Massive Tribal Dump

Give that man a job. Seahawks seventh round draft pick
Justin Forsett ran like a cat dipped in turpentine last night
in the 'Hawks preseason 29-26 OT victory over the Bears.

Greg:

I'm glad you finally got to witness first hand the huge screaming steaming drinking throbbing mass that is a Seahawks game at Qwest Field. Granted, it was only a preseason game, and therefore was only "sports orgy lite". Still, it made our backup QB Charlie Frye's foibles - the interceptions and whatnot - no less rage-inducing. (If he were more competent perhaps we could get "World's Most Athletic Human" Seneca Wallace out where he should be, catching passes instead of backing up Matt Hasselbeck.)

But I have to tell you, every year at the first game when the players come flying out of the tunnel to all the smoke and fire and beer-gurgling fanfare, it reminds me of the scene in "Gladiator" when the fighters are brought up into the light of the coliseum for the first time and all nearly crap their loincloths over the sheer fucking size of it all.

Now you also know how oh-so-very-goddamn loud it is. Again - it was only a preseason game, so it was "ear-splitting lite". Increase that cacophony by a factor of 2.5 and you get an idea of what a post-season game is like.

Now that you know what I mean when I say that I find it quite satisfying to take a gigantic emotional dump in public, and to do so without consequences, and to have it be an expected behavior. Also, as you pointed out, to not just take an emotional dump individually, but tribally as part of the tens-of-thousands-strong screaming steaming drinking throbbing mass. (SSDTM for those of you who need an acronym for everygoddamnthing if it gets more than two mentions. I'm looking at you, Microsoft. -Ed.)

If you know me as well as you do, dear brother, it begs the question how I, who never had the athletic inclination to throw my voice fer Winchell's sake, would become a frothing sweating screaming flailing fan of football. (Or FSSFF. Not the second mention yet. I know. I'm just getting ready. -Ed.)

Easy. I think football is a dharma. It represents an integral concept of this difficult and oft-confusing life that is represented in my favorite fuckin' haiku of all goddamn time from Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828):

It is a dewdrop world

Surely it is

And yet

And yet -

Football is only a concept. (Oh yeah? Try convincing Bears backup QB Caleb Hanie that the 600-pound sack of man-crete that flattened him last night was a concept. I'm sure his chiropractor would like to hear that too. -Ed.) (Quiet you! -TRG.) It is what it is - to flog a hackneyed football interview phrase - because we all agree that it is. The fans, the players, the coaches, the ticket scalpers - you get the drift. It only has as much importance as I interpret it to have. I scream until I hyperextend my pyloric valve in anger when our backup quarterback Charlie Frye throws an interception, but I do so by choice. If it were, say, Bears QB Rex Grossman throwing the interception, I would shriek with glee and dispense high-fives to everyone within high-fiving range.

I find it enjoyable to become a FSSFF (Nice! -Ed.) because it is one of the few times in life when I am conscious of the emotional choice. In the rest of my life, it's not like that. Someone tells me shocking news and I startle. People die and I weep. My brother grieves and I despair. The cat pukes on my bedspread and my heart is filled with blackest rage. All of these things, though they seem appropriate to the situation, arise spontaneously and therefore seem as autonomic as a sneeze.

All these emotions, however autonomic they may seem, arise from values that I possess: the worth of my bedspread and the importance of my brother's well-being, for instance. These could be subject to emotional choice as well. I could choose to help others breathe through their upsets as I breathe through mine, to listen compassionately when my brother grieves, and transform the urge to punt the cat into compassion for his dyspepsia. (Or if you must punt the cat, punt him delicately and with loving-kindness. -Ed.)

But I will always rage over the foibles of Charlie Frye, because as Issa put it so succinctly two hundred years ago:

It is a preseason game

Surely it is

And yet

And yet -


Cheers, -Thaddeus

A Prayer to St. Expeditus

St. Expeditus (above), patron saint of
The Republic of Molossia (where the f?),
also patron of procrastinators, programmers,
and emergencies (I shit you not), but
lest we forget, also patron saint of
greased lightning, fedex drivers, espresso jitterati,
nervous little dogs, wigged-out bugs,
alka seltzer bubbles, 4.4 forty runners,
coke freaks, meth freeeks, crank frreeeex,
and (say it with me now)
les freaks Parkour.

Saint Expeditus -

Howya doin'? You don't say. Ossum.

Most Holy and Glorious Martyr Expeditus,
Let us not beateth around the bush.
I know you know what I need.

I have already entreated St. Joseph on this point
And I know that you two talk,
Belonging thou both to the same lodge, as you do
And drinking ye both of the Fuzzy Navels
And playing thou both the game of bridge concomitantly
Each Wednesday and Saturday

For St. Joseph, while he's a nice guy
And handy with the woodworking tools
And good with the changing of the Holy Diapers of
Our Lord and Savior, Wee Screaming Baby Jesus,
...by the way, where the hell is Mary? Getting a pedicure or something?
Howcome she's not on poop detail?
Ohh...step father. Got it.

But lookest thou here, St. Expedite:
I didst my due diligence
And in accordance with the instructions
(In both English and Spanish)
On the laminated holy card,
Didst bury St. Joseph in order to hasten my request
That he help us procure a new home

I maketh not this shit up. That's what it said to do.
Think about it, St. Expedite.
I am a grown-ass man, yet I found myself
Whispering strange incantations over a plastic statue
And covering it with dirt in the deepest, darkest part
Of the mid-afternoon
My dignity thus compromised
For so great was my need
Disregarded I the chortling of the neighbors
And stoppered mine ears against their epithets

So - St. Expedite - here's the deal:
Whilst Most Holy St. Joseph is taking
A Blessed Dirt Nap
Steppest thou up to the ear of God -
- the BIG God, not any of the little ones -
And with an urgency that denotes impending urination
Beseech He/Him/She/It on my behalf
So that I, my wife, and all of our cohabiting family members
Who number (wait...five, plus eight...carry the twelve...)
Who are more numerous than the beasts of the air,
The birds of the field, and all the stars in the firmament
Of Hollywood combined -
(I didst the math and knowest it to be true for I have shown my work
In mine own third period notebook)
Lo! They are many and the house it is small -

Most Holy Martyr St. Expeditus,
As I hath mentioned before,
One saint has already been put on the job
And he's head-down in a flower pot, mulling his fate.
Don't want to sound like I'm threatening or anything
But unless thou likest the taste of dirt,
Perhaps you oughtta intercede on my behalf here chop chop,
Capiche?

Amen, and BFF:

-Thaddeus

A Prayer to St. Joseph

Props to the Pops: Lil' Jesus gives his step dad an under-chin high five.

Most Holy Saint Joseph,
step dad of Lil' Jesus,
for whom baby aspirin is named,
you taught our Lord
the carpenter's trade,
and saw to it
that he was always properly housed,
hear my earnest plea.

I want you to help me now
as you helped your foster-child Jesus,
and as you have helped many others
in the matter of housing.

Yeah, that's right, I said "housing".
I know I bought a house just a year ago.
Heareth me out.

I wish to purchase a house in the Admiral District,
a beautifully renovated 1929 Tudor,
in a great location near schools,
shops & parks(!)
with elegant period details & modern updates
leaded glass windows, tile fireplace, picture moldings
& mahogany woodwork
(yea, though the listing hath many ampersands
and parenthetically-ensconced exclamation points)
slab granite counters & eating
bar, new cabinetry, farmhouse sink & stainless appliances.

Yea verily, it is even earthquake retrofitted!

Most Holy St. Joseph,
who seest the content of mine heart and wallet
and knowest that I need more liquidity
and more open credit sufficient to procure
this domicile (though my credit rating be blameless),
...just hang tight for the rest of my plea, okay?
And not let thy holy eyes roll heavenward in disgust
and exasperation.

