Oh God, You Devil Part 3

It’s morning. Another miracle. Yay. Parenthood has bitten me in the ass today. Okay, that’s a little harsh, but it goes like this: My wife is out of town. She went to NY, one night only, and I’m home alone…Great, my synapses immediately kick in and start sending messages to my brain: “I should have a party and invite tons of people over, maybe get a keg and befriend some sort of pharmacist or something wild like that…get some chimps to strip for us, perhaps.” Well, actually, no. I have to care for an infant, who, by the way woke up at four thirty this morning. WTF, dude? I thought being a dad was gonna be a constant party, full of sexy librarians, sexy pediatricians, sexy young moms and teachers, tons of strippers and mountains of blow, but actually, that’s just the Hollywood gloss. I’m here to tell it like it is people: Parenting features almost NONE of the day-awesomizers listed above. Almost none. The real sack punch is that there’s this little bar right down the street from my house that I love, and even after the baby is asleep (six thirty), I can’t go there, because god forbid you leave a sleeping baby alone in a house with no one in charge but a couple of snide Chihuahuas! That’s apparently illegal. Total bullshit.
And it’s gonna be boring, people, because I don’t like CSI or Cold Case Files or America’s Great at Juggling Pies or any of that shit. I spend all day writing various songs, treatments, skits, scripts and this fucking blog thing, so I don’t exactly want to carry that on through the night. That leaves two options: read the bible or watch girls stuff melons into their assholes on the internet. Either way, I’m already exhausted.
And Christ, I work tomorrow, so that means that my chimp-stripper-pharmacist party wouldn’t really fly anyhow, since I’d be way to hung over to go “that comes with chips, but for an extra buck I can give you fries or veggies” or “I don’t have any Coors products” and inject it with any sort of believability.
The wee beast has just made his inaugural squawk that signals that his nap is over. My fingernails are already tingling with the fervent anticipation that comes with knowing that you’ll soon have shit squished underneath them. Again, yay.

Everyone kind of wishes they could change things about themselves, right? Maybe not physically, although I think that’s usually a big one (god I wish I wasn’t such a lardass/bald/such a bald lardass), but often people want to be better at public speaking, or funnier or more secure in their convictions.

I wish I was religious. Here’s why: You can do whatever the fuck you want and just say it’s gods will. If it’s something that’s obviously not gods will (smoking crystal meth with a gay hustler right before you felch him within an inch of his life) hey! That was a test! People forgive you and call you brave and see you in church and say “hey, brendan’s really cleaned up his act. He’s always in church and he’s always crying when preacher joe boy talks about the sin of fagdom. He must no longer have the desire to gargle balls while big vieny dongs hang halfway down his gullet. Good for him!” That right there is enough of a reason. Plus, if I was religious, apparently I wouldn’t be scared of this crazy Alaskan bitch. Never mind that Christianity is the biggest religion in the world and therefore necessarily populated by TONS of people who probably shouldn’t be in charge of anythng. Anyone who believes is automatically semi-qualified to run a gigantic powerful country. I mean, fuck, by that meterstick, Kirk Cameron, Liberace or Mike Tyson would be decent choices for VP.
Sheeeit! Hold the phone, grandma. Did anyone ever actually think about getting Mike Tyson in there? I bet diplomacy would go our way a lot more often if old “breakfast of ears” Tyson was across the table from Ahmadinejad discussing nuclear proliferation. Okay, I’ve digressed. Why else do I wish I was stupid…er, religious? Oh no you di’int!!!!
Yeah, sure, that’s a shitty thing to say. There are lots of religious people out there who aren’t stupid. Although, every last one of them shares a common stupid misconception that I can’t really deal with and that’s this: That religion is fundamentally a good thing that gives people a good set of rules for, you know, not killing and stealing and coveting thy neighbor’s Humvee and shit like that.
Here’s the thing. Nope. Those rules are hardwired into humans and with a few notable exceptions (John Wayne Gacy, Hitler) we follow them. In fact, the similarities in the basic tenets of ALL religions in the world, from the fucking Aborigines to the Eskimos to the Chinese Jews (I’m sure there are a few) more likely imply that when people were cooking up their creation stories and faiths, they injected these most basic of moral principles that are necessarily inherent in human beings in order for us to function in a society (which is a genetic necessity, because without cooperation, we would not be able to, for example, kill a wolf that wanted to eat us [maybe some people could, not me]) into the religions that they were making up. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Morality is, at a fundamental level, universal. Everyone agrees that killing is wrong, raping, no good, stealing, a dick move, etc. Yeah, I know, it’s all twisted around now and plenty of people think raping is great, and stealing is justified if it’s for a greater good and blah blah blah, wocka wocka wocka. Well, are any of these people religious? Well, without casting blanket aspersions, I’ll tell you for damn sure that they’re not all a giant cabal of atheists.
Again, I’m off topic. My point is, this fallacy that religion injects something good into the lives of otherwise miserable fucks out there who, without jesus or Allah or Zoroaster, would just be killing and fucking their kids and stealing and worshiping golden cows…that’s a damaging and dangerous misconception. The truth is, religion is a way to organize stupid people. They point to the moral structure of their religion, say “this is what we gave you. Without this, you’d all be fucking killing each other, and besides, who cares if you are so poor that you need to serve your family shit-pies for supper? It’s all gonna even out in heaven, hoss!” and then they act in the best interest of some completely arbitrary ideology and expect everyone to go along with it. And by and large, it works. “They” even point to religious doctrine that can’t possibly have anything to do with modern problems and act like their agendas are right in the texts! Don’t like gay marriage? That’s fine, cuz hating that’s in the bible, apparently. Want to blow up a schoolbus? It’s in the Koran. Want to just waltz into someone elses home and set up camp and tell them to get fucked? Check the fucking Torah my friends…that shit’s allowed.
So yeah. I wish I was religious. Because I’d just leave my fucking baby at home and go get drunk tonight and blame it all on god.
Happy Wednesday.