I’m lucky enough to get pretty regular feedback on my blog posts.  If I’m ranting about politics or rambling on and on over some piece of pop culture I always get a big response.  As soon as I start to talk about God or feelings the comments dry right up.  Ironically those posts tend to get more page views, so I know people are reading them and likely passing them on.  So what gives?  It’s a puzzlement.

I spend a lot of time thinking about my relationship to the universe.  The BIG questions like “why are we here?”, “what does it mean to be human?” and “what is good and evil” are interesting and, I hope, important.  In my mind they’re all the same question; “God?”.  Because apparently I’m a freak and therefor less restrained by social mores I like to talk about “God?”.  I particularly like hearing other people’s opinions on the subject.  Besides being endlessly fascinating it helps me refine and understand my own answers.  Sometimes these discussions even change my mind about something but unfortunately they’re all too rare.

The current cultural mores seem to make the most important spiritual topics taboo and the same is true about Love.  I love the people in my life.  My life is better because of their presence and I try not to be shy about letting them know.  All too often that makes them uncomfortable.  Jokes are made.  Awkward silences ensue.  And that sucks.  Why would such a thing be?

I love my friends.  I love my version of God.  I really don’t give a shit who knows it but I’m at a loss as to why taboo suppresses the two most important topics in our lives.  Are we really that repressed?  Are we so cowed by the cranky old men who run our religions?  Does it have to do with how easily we accept criticism and how hard it is to hear compliments?  What, if anything, can we do to change this dynamic of discomfort?

I don’t mean for this to be a rhetorical question.  I’d really like to hear your opinion.  Send it to me over FB (Temple of the Circus Monkey) or by email angus@kwchop.org.  I’ll post any good answers.  Perhaps by working together, we can eliminate this silly distance between our selves and our creator.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of the mass media equating hate filled, fearful, small minded people with morality.  It implies a spiritual or religious superiority to their way of thinking.  THAT SIMPLY ISN’T TRUE and it’s pissing me off.

Here we are in the middle of what’s become our perpetual election season.  The lazy ass media requires easy ways to talk about large groups of voters in order to reduce their newscasts to simple sound bites between boner pill commercials.  Since most of the coverage these days is to decide which repressive corporate robot will represent the GOP they’ve divided the Republican electorate into various factions.  Some of these labels are only mildly offensive.  ‘Tea Partiers’ is short for those mouthbreathers who want the government to keep their hands of everything, especially their medicare and the military.  ‘Moderate’ republicans means those people who are conservative and still manage to think about issues using their frontal lobe.  ‘Independents’ are those hard to pin down people in the middle who don’t get involved in campaigns until it’s actually time to vote.  ‘Libertarians’ are people who’ve actually read the fucking constitution.  Sure, these are gross over generalizations, but that’s what we expect from our lame corporate press.  Nothing there to get too worked up about, right?

Oh wait, there’s one more group that‘s pivotal to right wing elections; the ‘values voter’, also some times referred to as ‘people who vote their conscience’.   WHAT THE FUCK?  Every time I hear that phrase I want to throw something through my tv screen.  AAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH.

Okay, calm down.  Unload the magnum and stop thinking about Southern Baptist churches.  No no, put down the sword.  That’s better.  Where were we?   Oh yeah, values voters.   AAAARRRGGGHHH.  Deep breaths.  Find my happy place.  Happy place, happy place.  Sigh.  Okay, let’s try this one more time…

If you refer to one group of voters as ‘values voters’ you are, by implication, stating that all other members of the electorate DON’T vote their values.  Even worse, you are clearly implying that the ‘values’ of those ‘values voter’ are somehow superior to, or more important than, those of the rest of the electorate.  The same applies to the phrase ‘voting their conscience’.  EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN votes their conscience and EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN has values. And EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN has spiritual and moral reasons that matter.  Jesus fucking Christ you people piss me off.  (Happy place, happy place, breathe…)

Those two terms have become shorthand for a very specific group of political ideas found on the far right fringes of American society.  Ironically those ideas represent some of the worst, most hate filled of human ideologies.  The ‘values voter’ hates gay people, is scared of anything new or progressive, tends to be racist, denigrates women’s rights, and absolutely loathes anything joyful or sexual.  They hide their own fears behind a vengeful and petty god.  I totally support their right to hold these silly, fear drenched ideas.  It’s a free country, kind of.  I just can’t stand that this philosophical bag of puss is somehow equated with superior values and conscience by a scared and slothful media.

Listen up, reporters and news people.  The far right, theocratic voter is not a ‘values voter’.  We are ALL ‘values voters’.  Some of us just think tolerance, joy, love, sex, and inclusion are better values than hate, fear and repression.  We ALL vote our consciences, even if they aren’t riding us with a whip hand of guilt.  We are ALL spiritual and we ALL consider that spirituality in the voting booth.  To pretend otherwise is to publicly and repeatedly endorse one very narrow interpretation of Christianity as the only true moral path.  And that is TOTALLY FUCKING WRONG.

There is very little room in this country’s dialogue for people who’s spirituality doesn’t involve being scared by cranky, repressed old men.  That’s a shame because there really are better choices.  The constant media repetition that those schools of thought are somehow moral or more central to their practitioner’s life is damaging to any hope for spiritual evolution.  So find another label.  (May I suggest ‘repressed, hate-filled, fearful meatbag of puss voter’?  Too long?)  Do yourselves this favor because anyone who looks at the shitheads in the Westboro church and says ‘values voter’ isn’t just stupid, they’re aiding and abetting evil.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

All of us, regardless of religion, need to accept a simple fact: The rich control our religious organizations just as surely as they control our government and to pretend otherwise is willful blindness.  The church, most any church, has long been an instrument of subjugation.  The many complaints of Martin Luther are just as relevant today as when he nailed them to that big wooden door.  Same as it ever was.

It’s kind of funny really because those that make the most noise about faith are actually the most cynical.  The Pope sits draped in silk on a golden throne while preaching about the piety of poverty.  Megachurch pastors berate their flock about choosing God over worldly pleasures while they count their millions and play golf with millionaires.  Ayatollahs live in a palace while demanding their subjects try to scratch out a living.  I’ve got mine and God wants you to be poor is the worst kind of cynical bullshit and borders on the evil they’re pretending to fight.

Of course I’m generalizing.  Each and every religion is filled with wonderful, pious people expressing their spirituality.  However all too often those people are simultaneously violating some tenet of church policy.  Spirituality is a deep human need and should be expressed in whatever manner is meaningful to the practitioner.  It has almost nothing to do with the large human made entities that pretend to represent God while they actually serve the rich ruling class.

Now, what do the rich want more than anything?  To stay rich.  Duh.  So it’s not exactly rocket science to put these two simple ideas together.  Rich people run the church plus rich people want to keep their unequal share equals churches that tell you to behave and embrace poverty.  Now think about this for one second.   Why in heaven would God want YOU to be poor and hungry while that dude over there is buying gold toilets to shit in?  Does that really sound divine or does it sound more like the ideas of mister gold crapper?  Yeah, I thought so.  God does NOT want you to sacrifice for him, Mr. Richy-rich does, and pretending that God loves him more is the height of cynicism.

Unfortunately the rich motherfuckers running churches are only part of the problem.  They have an ally in the repressed the joy killers.  You know the type; pinched and cranky looking men and women who are so poorly   integrated that they can’t stand to see anyone having a good time.  No sex, no drugs, no meat, no alcohol, no compassion, no Love and no fun.  The modern day puritan that is so often caught at some sleazy motel 6 with a nose full of cocaine and dick in his mouth.  Mr. or Mrs. “I can’t handle my urges so I have to stifle yours”.  They fill the churches and meeting rooms of every religion and most political movements, from the Islamist bagging up women to the PETA idiots crying over bacon.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Puritanism- the fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.  They make me laugh and they make God sick to his divine stomach.

So now it’s election time and the ‘we must repress and sacrifice’ forces are lining up to protect the haves from the have-nots.  Their churches are preaching against birth control and choice.  Their political representatives are wringing their hands over gay marriage and women serving in combat.  Rick “please don’t google me” Santorum recently gave an interview stating that the real core problem with America is that women take birth control.  Once women started having sex for pleasure our society started to crumble.  Really Rick?  Women having orgasms magically took all the middle class wealth and moved into a few rich pockets?  Wow, must be fun to be your wife.  Meanwhile the banks and the rich keep hoovering up all the wealth while shutting down your local school.  Are we really that dumb?

Look, I’m no fan of the current president.  I think he’s kind of weak and a little ineffective.  He is NOT, however, a radical, a socialist, or waging war on religion.  (If he were any of these things he’d probably get more of my support.  At least he’d be something.)  I’m certainly not suggesting that you vote for him.  What I am suggesting is that your religious organization doesn’t have your best interests at heart and probably is much further from God than you are.  Guess that makes me a heretic.

There is absolutely NO REASON to think that God asks for sacrifice.  It’s seems extremely unlikely that we would be created with a tremendous capacity for art and joy only to be asked to repress it.  It’s heretical to me to suggest that God loves Americans more than Argentineans or white people more than brown people.  It’s obscene and cynical to think that God likes greedy rich people better than those who serve others.  God gave you joy and sex.  God wants you to help others and care for each other.  Cynical, repressed old men ask for sacrifice, and the resounding spiritual answer to them should be “Fuck You”.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

Let’s begin with Planned Parenthood.  It exists because it HAS to.  We live in a country where two things are undeniably true: healthcare is not well distributed to the lower economic classes and good, scientific information about sex isn’t distributed at all.  Planned Parenthood bravely tries to fill both of those voids at once and make women’s sexual health care available to under served communities.  More power to them.  I admire and support their efforts and I really don’t give a fuck how much their executives make.  They’re fighting the good fight and doing so on two fronts.

Their first battle is with poverty.  Huge numbers of people in the good ole US of A don ‘t get to go to the doctor.  At least half those people are women who need things like pap smears, breast exams, pregnancy counseling, birth control, and yes, abortions.  (I’m not going to get into that particular debate right now, just suffice it to say they are legal, have been legal, and are likely to continue to being legal.  Therefor performing them is not a fucking crime.)  This country pretends to be Christian but ignores the fact the huge portions of the New Testament implores people to deal with poverty.  Not gay marriage, not capitalism, not abortion, not tax cuts, POVERTY.  Yet I never see the fucktards in conservative baptist churches picketing to help the poor.  At least Planned Parenthood doesn’t pretend poor people don’t exist or, even worse, demonize them.  They might be one of the most christian organizations in the country.

Of course all the pretend Christians can’t see that because of the second reason Planned Parenthood is crucial.  PEOPLE HAVE SEX.  Not only like that, but many people like it.  And, gasp gasp, faint faint, half of those people are women too.  Oh my goodness, women enjoying sex?  The horror, the horror.  The political right wing of this country can’t fucking stand the idea of a sexually aware, joyful woman.  They’ve spent the 50 years since oral contraception was released trying desperately to shove that particular genie back into the pill bottle.  Talk honestly to the anti-choice movement and they admit that abortion is the first step in a long plan that includes banning the pill and eventually outlawing sex outside of marriage.  The recent attempts at ‘personhood’ amendments prove that agenda.

Now look what Planned Parenthood does.  It educates girls about their bodies.  It helps them keep from getting pregnant and helps them stay healthy.  Since the big swing to the right in the 2010 elections the evil, and I do mean evil, forces of repression have gone after PP with everything they have.  Many states have stripped funding and so has the federal government.  And now the new VP of Komen, who just happens to be a failed right wing political candidate in Georgia running on a pro life agenda, decides to cut funding too.  You can’t help but place this attack in that social context.

Now, on to Susan G Komen itself.  I’m not a huge fan.  First of all it’s ridiculous to let yourself be drawn into a political fight, especially one that seems to be counter to your mission statement.  Beyond that I have a healthy skepticism when it comes to cancer charities in general.  I once had a well known researcher at UCSF admit to me that there were people in the field that lived in dread of a true cancer cure because of the thousands of jobs and billions of dollars they would lose.  It reminds me of the March of Dimes who was pledged to fight polio.  When polio was cured the executives were shit out of luck.  Rather than congratulate themselves and go home or choose another disease they decided to pivot to ‘birth defects’ because that was a broad enough category to insure that they could stay employed.

Don’t get me wrong, cancer sucks.  I’ve held a close friend as she died of lung cancer.  The pain and loss are monumental and I would give much for a cure.  I’m just not totally comfortable with the giant industry that cancer care has become.  Especially a cancer that gets so much attention largely because tv executives like an excuse to put the word ‘breasts’ on the air.

I believe in charity.  I donate a lot of time and, for me, a lot of money to the causes I support.  Planned Parenthood makes the cut, and Susan G Komen doesn’t.  This whole debacle has looked a little bit too much like middle class white women thinking that breast cancer is a tragedy for them while breast cancer for poor brown and black women is a useful fund raising statistic.  But you might not want to take my word for it.  After all, I like sex and women and in some circles that makes me a heretic.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

‘Policy’ is a great refuge for hatred and bigotry in this election.  It’s not that the right hates gay people or black folks, it’s just a matter of ‘policy’.  Obama doesn’t necessarily just bend over and spread anytime the banks want something, he just had to support certain ‘policies’ when the economy tanked.  The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t hate Mexican families, it’s just ‘policy’ to deport them at a record rate.  A lot of Nazis didn’t have anything personal against Jews, Gays or Gypsies.  You see, they just had this policy…

And it gets worse.  Policy is the panacea that cures any vile or disgusting act.  Every time some old person is humiliated by the TSA or an attractive young woman is put repeatedly through the scanner at an airport the answer comes back with some version of “every action taken was in accordance with our policies”.  Whenever some cop gets a little taser happy and zaps a little kid or unarmed woman the exoneration comes with the same crap about “the offending officer was found to be in compliance with departmental policy”.  Hell, the dude who walked up and down a line of kids in Davis dousing them with pepper spray like he was watering a garden of hate wasn’t severely punished.  Instead UC decided to “revisit some of their policies”.  Sure, that seems reasonable.  Let’s dispense with right and wrong and just go with what this paper says.  Bullshit.

The world isn’t made up of polices, it’s made up of people.  People who can’t marry the person of their choice.  People who deserve to go through their day without being molested or abused.  People who have stories and feelings and rights.  Policies lets officials hide behind rules and pretend like it isn’t their fault.  It permits them to distance themselves from the very real pain and heartbreak happening to another human being.  In a word, it allows them to be evil.

Yes, I said evil.  As in Good vs Evil.  As in immoral and wrong.  If you choose to enforce a policy that causes pain, humiliation, or the loss of rights to another human being you are, for that moment, evil.  No excuses.  No ‘just doing your job’.  If you write and defend those policies you are an affront to God regardless of which church you attend.  Repent before it’s too late and you’re standing before your maker next to Santorum trying to justify and explain your actions.  Because I have news for you.  God prefers people over policies too.

I like people.  I like to see people, all people, do well.  I will choose a person over a policy every single fucking time.  I will choose kind over officious or even legal.  Furthermore I will immediately distrust anyone who tells me that kindness is impossible because of a ‘policy’.  And I vote that way.  Go ahead, accuse me of being soft hearted and a hippie.  Tell me how I’m living in a dream world.  I don’t care.  People matter, policy never does.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

Here’s the story:  A young English couple decided to come California to party and vacation.  2 weeks before their trip they tweeted to friends that they were going to ‘destroy’ Hollywood, a common English slang term for hard partying.  They also tweeted some lines from a cartoon tv show about ‘digging up Marilyn’.  Harmless enough, right?  Nope.  They were met at LAX by Homeland Security because apparently our government has nothing better to do than monitor EVERYBODY IN THE WHOLE WORLD’S Twitter account.  Oh well, a harmless misunderstanding, right.  Wrong again.  They spent a day in jail with drug dealers while being interrogated and searched for shovels.  And no, I’m not kidding.  The next day they were sent back to Europe after having their Visa’s revoked.

Oh, where to begin?  Civil rights, common sense, the Constitution.  FUCK.  So, the DHS is monitoring all of Twitter using software to find key words.  That doesn’t seem very democratic to me.  Let’s Occupy Twitter by sending a torrent of tweets using the terms that their software is instructed to find.  If enough of us do it we’ll create so much background noise that their unconstitutional snooping will be rendered useless.  If you don’t have a twitter account go sign up for one.  If you do just go and fire that baby up.  What a fun game!

Here are the rules:  Don’t say anything aggressive or antigovernment.  Don’t threaten or be negative.  Just use the words in innocent sounding sentences.  The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include: Illegal immigrant, Outbreak, Drill, Strain, Virus, Recovery, Deaths, Collapse, Trojan, Destroy.  These are from a FOIA request.  I’m sure there are more, use your imagination.  (I’m betting words like Revolution, Jihad, and Islam are there too.)  Use the hashtag #YRUwatchingme and let’s see if we can get it trending.

I know what some of you might be thinking.  If we do this the government won’t be able to find evil terrorist and we could all die.  To which I respond “Fuck You, my rights are more important than your irrational fears.”  I’m going to send out tweets like this all week.  Quit all your bitching and join me in my virtual Occupation.  Because this shit has got to stop.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

Archbishop Angus
Temple of the Circus Monkey
Avoiding the Squirrels

A couple of weeks ago I attended a motorcycle show at a public convention center.  In order to go in and look at the bikes every single person was patted down and wanded with a metal detector.  The line was huge and the intrusion was unpleasant.  Why was this necessary?  Because something bad MIGHT happen.  Because some biker clubs MIGHT have guns or knives and they MIGHT use them illegally and some innocent bystander MIGHT get hurt.  Oh sure, that’s a good deal.  Let’s definitely lose our rights over something that MIGHT happen.  What disgusting cowardice.

Look, I’m not a fool.  I know bikers sometimes shoot each other.  I was in Reno and missed that shootout by a couple of hours.  But I chose this example precisely because it is potentially dangerous.   I would rather tolerate that risk and keep my rights intact.  I’d rather have every single person in the country keep their personal privacy even if the occasional innocent bystander might get injured.  Yes, even if that bystander might be me.

The fourth amendment to the constitution guarantees that we get to go about our day without the government randomly fucking with us.  Unless, of course, we decide to fly, or go to a ball game, or check out a motorcycle show.  If it’s any situation where you could possibly imagine a bad thing happening, we lose that right.  Why?  Because we’ve become so risk adverse and weak that we can’t tolerate even the slightest chance that SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAPPEN .  A bunch of wimps.

Let me ask you a simple question:  Are there things worth dying for?  Freedom?  Liberty?  Our way of life?  I assume most of you would say “yes, of course” since we keep sending our young men and women oversees with guns for supposedly that exact reason.  What hypocrisy.  Some 18 year old can die for your freedom but you can’t possibly take the risk of seeing a football game without every one of the 60,000 fans being frisked for your protection.

Oh yeah, the military.  Another reflection of our collective cowardice.  Out of every dollar spent on the military worldwide, 40 cents is American.  Why do we need to have such a giant army?  Cause we’re so fucking scared all the time.  Ron Paul was recently booed at a Republican debate when he suggested that a strong, free country might not need to have American soldiers in every damn corner of the world.  Ooooh, the world is so scary.  Sob sob.

Everybody knows the old adage ‘better safe than sorry’.  When did we become so weak that it’s now ‘better safe than free’?  Americans used to be a tough and resilient people.  We were thrown or dragged out of countries all over Europe, Asia, and Africa and made the difficult and RISKY journey to the New World.  We settled the west and when Europe descended into world wars we went back and kicked some ass.  Most importantly we wrote down a set of rules that said liberty and freedom were worth protecting. Even if it was risky.  Not any more.  Now we cower instead of conquer.

A good argument can be made that all this cowardice isn’t buying us a damn thing and we aren’t actually any safer.  I don’t care whether that’s even true.  I think we should be brave enough to walk into motorcycle show without being molested even if some people might have guns and bad intentions.  I think we should be stout enough to fly in an airplane even if no one took their shoes off and some kid has a box of apple juice. I even think we could maybe be strong enough to scale back the military a little bit.

It’s popular these days to constantly repeat the silly phrase that ‘freedom isn’t free’.  Okay, sure.  But that cost of freedom isn’t necessarily just the death of a volunteer soldier.  It’s also the risk of injury and perhaps death of every single citizen.  Apparently we ‘re too fucking cowardly to pay that price any more.  Instead we choose ‘safe’ and ‘protected’ as well as ‘searched’ and ‘molested’.  Somewhere in heaven John Wayne and George Washington are weeping in shame.  But maybe it isn’t hopeless. Maybe we can find our balls, take off our helmets, and decide that freedom IS worth the risk.  I sure hope it happens soon.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.

Angus

What do you believe?  What gets you through the dark days and cold, lonely nights?  Do you know?  Do you ponder the meaning of life and wish to gaze upon the face of God or are you just a cog in the machine?  Do you dare question the universe or do you find it safer to march in line with all the good little worker ants?  These are questions that NEED TO BE ANSWERED.

2012.  The year the world ends.  Or maybe not.  More likely the year the Mayan carvers decided they’d done enough and needed a blow job and a drink.  But even if the world doesn’t end I still think it’s likely to be a watershed year full of chaos and deep changes.  Things are boiling below the surface and the unprepared will be forced even further into their fear caves.  Not us.  We feel it coming and we embrace uncertainty.  We will stay in the light even if we’re not sure from which direction it shines.

It seems so quaint these days to talk about good versus evil.  If you start to muse upon that never ending battle you’re resolutely ignored or mocked and there’s probably a good reason for that.  Most of the people who use that language are ‘Left Behind” types who think Jesus is coming back to take them to paradise while he punishes all those ‘different’ people or Muslim idiots who are battling the great Satan of women’s rights.  I’m not talking about that man made, fear drenched bullshit.  I’m taking about the deeper, more personal battle we all face in our own little lives.  Are we good to ourselves and each other?

Every day I see people choose love.  I see them go into relationships with bravery and optimism.  I see time, support, and care given wholly and without condition.  I see people create and sing and teach.  I see GOOD.  But I also see avarice, dishonesty, and greed.  I see the rich waste resources that would save lives.  I see hungry kids and lying scumbags running for office.  I see fear and hate and division.  And that, my friends, is EVIL.

Yep, 2012 is gonna be a wild ride.  My sources tell me things are gonna change.  It might be the year where you need to choose between Good and Evil, Love and Fear.  Or maybe not.  I’ve been wrong before.  Either way it can’t hurt to remember your reason to believe.  Now it’s time to honor the Mayans with a blow job and a drink.  Vaya con Dios and Viva la Revolucion.