For with thine aid, I shall purchase it
quickly, easily, and profitably
yea though mine own real estate agent
mocketh me and telleth me to
suck it up for another year
with mine current shack.

And I implore you to grant my wish
by purifying the hearts of the two nice ladies
who own the place,
and filling them with eagerness, compliance, and honesty,
and having them see their way clear
to accommodate my impoverished ass
(likewise, a shitload of cash
thrown my way wouldn't hurt either,
if thou gettest my drift)
and by letting nothing impede the
rapid conclusion of the sale.

Dear Saint Joseph,
I know you would do this for me
out of the goodness of your heart
and in your own good time,
but my need is very great now
and so I must make you hurry
on my behalf chop chop.

For lo, my current residence overfloweth with residents.
My beloved mother-in-law Lucy,
who maketh The Waffles of Righteousness
each morning of which we eat,
verily I trod upon her even this morning
so pinched are our quarters.
Likewise the cat I have trod upon,
as well as the wife, the dog, and several door-to-door
salespersons, and they likewise have trod upon me,
each in their own time
verily because of the tiny
space wherein we live.
Yea, we squeezeth through the roof beams
like toothpaste, so pinched are
our quarters.

Saint Joseph, here is the deal:
I am going to place you
in a difficult position
with your head in darkness
and you will suffer as our Lord suffered,
until the aforementioned house is purchased by us.

Why? Because All The Catholics I Know
said I have to bury your likeness in the yard,
head down, until the deal is done.
And there was the part about pouring martinis on you, too.
I am not making this shit up.

Then, Saint Joseph, I swear
before the cross and God Almighty,
that I will redeem you
and you will receive my gratitude
and a place of honour in my new home.

Just do me this one solid.

Amen.

Rage, Jesus, And The Hellclimber 3000

Hellclimber: die Treppe, die verwunden!
If it did not already exist, Dr. Josef Mengele would've invented it.

Greg:

I have to preface this letter by saying that a few days have passed since I wrote what appears below, and in that time, the rage of which I speak has ebbed, owing to the ever-changing landscape of the human psyche and certain interpersonal dynamics (misunderstandings, apologies, whatnot). You should understand. As I recall, you are as sweet as sugar candy most of the time, but also have inclinations to phlegmatism, biliousness, epithets, invection - not to mention acrid, acrid spite from time to time. Indeed, I recall times from our youth when local ne'er-do-wells would pelt your window with stones while you were napping just so they could see you rocket from the house in a purple rage. Glee ensued at your expense. Such is the burden of the perpetually peevish.

Well, I am no different, other than the fact that I've never been pricked to naked rage by the neighborhood wags. And I'm sure that Those Who Read Over Your Shoulder (TWROYS) will wonder was it I? Was I the one who pissed him off Grand Royal this week? To which I reply, "Dear Readers, in ways large and small, and in your own very special way, it was every single one of you bastards."

But let's be friends now! That was yesterday! Que sera sera! J'apologize! Today I have a clear and compassionate mind, a contrite heart, and a fresh load of Snapper Turtles. (Why Snapper Turtles? Read on.)

-TRG

Greg:

I don't look around for ways to suck at being Buddhist. I really don't. It seems that I contain a great deal of rage, and that is the crux of the "sucking at Buddhism" issue. It's hard to be enraged and compassionate at the same time.

I go to a Buddhist shrink. I talk to her about my rage all the time. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: "Boy am I pissed."
Her: "Is there anything wrong with that?"
Me: "Well...It limits the ways in which I can see solutions, that's for sure."
Her: "What if you were to say 'I experience myself as an angry person'? What if you were to say that?"
Me: (Internally: WHUH the FUH?!) "I guess...I...OK. I experience myself as an angry person."
Her: "Where do you feel that in your body?"
Me: "Ummm...mostly in the steam that is now jetting out of the holes in my exploding cranium."

Long story short, I've had rather a trying week at work so far and it's only Wednesday. The week didn't start out so bad, though. On Easter Sunday I went to St. Mark's Cathedral. To celebrate, the Episcopalians brought out what can only be described as the 40-Foot Holy Ribbon Dancer(s) and the ever-popular Cloth Butterfly On A Stick. All of this being so far removed from what I understood as the story of Holy Week, I decided to revise my understanding of the Easter story thus:

33 years ago, Peter Rabbit laid an egg inside a tomb in Eastern Hoosapatamia. After three days, the egg hatched and out toddled Baby Jesus. This miracle is repeated every year. Peter Rabbit lays literally millions of eggs each year, but only one - The Cadbury Prize Egg - is lucky enough to be laid inside the tomb. It is said that after Baby Jesus hatches, if he pokes his head out of his tomb and sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of Easter. If not, bring on The Rapture. (So far, so good on that whole Rapture deal.)

Yeah, so, church. Oh and further good news, I did not burst into flame. Afterwards we had a sumptuous feast of Fake Lamb Stew (which is so good, I can only guess that it's made from real lambs). Aaron, Marissa, Justin (Aaron's new roommate), Teresa, Elizabeth and I had a fantastic time. Many laughs were shared. It was the best Easter ever. EVER! Doubt me at your peril!

See? There it went again. The whole misplaced rage thing.

Which bring me to my next point, which is displaced rage. Or is it really displaced? You be the judge. This week we have a lot going on at work, and a lot has gone wrong (he said, for lack of a better way to not bore you with the details) as it is wont to do when we have complicated projects. So that means in turn that people get grouchy and pouty and vindictive so on - you know, the usual adult corporate behavior. Their behavior is not what's really troublesome to me. Nor am I trying to point the finger at myself and say that the situation would've been different if I had thought about it differently. No, bad behavior is bad behavior, period, and it's reasonable for me (or anyone else) to get angry over being treated poorly. What's troublesome to me is that my primary reaction to that sort of thing is absolute rage. In other words, excessive anger.

Don't get me wrong. I don't run around the office biting into jugulars. I keep a very cool demeanor for the most part. But the counterpoint to my outward serenity is the I Hope Your Fucking Eyes Get Fucking Devoured By Fucking Snapper Turtles, You Fucking Fuck mantra that runs beneath my calm exterior. It's distracting to say the least. Further (and perhaps more) troubling is the heart-bleedingly ardent Please Baby Jesus, Send The Snapper Turtles To Devour That Fucking Fuck's Fucking Eyeballs prayer that goes along with it. This, in my mind, is irrefutable evidence that at the core, I am not only a very bad Buddhist, I'm a very bad person.

So anyway, in the midst of wishing death to all four corners of the compass, an email to the entire consumer marketing division comes down from on high reprimanding us for - get this - playing too much ping pong, and directing us to limit our ping pong to 30 minutes or less per day. The reason given is that we're behind in our subscriber sign-ups for the quarter. (I'm sure you can hear the resounding WHUH the FUH already.) The email did not include an attachment that proved the linear connection between sign-ups lost and number of minutes of ping pong played. It would've been nice if there was an f(x)= -4/x thrown in there somewhere at least. And I have a creeping suspicion that if we're behind in sign-ups, the problem is much larger than ping pong. And I also need to remind you that a) I don't even play ping pong, and b) I'm part of a creative team. We don't stack bricks for a living, so more time spent at the desk does not equal more or better work done. Surely you know what I'm talking about. The downside of all of this is that there's really nothing I can do about it, so I'm left sitting here in my own bile.

So yeah, so then I'm freaking beseeching Baby Jesus to send an Army of Snapper Turtles such as the world has never seen. And I mean to the point of obsessive psychopathology. And I'm doing all kinds of counterproductive stuff. Losing sleep. Biting the cat. That sort of thing. So I decided that it'd probably be a good idea to work off that rage by going to the gym.

Au contraire. It was not to be. For on this day, I chose to work out my rage on the Hellclimber. I figure, "Hey, it's like walking up the stairs. How bad can it be?" Answer: It can be hell! It's awful! It may make you strong and give you the lungs of a teenage whale, but it will punish you mentally and physically. You climb and climb, but at the end of half an hour, you haven't made it to Somewhere Nice. You haven't even made it to the fucking landing of Somewhere Nice. You're still right there on the Hellclimber! For The Love Of Our Egg-Born Saviour, I say this thing is the primary tool of the Dark One.

Needless to say I was (and am) still enraged. The only thing that has changed is now the Hellclimber has been added to my Death List.

[If you'd like to purchase your very own Hellclimber, click here!]

So my point is this: what the heck do I do with all my rage when it becomes physically unmanageable? Is there some amount of rage that is either justified or to be expected? And finally, where can I get some ravenous Snapper Turtles?

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

The Rapture: Free Cars, No Fundies!

The Clearasil Jesus: This guy
couldn't kill nobody!

Greg:

Sgt. Rock, our brother, sent me a link to a blog by a guy name of Joe Bageant. Good writer. Mighty long-winded, though. Never say in five words what you can say in ten-and-a-half pages, I guess. Bageant was raving about what hate-seething tomes the ultra-rightwing-Christian novels of the "Left Behind" series are. Were it not for the fact that I read this particular installment, I never would have read any portion of the "Left Behind" series. Christian Hate Porno is not my bag. My thing is real estate. Send me pictures of a nice 3BR/2.75BA turn of the century Tudor revival with real mahogany plate-rail and wainscoting, vaulted ceilings and picture molding, and I may never leave the bathroom. I look at architecture the same way most men look at porn. (Yeah, baby! Lift those soffits! Show those dentils! Give the boys what they paid for!)

As usual, I have digressed.

Joe Bageant happened to reprint a paragraph or so of one of the series. It was some over-the-top kill-porn where Jesus was making the guts of the infidel - whoops! unbelievers - 'splode and their tongues dissolve in their mouths with a wave of his hand. Here's a chunk:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again." -- From Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

"The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."-- 15-year old fundamentalist fan of the Left Behind series

For a second I thought they were talking about some pee-o'd radioactive Guest Worker who had SuperPowers. I was so wrong. They're talking about Jesus H. Christ, the guy that Mel Gibson made that movie about. You know, the guy with all the compassion and stuff. Little Lord Jesus No Crying He Makes. That guy.

So yeah. Wow. I had no idea what a freaking blood-bathing hate-tome industry the whole "Left Behind" thing was until I read Joe's blog. 65 million copies of this stuff has been sold. And as he says, if the same books had been written from an Islamic perspective, we'd be burning them in the streets, expunging freedom of speech from the Constitution, and closing the borders.

To be fair, I didn't quite finish this blog entry. It sucked all the air out of the room and I passed out. And all I really know about the Last Days/Rapture stuff is what I've read on bumper stickers ("In the event of The Rapture, this car will be unmanned" - to which I reply, "Ossum! Free car!"). But the jist I got from it was that the popularity of these books is cause for a great deal of concern for non-theistic types like myself and everyone else who isn't either a honkie or a fundie (fundamentalist Christian) or both. We're all likely to get snuffed either directly or indirectly by these wingnuts any day.

I say "whoah now". Here's why. You know what type of media has a rate of consumption 5-to-1 over every other type of media? PORN. Yeah buddy. So that means for all 65 million of the "Left Behind" series that has been sold, 325 million copies of world-renowned smut classics like "Temple of Poon" ('Witness meat-eating hardbodies lunging on love lumber!') have gone before them. And out of all the people who buy all that porn, how many of them are people we should be really concerned about, viz., rapists and the like? A sheensy beensy teensy percentage, that's how many. Not none, but close. It's one thing to look. It's another to touch. It's the same sort of illogical panic people send up that equates homicidal sprees with video game usage.

The thing that concerns me about Christian fundamentalism - specifically the sort of fundamentalism the authors of the "Left Behind" series espouse, is that I don't hear any other Christians speaking out against it. If they are, they must not be very loud. I mean, isn't there a single priest or congregant out there trying to point out that Jesus was probably more of a touchy-feely and less of a killy-mcbloodbath? (Actually, from what I remember of catechism, I'm damn sure Jesus didn't kill anybody, so these jokers can kiss my left behind.) I mean, c'mon, isn't there even a single Episcopalian (where there's four, there's a fifth!) who can write a scathing letter or something?

So why not me? I'll tell ya why. Because my Vow of Refuge clearly states that I have to take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha on this one. And not one of the the Three Jewels has told me (yet) that I can throw all their hate-filled fundie asses into a blazing chasm. Instead, I have to sit my own ass on my zafu and generate compassion for people who would really like to see me get flayed with the flaming sword of Jesus.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

Baby Jesus Is The Antichrist

Baby Jesus: Strap on a coupla horns and he's good to go.

Greg:

A perfectly horrifying thought crossed my mind over the holidays. No, not the one about how Regis Philbin may actually be a puppet run by a gang of reprobate squirrels. The other one - the one where Baby Jesus is actually the embodiment of evil.

Think about it. During what time of year are more families and wigs torn asunder than any other? Yeah, that's right. Christmas. It is the season when the meekest of us become whiskey-fueled, wig-rending psychopaths. SUVs, chock-a-block full with holiday shoppers sport bumper stickers that read "I'd Step On Your Mom's Throat To Get A Great Deal On A Tickle Me Elmo At Wal-Mart!"

And what spirit provides the fuel for this season of revelry? Baby Jesus. Ergo? Yes. Ergo. And that is exactly my point.


Baby Jesus: Yo, Mister Potato Head! Ready to bend to my evil will?
Santa: Yes, my Dark Master.

Go ahead. Defy my perfectly circular logic. Have you ever seen two Baby Jesii in the same place at the same time? No. You have not. And you will not. Not unless they're stuffed. Or replicas. The kind of replicas with Cameras for Eyes that send Communiques back to the Factory! And then the Filthy Bottom will send His Dark Agents to Poison My Food! Igor! Bring me the ether! Sswwwffffft!

Much better. Now where was I?

Oh yes. We were talking about Christmas Dinner with the family. It went just fine, except that I think I had way too much coffee beforehand and afterhand and inbetweenhand and may still be suffering the effects of caffeine-induced toxic psychosis. And I've had tons of sugar in the past few days. I'm not too sure if I'm not sleeping at all or actually sleeping a lot faster than I used to. My gums - if you can call them that - are complaining bitterly about the truckloads of Italian nougat that I've been shoveling past them. And here's the kicker: I've been losing weight. I lost 1-2/3rds man teat in the week leading up to Christmas. But then again I've been both working out at the IMA quite a bit and badgering my wife. Wife-badgering, if you haven't tried it yet, is an excellent means of burning excess calories, although it does come with the risk of the wife getting fed up with your juvenile shenanigans and driving a stake of holly through your heart on Christmas night.

Look, before you click that little X in the upper right hand corner of your browser and close this window forever, I really do have a point. And that point is that I discovered this holiday season that certain emotional episodes may be the result of the emotional interpretation of bodily sensations brought about by diet. To wit, caffeine making a neurotic person's heart go pitter-pat might make them believe that there was something wrong with them physically, and then cause them a great deal of stress which they in turn take out on the family, the in-laws, the dog and whatever. Even people who otherwise have a great deal of emotional integrity might snap under the onslaught of increased sugar and caffeine intake combined with holiday stressors. So my theory is that it's not just the holiday that stresses people out and makes them into a bunch of emotional weirdos. It's the added crappy food/lotsa sugar/loads of caffeine thing that causes otherwise tender, loving hands to curl into the wig-rending talons of the Holiday Harpie. So - long story short - if you're a bona fide nut like me, there are more reasons to watch you diet over the holidays than just keeping your girlish figure.

And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to weeping like a wee bairn - for no particular reason.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus