of millions of self-proclaimed Christians will spit in the face of YHWH, he who demands that all praise be given to him and him alone, he who calls for the death and banishment of those who mock his name, his power, his glory, his and his alone, now and forever. (Failing to follow the clearly-stated directives of one's god amounts to mocking that god's very existence.)

Do these poor fools realize that they're perpetuating the culture of me-first consumerism that is surely and steadily dragging America down into sad oblivion? Do they see the hypocrisy of driving to their churches in gleaming cars while dressed in fancy and expensive clothes in order to scrape perfunctorily before Jesus – a god who urges them to give as much to the poor as they can bear to give and to live their lives in simplicity, humility, and moderation – when in reality they sit in their single-family homes hoarding greenbacks and coveting baubles? Last year's retail sales numbers and this year's sales projections indicate that millions of Americans believe in Baal above Jesus and in consumption above compassion, that they allow advertising firms to dictate their lives, and that they have succumbed fully to the hollow grasp of their black and twisted egos. No amount of talking about this foul erosion of our nation's erstwhile and honorable frugality will make things better; I rail on this blog against these excesses just as my father once railed against them from his pulpit, all but begging his parishioners to choose love for one another over love for self. But, just as his words fell mostly on dead ears, so I feel do mine, woeful warnings wantonly ignored. If people wish to violate the tenets of their religion in order to save a couple dollars, that is their choice; if they would rather give in to the siren-call of conspicuous consumption than nurture in their hearts a wondrous and peaceful tranquility, who am I to say that they are wrong to do so? And besides, when the savings are this good, it doesn't matter if a few more people get trampled this year than last – it just means less competition. Save sanity, serenity, and soul – boycott black Friday!

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

on the audacity

Attention, liberty-loving, self-respecting Americans who mind their own business: the forces of greed, deceit, and religious oppression are running for president. Anyone supporting the notion of equality amongst humans ought help to combat this threat. Long have we winced when our leader spoke of ruling us according to the rules found in Christian bible, which is just one of the countless different religious books that we Americans turn to every day. Messieurs Romney and Ryan just announced that if they should be appointed by the electoral college to the presidency that they would add to our secular Constitution a line defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Not only would such an amendment violate the rights of gay and lesbian Americans of sound mind and legal age to wed whomever they should wish to wed, it would contaminate a pure and honest document with the hateful directive of YHWH, the Christian's jealous (Exodus 20:3) and genocidal (Joshua 6:17) godhead. This, however, is not the gravest threat facing our nation at this time; the greater threat comes from the Republican Party itself, and from its mindless, lie-spewing, line-toeing members, light-skinned and well-to-do individuals, puppets marching in jackbooted lock-step with tears of joy in their eyes as their leaders gut the welfare state and destroy the last remaining remnants of fragile, precious Liberty.

Millions march across the globe to protest the greed of vulture capitalists, the avarice of our corporate overlords, and the cruelty of consumption-oriented capitalism, and yet the members of the Republican Party in America chose as their candidate for our nation's highest office a 1%er, a silver-spoon-sucking, income-tax-evading, private-jet-flying, local-job-destroying douchebag whose first name rhymes with shit. And why shouldn't they? They long ago sold their souls to the first corporate bidder to dangle an envelope stuffed with greenbacks in front of their milky gazes, forfeiting sacred Honor for cash, a paltry exchange. This author is not trying to say that only the Republican Party is a donation-addled behemoth that cannot possibly represent the varied interest of one hundred and sixty millions of American voters; the Democratic Party is just as deaf to the cries of the poor, as blind to the whites of its lies, and as polluted with the foul stink of corporate funding as are its donkey-sucking counterparts across the aisle. It is shocking, though, that the Republicans would prove so disconnected from reality, so stultified in what passes with them for thinking, so bedazzled by the righteous fury of religious conservatism that they would even seriously consider openly releasing the platform they drafted for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It appears, however, that my hope for the future of this land was little more than cruel and short-lived fancy, that my belief that we Americans were still a compassionate people bent on uplifting those without means and on perpetuating the notion of personal Liberty was little more than foolhardy delusion.

Beyond this author's whining and my dislike for theocratic rule, the audacity of the 2012 Republican presidential platform is what really chaps my buns, that a party that once included Abraham Lincoln and Theodor Roosevelt could forget that our founding persons conceived this nation as one of Liberty, equality, Safety, and Happiness for all, not as a piggy-bank for brainwashed, super-rich, goose-stepping religious extremists. (America's native religious extremist groups are just as dangerous to our common Safety and Happiness as are foreign religious extremist groups such as al-Qaida or Hezbollah.) A Constitutional ban on gay marriage would destroy the right of each American to choose whom to spend his or her life with, be that person black, white, yellow, tall, short, fat, skinny, hirsute, balding, sick, healthy, gay, straight, whole, crippled, or born without hands. Ultimately, it is not the Republican Party's business, nor is it the business of the federal, state, or local government, nor it is not the business of heterosexual individuals to tell homosexual or transsexual individuals how they should live their lives. So let's all start minding our own business, and focus on making our own lives long, and happy. Stand up, speak out, fight injustice, and keep America free of morally-justified terrorism. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on b.i.b.l.e – 2

A month ago, I wrote a piece ridiculing a bumper-sticker that read: B.I.B.L.E. – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Upon further consideration, the Christian bible does in fact contain a few passages in which the god of the Christian sect, a god called YHWH, spells out in fairly simple tones exactly how people are to comport themselves (if one actually believes that this god dictated to the members of a long-since-vanished desert tribe his outlines for living a good and a virtuous life, which I do not believe). The primary passage is found in a chapter called Leviticus, in what the Christians refers to as their old testament, under heading number 20.

In Leviticus 20, god YHWH (who is supposedly also his own son as well as a spirit known as holy) is said to demand of his followers that they murder homosexuals, people who engage sexually with animals, and those claiming to be mystics or spirit-mediums. The teachings of this bloodthirsty god furthermore demand that his followers slay in public young girls who are found not to be virgins on their wedding night, and that they put to death persons guilty of worshiping idols other than those of the Christian's own triumvirate. YHWH commands this in no uncertain language; this god makes these demands using clear and simple words; these are basic instructions by which the true Christian might prove to the member of his sect that he should survive the forthcoming progroms; they pose a way by which he might prove to his god that he is worthy of going to the sect's Happy Place In The Sky.

Please, believers in YHWH, carry out the clearly worded mandates of your god, and stop standing around bitching and moaning about abortion and the separation of church and state. If you do come at us, however, we rational, open-minded, freedom-loving people shall defend ourselves, our bodies, and our property with terrible purpose, with righteous fury, with passionate rage, and with any and all weapons at our disposal, including yours.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit