O Canada/Dead Pope Society
Well, folks, I learned some valuable lessons this past weekend. I learnt them from a Canadian girl who shall remain nameless. Yes, I said "girl" -- because she's only 12. OK, technically she's 28. But on the inside, she's 12.
I was going to write the whole story, but that would be giving her that much more of my time, and she already wasted a few of my hard-earned American dollars and an entire weekend of my busy life that I will never get back. So instead, I will delete her from my cellphone and my memory, as if she never existed. Poof!
But I WILL take one thing away from this that is probably a very valuable lesson, and that is this: people are fucked-up everywhere. I guess (strangely enough for a cynic such as myself), I was naively laboring under the misconception that, because it is we Americans who are currently creating the most havoc on the planet, that somehow there must be something inherently wrong with us alone. But no, I realize now that there are assholes and idiots everywhere, sprinkled among the teeming masses within every imaginary border, and especially in the strange grab-bag netherworld of the online personals.
And so, my former friend from the Great White North, whose Scrabble skills and character fall far short of my own, I bid you adieu and I wish you the best, knowing that your confessed lack of self-worth is quite truly warranted, and I can only hope that someone someday will be as kind to you as you have been to me.
* * *
Now, on to more important matters.
OK, so the Pope is dead. Those of you who know my deeply religious convictions will no doubt think I am sitting here in sackcloth and ashes, mourning his loss. Well, I scraped my bong for some ashes, but I couldn't find any sackcloth, so I gave up on that. Instead I'm selling authentic organic-hemp replicas of the Shroud Of Turin, handmade with care in China, with a limited number signed by Jesus Christ Himself. Write me for more details -- act now, before I raise the price and put 'em on ebay. All proceeds will go to benefit the starving bloggers of San Francisco, or at least ONE of them. What does this have to do with the death of the Pope, you might ask? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Because I'm going to explain it to you.
Way back before my folks became nutcase fundamentalists (see my 'Dogma' posting), we were raised Catholic. I was pretty young and didn't really fathom the whole thing, but I remember sitting in those uncomfy pews saying "and also with you" a lot. Then we'd have to kneel on the little cushioned collapsible prayer thing-a-majig (does anybody know what those things are called?) to pray silently and cross ourselves over and over again in an apparent attempt to beg for our worthless little lives from some deity who was always on the verge of crushing us for our evilness. But then they would talk about how God was Love, and Forgiveness, and Grace, and all that -- unless you pissed him off, which you were bound to do every five minutes because you are Scum. We weren't always Scum, you see, but that nasty bitch temptress Eve (from whence comes the word 'evil') force-fed Adam the only fruit he wasn't supposed to eat. You know the story, right? If you don't, I ENVY you.
Anyway, we've all been Scum ever since. Original Sin, they call it. Or at least that's what they started calling it after Saint Augustine had his fill of fun and decided his own lusty tendencies weren't his fault; they were the fault of Eve and her wicked hold over Adam. Personally, I can totally relate to Adam -- a beautiful naked woman hands me something, and I will just fucking eat it. Like Jack Nicholson said in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' when you have that little pink beaver in your face, you don't ask it any questions. Or something like that.
OK, so here we are, all Scum, subject to the Vengeful Wrath Of God at any moment, with the only thing standing between us and Eternal Damnation being a bunch of self-appointed Ambassadors To Heaven, all wearing some variation on the Funny But Holy Hat. One must NEVER laugh at the Hat, no matter how Funny. In fact, the Funnier the Hat, the Holier the Wearer. This had to be an act of ironic brilliance on the part of some medieval Merry Prankster Scribe Guy, the idea of the Funny But Holy Hat. Because whomever he was, he had to know that it is nearly impossible to avoid laughing at a funny hat when it is worn seriously. When a drunk guy wears a funny hat to be funny, he just looks stupid and you try to avoid him. But when such a hat is worn in complete earnest, especially with some sort of implied reverence, it is fucking hilarious. And so the nameless inventor of the Funny But Holy Hat, whether intentionally or otherwise, created the perfect ploy for the endlessly repeating mobius strip-like phenomenon of Self-Loathing that is essential to the perpetuation of any successful religion.
Because laughing at the Hat, even to oneself, makes one feel guilty and fearful, and one must sprinkle oneself with Holy Water and cross oneself over and over, and pray the rosary, and beg for God to forgive and not boil or roast us or break us on the wheel for the fowl of the air to pluck out our eyeballs, etc. And, of course, God is not only a Forgiving God, but He can also be bought off, so we put our hard-earned cash in the collection plate in the hopes that God in His mercy will forgive us for snickering ever so softly at the Hat.
Which brings us to the Pope, for centuries the wearer of the Funniest And Therefore Holiest Hat of all. You see, I have no problem with the Pope himself. I'm sure He, like other Popes before Him, truly believed in His office as the representative of God on Earth, saving souls and collecting money to fund the Second Coming (because we all know that such an event would be ridiculously expensive these days, making a typical Presidential campaign look like a Mississippi baby shower). But from MY perspective, as Bono so eloquently put it in 'Bullet the Blue Sky,' "The god I worship ain't short o'cash, Mister." So His Holiness the Pope can be as sincere as a fly laying eggs in shit, but that doesn't make it any prettier. Get me?
After all, that Hat is surrounded by opulence that Donald Trump couldn't make a downpayment on, and all at the expense of desperate, fearful little people who for centuries have watched their children starve in the shadow of the Hat because God's Chief Spokesman refused to allow them birth control while He bled them for ever more protection money in a racket that the entire Mafia could never hope to match. Suddenly the Hat doesn't seem so fucking funny anymore.
I remember when Sinead O'Connor did her little ripping-up the picture of the Pope anti-publicity stunt. I say 'anti' because, while we all know that in the music biz, any publicity is generally good publicity, I do believe that little episode DID actually hurt her career. I got what she was trying to say, but I don't think it was well thought-out, kinda like Michael Moore's diatribe at the Oscars. Choose your battles, and choose where to have them. Otherwise you're just masturbating in public, and unless you're Angelina Jolie, nobody wants to see that.
I remember seeing footage of John Lennon publicly 'apologizing' for his statement that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus Christ," though I think his explanation was deliberately, brilliantly ironic. He was one smart cookie, and he knew the dry British humor of "I meant 'more popular' because there are more people now than there were then" would be taken literally and seriously by clueless American audiences. The Beatles were forgiven their 'blasphemy' and went on to become the legends we all consider them to be. Now THAT was some nice spin. It was a guy like Lennon who invented the whole Hat thing. Maybe they were even related.
Madonna did it twice, first with the whole 'Like a Prayer' controversy and then by becoming Jewish and pushing the whole Kabballah thing. Brilliant. She's the only single individual in the world who does better marketing than the Catholic Church, and she does it without selling guilt. And she's never had to apologize, which is more than I can say for Sinead or even Lennon. But I'm getting off-topic.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The Pope. What, did they think he was gonna last forever? The guy was like two hundred years old! Of course he's dead! He's not God, people! If you want your Popes to last longer, ya gotta do like they do with the Dalai Lama -- he's reincarnated into some little kid, and they find the kid, and voila! The kid is the new Dalai Lama. That way, instead of starting with an old guy, your Spiritual Leader is all fresh and spry, but with the wisdom of the ages behind him. I think I'll write a letter to the Vatican and suggest it. I was there once but didn't see a suggestion box. As a matter of fact, that's a whole other story I need to mention: my trip to the Vatican, when a guy with a submachine gun threw us out after we waited in line for 2 hours in hundred-degree heat, because my girlfriend's shirt fell just slightly short of her belly button. Yeah, they don't let you in there if your belly button is showing, at least not if you're an adult female. Maybe if you're a preadolescent boy, they let you in naked, and you get a backstage pass to meet the Pope Himself. I don't know; I'm just guessing. All I know is that God, or the Pope, or whatever, isn't supposed to see your belly button -- the scar left by your umbilical cord, which SHOULD symbolize your birth into this world, right? I mean, I'm sure Jesus had a belly button, right? The belly button is almost a holy thing (ooh, bad pun) -- and my girlfriend had a pretty nice one too. She's gone now, and I really don't miss her for the most part, but I DO miss a few parts of her, one of which was that oh-so-perfect belly button.
Anyway, I started arguing with the guy, but like I said, he had a submachine gun. Not smart of me. I can see the headline now: MAN GUNNED DOWN BY VATICAN SECURITY IN ST PETER'S SQUARE; RAISES BELLY BUTTON CONTROVERSY. Actually, they'd never let it get out like that. They'd simply say I was a terrorist trying to take down the Pope, and my name would go down in infamy, while my girlfriend would be locked up forever in some Vatican dungeon to keep her quiet. Actually in retrospect, considering how unceremoniously she ended up dumping me later, that might have been a cool way for it all to have ended. Call me vindictive if you must, but vindictive is pretty romantic -- and besides, while she'd be suffering in the same ancient vaults as prisoners of The Inquisition itself, I'd just be dead. She'd have the rest of her life to enjoy a (small, confined) part of the rich history of the region.
So...finally we walked across the piazza and down the tourist-tchotchke-lined street (what is it about Religious Kitsche, anyway? It's a whole crazy multibillion-dollar industry that rivals Catholicism itself!) and bought a big scarf, which she wrapped around herself and then we returned to the line and waited another 2 hours to get in. What can I say? She wanted to see the Sistine Chapel. Of course, she didn't realize that you need binoculars to see the fucking 900-foot ceiling from the crowded floor. I knew that, but I didn't want to pee on her parade after the whole belly button ordeal.
So anyway, what I'm trying to say is, "Hey Pope, buh-bye! I hope it's everything you thought it would be, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. And, oh yeah -- you forgot your Hat."
* * *
I was going to write the whole story, but that would be giving her that much more of my time, and she already wasted a few of my hard-earned American dollars and an entire weekend of my busy life that I will never get back. So instead, I will delete her from my cellphone and my memory, as if she never existed. Poof!
But I WILL take one thing away from this that is probably a very valuable lesson, and that is this: people are fucked-up everywhere. I guess (strangely enough for a cynic such as myself), I was naively laboring under the misconception that, because it is we Americans who are currently creating the most havoc on the planet, that somehow there must be something inherently wrong with us alone. But no, I realize now that there are assholes and idiots everywhere, sprinkled among the teeming masses within every imaginary border, and especially in the strange grab-bag netherworld of the online personals.
And so, my former friend from the Great White North, whose Scrabble skills and character fall far short of my own, I bid you adieu and I wish you the best, knowing that your confessed lack of self-worth is quite truly warranted, and I can only hope that someone someday will be as kind to you as you have been to me.
* * *
Now, on to more important matters.
OK, so the Pope is dead. Those of you who know my deeply religious convictions will no doubt think I am sitting here in sackcloth and ashes, mourning his loss. Well, I scraped my bong for some ashes, but I couldn't find any sackcloth, so I gave up on that. Instead I'm selling authentic organic-hemp replicas of the Shroud Of Turin, handmade with care in China, with a limited number signed by Jesus Christ Himself. Write me for more details -- act now, before I raise the price and put 'em on ebay. All proceeds will go to benefit the starving bloggers of San Francisco, or at least ONE of them. What does this have to do with the death of the Pope, you might ask? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Because I'm going to explain it to you.
Way back before my folks became nutcase fundamentalists (see my 'Dogma' posting), we were raised Catholic. I was pretty young and didn't really fathom the whole thing, but I remember sitting in those uncomfy pews saying "and also with you" a lot. Then we'd have to kneel on the little cushioned collapsible prayer thing-a-majig (does anybody know what those things are called?) to pray silently and cross ourselves over and over again in an apparent attempt to beg for our worthless little lives from some deity who was always on the verge of crushing us for our evilness. But then they would talk about how God was Love, and Forgiveness, and Grace, and all that -- unless you pissed him off, which you were bound to do every five minutes because you are Scum. We weren't always Scum, you see, but that nasty bitch temptress Eve (from whence comes the word 'evil') force-fed Adam the only fruit he wasn't supposed to eat. You know the story, right? If you don't, I ENVY you.
Anyway, we've all been Scum ever since. Original Sin, they call it. Or at least that's what they started calling it after Saint Augustine had his fill of fun and decided his own lusty tendencies weren't his fault; they were the fault of Eve and her wicked hold over Adam. Personally, I can totally relate to Adam -- a beautiful naked woman hands me something, and I will just fucking eat it. Like Jack Nicholson said in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' when you have that little pink beaver in your face, you don't ask it any questions. Or something like that.
OK, so here we are, all Scum, subject to the Vengeful Wrath Of God at any moment, with the only thing standing between us and Eternal Damnation being a bunch of self-appointed Ambassadors To Heaven, all wearing some variation on the Funny But Holy Hat. One must NEVER laugh at the Hat, no matter how Funny. In fact, the Funnier the Hat, the Holier the Wearer. This had to be an act of ironic brilliance on the part of some medieval Merry Prankster Scribe Guy, the idea of the Funny But Holy Hat. Because whomever he was, he had to know that it is nearly impossible to avoid laughing at a funny hat when it is worn seriously. When a drunk guy wears a funny hat to be funny, he just looks stupid and you try to avoid him. But when such a hat is worn in complete earnest, especially with some sort of implied reverence, it is fucking hilarious. And so the nameless inventor of the Funny But Holy Hat, whether intentionally or otherwise, created the perfect ploy for the endlessly repeating mobius strip-like phenomenon of Self-Loathing that is essential to the perpetuation of any successful religion.
Because laughing at the Hat, even to oneself, makes one feel guilty and fearful, and one must sprinkle oneself with Holy Water and cross oneself over and over, and pray the rosary, and beg for God to forgive and not boil or roast us or break us on the wheel for the fowl of the air to pluck out our eyeballs, etc. And, of course, God is not only a Forgiving God, but He can also be bought off, so we put our hard-earned cash in the collection plate in the hopes that God in His mercy will forgive us for snickering ever so softly at the Hat.
Which brings us to the Pope, for centuries the wearer of the Funniest And Therefore Holiest Hat of all. You see, I have no problem with the Pope himself. I'm sure He, like other Popes before Him, truly believed in His office as the representative of God on Earth, saving souls and collecting money to fund the Second Coming (because we all know that such an event would be ridiculously expensive these days, making a typical Presidential campaign look like a Mississippi baby shower). But from MY perspective, as Bono so eloquently put it in 'Bullet the Blue Sky,' "The god I worship ain't short o'cash, Mister." So His Holiness the Pope can be as sincere as a fly laying eggs in shit, but that doesn't make it any prettier. Get me?
After all, that Hat is surrounded by opulence that Donald Trump couldn't make a downpayment on, and all at the expense of desperate, fearful little people who for centuries have watched their children starve in the shadow of the Hat because God's Chief Spokesman refused to allow them birth control while He bled them for ever more protection money in a racket that the entire Mafia could never hope to match. Suddenly the Hat doesn't seem so fucking funny anymore.
I remember when Sinead O'Connor did her little ripping-up the picture of the Pope anti-publicity stunt. I say 'anti' because, while we all know that in the music biz, any publicity is generally good publicity, I do believe that little episode DID actually hurt her career. I got what she was trying to say, but I don't think it was well thought-out, kinda like Michael Moore's diatribe at the Oscars. Choose your battles, and choose where to have them. Otherwise you're just masturbating in public, and unless you're Angelina Jolie, nobody wants to see that.
I remember seeing footage of John Lennon publicly 'apologizing' for his statement that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus Christ," though I think his explanation was deliberately, brilliantly ironic. He was one smart cookie, and he knew the dry British humor of "I meant 'more popular' because there are more people now than there were then" would be taken literally and seriously by clueless American audiences. The Beatles were forgiven their 'blasphemy' and went on to become the legends we all consider them to be. Now THAT was some nice spin. It was a guy like Lennon who invented the whole Hat thing. Maybe they were even related.
Madonna did it twice, first with the whole 'Like a Prayer' controversy and then by becoming Jewish and pushing the whole Kabballah thing. Brilliant. She's the only single individual in the world who does better marketing than the Catholic Church, and she does it without selling guilt. And she's never had to apologize, which is more than I can say for Sinead or even Lennon. But I'm getting off-topic.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The Pope. What, did they think he was gonna last forever? The guy was like two hundred years old! Of course he's dead! He's not God, people! If you want your Popes to last longer, ya gotta do like they do with the Dalai Lama -- he's reincarnated into some little kid, and they find the kid, and voila! The kid is the new Dalai Lama. That way, instead of starting with an old guy, your Spiritual Leader is all fresh and spry, but with the wisdom of the ages behind him. I think I'll write a letter to the Vatican and suggest it. I was there once but didn't see a suggestion box. As a matter of fact, that's a whole other story I need to mention: my trip to the Vatican, when a guy with a submachine gun threw us out after we waited in line for 2 hours in hundred-degree heat, because my girlfriend's shirt fell just slightly short of her belly button. Yeah, they don't let you in there if your belly button is showing, at least not if you're an adult female. Maybe if you're a preadolescent boy, they let you in naked, and you get a backstage pass to meet the Pope Himself. I don't know; I'm just guessing. All I know is that God, or the Pope, or whatever, isn't supposed to see your belly button -- the scar left by your umbilical cord, which SHOULD symbolize your birth into this world, right? I mean, I'm sure Jesus had a belly button, right? The belly button is almost a holy thing (ooh, bad pun) -- and my girlfriend had a pretty nice one too. She's gone now, and I really don't miss her for the most part, but I DO miss a few parts of her, one of which was that oh-so-perfect belly button.
Anyway, I started arguing with the guy, but like I said, he had a submachine gun. Not smart of me. I can see the headline now: MAN GUNNED DOWN BY VATICAN SECURITY IN ST PETER'S SQUARE; RAISES BELLY BUTTON CONTROVERSY. Actually, they'd never let it get out like that. They'd simply say I was a terrorist trying to take down the Pope, and my name would go down in infamy, while my girlfriend would be locked up forever in some Vatican dungeon to keep her quiet. Actually in retrospect, considering how unceremoniously she ended up dumping me later, that might have been a cool way for it all to have ended. Call me vindictive if you must, but vindictive is pretty romantic -- and besides, while she'd be suffering in the same ancient vaults as prisoners of The Inquisition itself, I'd just be dead. She'd have the rest of her life to enjoy a (small, confined) part of the rich history of the region.
So...finally we walked across the piazza and down the tourist-tchotchke-lined street (what is it about Religious Kitsche, anyway? It's a whole crazy multibillion-dollar industry that rivals Catholicism itself!) and bought a big scarf, which she wrapped around herself and then we returned to the line and waited another 2 hours to get in. What can I say? She wanted to see the Sistine Chapel. Of course, she didn't realize that you need binoculars to see the fucking 900-foot ceiling from the crowded floor. I knew that, but I didn't want to pee on her parade after the whole belly button ordeal.
So anyway, what I'm trying to say is, "Hey Pope, buh-bye! I hope it's everything you thought it would be, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. And, oh yeah -- you forgot your Hat."
* * *
posted by brioSphere at 6:26 PM
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