An Heavenly Encounter

Attention Internets: This very night I was visited by our lord and savior Jesus Christ. I was sleeping, and all of a sudden there was a bright light and a choir of angels, and Jesus was standing right there in my bedroom. Luckily, I had a tape recorder by my bed (it came with my review copy of Bioshock), and I was able to capture our entire conversation. Here is the transcript of that meeting:


ME
Jesus Christ!

JESUS
Sup, bro?

ME
Um, nothing much. What’s up with you, Jesus?

JESUS
I’m chill, man. You know, takin’ it easy.

ME
Um, what are you doing here, Jesus?

JESUS
I’ve come to help you out, bro. Show you the way, and shit. Teach you how to live your life, you dig?

ME
Okay... Sure, tell me how I should live my life.

JESUS
You should never be a dick to anyone, man. Just, like, be cool to people. Be a nice guy, like, help old ladies across the street and shit. You know, shit like that.

ME
So, you came into my room in the middle of the night, to tell me to be nice to people?

JESUS
Yeah, man, the good works and shit.

ME
You know, Jesus, I kind of already knew that.

JESUS
Oh, shit man, sorry, my bad. I should have known you’d have your shit together. Fuck, I’m sorry, bro.

ME
It’s okay, Jesus.

JESUS
Naw, man, I was like serious out of line. I crossed a line, I’m so sorry, dude.

ME
Dude, you couldn’t have known. I mean, you’ve been dead for like two thousand years.

JESUS
Aw, buzzkill, man. Are you serious? Am I really all corpsed up?

ME
Yeah, they nailed you to a piece of wood.

JESUS
Oh shit, yeah, I remember that shit now. That was a bad fuckin’ day, you know?

ME
That’s gotta be unpleasant.

JESUS
Shit. Well hey, man, if you already know all that shit, does that mean you’re gonna join my church?

ME
Which one is yours?

JESUS
Fuck, I can’t remember that shit, man. Ummm... Scientology?

ME
Scientology, really?

JESUS
I don’t know, man. I think it starts with an “S.” Or maybe it was an “F.” Ah fuck it, my church is full of assholes anyway, you probably wouldn’t like it.

ME
You’re probably right.

JESUS
Well, bro, I guess I should be going. Get some fucking sleep, man. Oh, and hey, hit me up sometime. We’ll rock some mad ping pong.

ME
Jesus, I am terrible at ping pong.

JESUS
Shit man, me too. I don’t even know why I fucking like it so much.

At this point Jesus laughs for about two minutes, nonstop. Seriously.

JESUS
Hey, you got my cell number?

ME
No, Jesus, I don’t think I do.

JESUS
Hold on a sec.
(he pats down his robe)
Ah, fuck! Where the hell is that shit? Man, I hate this fucking robe. Shit is always falling out of it. Not cool.

ME
I’m sorry, Jesus. Maybe you should buy a pair of pants or something?

JESUS
Yeah, I should do that, shouldn’t I? See, this is why I love you man, you’re a fucking genius, you’ve got all the great plans. Well hey, maybe I’ll just see you around.

ME
Sure thing, Jesus. I’ll see you around.

JESUS
Later, bro.


END TRANSCRIPT


And with that, he vanished. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, but I guess Jesus is a pretty cool guy. A little scatterbrained, but a decent dude nonetheless. Also, he smelled really... herbal. Not really sure what to make of that.

Hopefully I’ll see him again. I don’t know, where does Jesus like to hang out? The mall? Does anyone know? If anyone knows where I can find Jesus, drop me a line. Anyway, I’m going to go do as the savior-man suggested and catch some more Zs. Good night, Internet.

My Long-Awaited Review of the New Xbox Experience

It sucks.

Xbox Avatars: Do Not Want

Just installed the "New Xbox Experience," and the avatars are fucking garbage. Back when the Wii came out, Miis were charming, fun, and easy to make. Avatars are none of these things. Instead of simple yet surprisingly versatile creation options, we get an endless parade of douchebags, none of which look like you, and the available tools don't allow much deviation from that shitty standard. You can't even create some sort of hideous freak, which would really take the edge off.

I might have some impressions of the "Experience" itself, but I've spent the last couple of hours wrestling with this damn avatar bullshit, so I have no idea what the rest of the interface is like. Once I've managed form my dude into something that won't make me want to kill myself every time I turn on my Xbox, I might share some of that Experience(tm) with you.

Until then, if you see me online please forgive my douchey appearance, and I will forgive yours.

Wil Wheaton Is Kind Of An Asshole

Here is something exactly one person I know will find hilarious:
http://twitter.com/wilw/status/1005052946

A Funny Thing Happened...

So, something interesting has happened. While looking through my recent traffic, there was a decent-sized spike right around when I posted my last entry on the California gay marriage ban. The reason this is interesting is because, random searches for off-kilter pornography aside, I would estimate that this blog is read by a grand total of about four people. That's when I noticed I had been linked from a Mormon apologetic message board.

That alone gave me a chuckle. Because of this, far more people have been exposed to my words than I ever intended, and it's because of someone who obviously disagrees with me. Then I read his post, and my chuckle graduated to become something like spontaneous rapture.

See, this guy decided to analyze my post. He posted it in pieces, with his own little comments after each section, analyzing my "arguments." The word "arguments" is in quotes there because I am referring to the points I made in my rant. Because that's what it was, a nice little rant that I only wrote because I was pissed off and writing about it helped me feel better. But I felt about a million times even better when I saw that idiots were obsessing over my own stupid little blog.

This has honestly made my night, that for at least a little while some asshole not only read my off-the-top-of-my-head purposefully inflammatory post, but was forced to actually think about them. Seriously, this is like catching someone watching a fake newscast on a TV show and thinking that it's real. Not that there was anything fake about my words, the opinions are true and valid, it's just that I probably wouldn't go publishing them in any scholarly journals, because it was just for fun. And I am just loving how it's making people squirm.

And no, I'm not going to link to it, because these people are still assholes, and even though I enjoy laughing at them they do not deserve any of the attention they get. Here, however, are some people I will happily draw attention to:



"What's more harmful to society - two well-dressed men getting married and settling down, or two idiots tying the knot and cranking out any number of additional idiots?"
--Robert Kirby, Salt Lake Tribune

--

"To those of you sitting out there gloating, wasn't it enough to have Stuart Matis' blood on your hands? You wanted more blood? You, the vampires of the human spirit seem to have an insatiable need to keep robbing those of us who are different of our lifeblood and our desire for safety and dignity.

"You have robbed wrongly this time. You have unleashed the fury of a thousand gays. You have piled on the final straw, the last drop, the last nail. You have taken your last best swing and now you will pay the piper.

"The smugness on your faces right now will soon be replaced with a more humbled countenance as you begin to realize how much damage you have done to yourselves and begin to be aware of the sound and the fury that is coming. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of smugness because it will soon be over. Oh man, you have no idea. Go back and read about Stonewall and know that this is its second coming."
--TLC, Exmormon.org Recovery Board

--

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
--Thomas Jefferson

--

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow."
--Martin Luther King Jr., Acceptance Speech, Nobel Peace Prize 1964



Quotes like these remind me of the power of words. But it seems, even words shouted into the void, shouted in vain for no reason other than to please the one that spoke them, can wield power, even if that power is just the ability to piss off some religious nutjobs. Which is a fine and respectable power to have. In fact, this power is as close to a genuine goddamned miracle as I have ever seen.

When I wrote my last post, people sat up and took notice of someone who was, in the grand scheme of things, entirely unimportant. After all, who am I? Nobody really, I'm just some guy who writes his opinions down on a blog because it helps him to organize his thoughts. But it worried them. It worried them that someone cared so much, to see that outpouring of emotion. One man writes a blog to nobody in particular, and they go on the defensive. We are dealing with scared people here, who know that their current state of power is built on a house of cards, and the only way they can keep it from blowing over is to blow back as hard as they can.

So do me a favor. Anyone who reads these words, go out there and piss someone off. Someone who really deserves it. It doesn't take much, and remember that the fact that you're getting to them means that you're undermining their position. Show the world your love, your anger, your indomitable spirit, your righteous indignation, whatever. If the best revenge is living well, then live as well as you can. Do whatever makes you happy, and be proud of it. And if the jackasses of the world get their panties all in a bunch, you know you are doing it right.

Words have tremendous power. Even when you are throwing them away on a dumb little blog. And this tiny little splash that I doubt many people have even noticed still contributes to the growing ripple that will one day change the world.

And that is very cool indeed.

Proposition Hate

Let’s talk about lies for a moment. Specifically, let’s talk about liars. When I say liars, I don’t mean people who have told a lie, or even people who lie often. A lie does not a liar make, just as a theft does not create a thief. I don’t even mean people who habitually lie, and have only told the truth maybe once or twice in their entire lives, so long as they do it for entirely selfish reasons. No, a true liar, a filthy, goddamn, piece of shit liar is someone who lies to impose their will on others.

I can understand the people who lie for self-serving purposes, their true motives are clear, but the fucking Liars-with-a-capital-fucking-L, who knows what the hell they’re thinking. The idea that someone can see another person and think, “I need to protect this person from themselves,” simply confounds and repulses me. It’s an entirely new level of self-serving attitude, and it’s evil on a level that even puts most murderers to shame. After all, most murderers act out of passion or for personal gain. But deliberately misleading people to try to bring about your own vision of an ideal world, it’s social manipulation at its most twisted.

This past election day, a ballot measure was passed in the State of California revoking certain rights to a certain group of people. This measure was backed, in secret(note: see Addendum below), almost in total by the Mormon Church. While it’s despicable enough that they hid behind a token list of other names despite being the driving force behind the campaign, the campaign itself also hid behind wall of lies. Ironically, they portrayed their campaign to take away civil liberties as a defense of their own civil liberties. Their case was, of course, entirely made up.

The Mormons spent 80 million dollars to cover the state with lies. And it worked. Of course it worked, because how do you counter such a thing? Who could ever imagine that someone would spend 80 million dollars promoting hate? You simply can’t match that figure to oppose it, because in sane society people don’t go around spending millions of dollars to destroy something that offends them and causes them no harm whatsoever. I’d like to think that people would spend a good deal more than 80 million dollars promoting love, but that’s a far different animal than opposing hate. People just can’t conceive of that amount of hate, because it’s an inconceivable amount. It’s crazy. It’s something only a sociopath would do. It’s Nazi-like in its conception, though admittedly much smaller in scope. But at least Hitler was upfront about what he was doing.

This tears me up inside, not least of all because I was raised by people who to this day continue to count themselves as Mormons. Betrayal is perhaps the wrong word, as I didn’t have any faith in the Mormon church to begin with, but on some level I do feel betrayed. For good or for ill, Mormonism remains a large part of my childhood, and much as I’d like to I can’t just shut it off. That church gave me some wonderful friends, and it did much to help me find my identity, to shape me as a person, even though the shape that took form was in opposition to everything the church stood for. So when it goes out of its way to stomp on the dreams of people I care about, and thousands more, I guess that does in fact read something like betrayal.

Joseph Smith started a religion so he could have sex with teenage girls. That’s bad, but it doesn’t make me hate the religion. He led a bloody coup against the United States, but that doesn’t make me hate the Mormons. Brigham Young ordered THE MASS MURDER OF OVER A HUNDRED UNARMED INNOCENT PEOPLE, yet I still cannot hate him for it, because it was done out of ignorance and fear. But this, this is too much. This is enough for me to finally say, I hate the Mormon church.

I hate the Mormon church. Earlier I mentioned how the majority of murderers are better than this breed of liars, but I left out one class of murderer. The final type of people who kill are those that think that their victims would be much better off dead. And that’s what it boils down to, that the logic of these people who are out to save the world from itself is the logic of a psychopath. And there’s really no defense against that. In the same way that a serial killer can terrorize a city for years without being caught, organizations like the Mormon church can continue to pour money into deceptive campaigns for whatever stupid, crazy act of intolerance takes their fancy. Because there is no motive, no good reason for them to be doing what they are doing. You cannot outmaneuver them because they are not maneuvering. It’s a mental illness, and there is no logical way to counter it.

Usually, I like to end these with an idea to change something, to bring about some glimmer of hope. But I honestly see no solution here. You can’t win an argument with a crazy person, you can only hope that eventually everyone else will see that your opponent is crazy. And since everyone is so worried about trampling on anyone else’s feelings, it could be a long time before people start to see that. So instead of trying to find the good in this situation, because damned if I can see any, I’m just going to say one final thing to make myself feel better.

Fuck you, Mormon church.


ADDENDUM: Since writing this, someone has made the point to me that their stupid fucking church wasn't acting in secret. I disagree. The Mormon church never issued any sort of public statement backing the proposition, and the despite encouraging their members to dig deep for donations, not a single cent was donated by the leaders at the top. They obviously didn't want their role to be known because the church would be flooded with bad press, like it is right now. Just because they failed completely and utterly at covering it up does not mean that they didn't intend to keep their influence in the matter a secret.

Dick Shandley and the Altamont Divide

Dick Shandley was an unassuming man. He made it a point never to judge people. Never to think good or ill of them or their choices. That wasn’t his job. His job was to insert himself into their lives and expose them as liars and frauds. Dick was a private investigator.

Because of his unassuming nature, he regarded the nervous little man sitting in his office with polite detachment. So what if his eyes had the unsettling quality of never really settling on one thing, instead ceaselessly darting around the room, like a staccato metronome set on “crazy?” Dick knew that this behavior usually indicated that the speaker was lying, just like the beads of sweat at the mans brow, the nervous shuffling of his feet, and the fact that he was wringing his hands so hard he could have crushed walnuts into diamonds. But because he was a man of an unassuming sensibility, he ignored all of this. He ignored, but he also kept his hand on the gun in his pocket.

The man in the chair was in his 50s, with an actively receding hairline and large, thick glasses. What was left of his hair was black, too black, and greasy. He was wearing a dark-colored suit that he seemed to have borrowed from someone two sizes larger than him, and the one thing that bugged Dick was that one of his socks was a slightly darker shade of brown than the other. He jotted down a quick note on his notepad, “Investigate socks.”

“And that’s when the trouble started,” the man said. Dick nodded his head. He wasn’t actually paying attention to what the man was saying, because he was too busy writing down the sock comment, but he knew if he asked him to repeat it, it would hurt the image of his unassuming nature. So he acted as though he had been paying attention all along, and asked the man to continue.

“I trust you know of the incident on the Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969?” asked the man.

“Of course,” replied Dick, “Hell’s Angels, a handful dead, several injured. It was the end of free love, ‘the day the music died.’”

“Well spoken. Well, as I’m sure you know, the fortieth anniversary of the event is coming up soon, two weeks from now, in fact, and as it gets closer the… incidents have started occurring more often.”

Incidents? Dick wondered what the hell he could mean by incidents. If only he had paid attention earlier. He looked into the man’s eyes for some sort of clue, but they refused to meet his, instead continuing to dance around the room. As he watched, he noticed that the mans eyebrows almost came together to join into a single brow, save for a perfectly circular patch of bare skin in the center. This was interesting, he would have to write this down. He did so, and then looked up again at his client.

“--and then they just vanish. So, Mr. Shandley, what do you think?”

Shit, he had done it again. He would have to continue to fake his way through the conversation.

“Uh, first why don’t you tell me what you think?”

“Well, as I mentioned before, I’m not an expert on this sort of thing, but as I understand it, spirits can be drawn to areas of strong emotional events.”

Ghosts! Aha!

Dick breathed a sigh of relief, because now he knew what the case was all about. The paranormal was something of a specialty of his. Most of his cases were paranormal in origin, a decision he had made because they were the easiest cases he had ever gotten. Ninety percent of the time, he could simply pull out an old walkman he had glued some aluminum foil to, wave it around, say some spooky things and then declare the apparition evicted, and collect his fee. The other ten percent, well, those required some quick thinking.

“So you want me to head out to Altamont to hunt some ghosts, right?”

“Well, that’s not exactly how I’d put it, but yes.”

“I can be on a plane tonight.” Dick leapt to his feet, shook the man’s hand, grabbed his hat and coat and rushed out the door. The man was left standing in Dick’s office, alone and confused. He wondered if Dick had forgotten to lock the door, but looking around, realized that there was not anything worth stealing. Once he had waited long enough to be sure that Shandley wasn’t coming back, he too walked out the door.

---

Dick Shandley arrived at the Altamont Speedway early in the morning, to make sure it was empty. He didn’t want a lot of people around to wonder what it was he was looking for. Actually, Dick wasn’t so sure himself what he was looking for, but he knew he was looking for something, and that set his mind at ease.

He remembered his client saying something about people going missing, but he wasn’t really sure how to check that out. Dick didn’t trust the police, and it was too early for the library to be open to check the newspapers. Well, if he couldn’t follow his only lead, he would have to create one himself. He turned his attention toward the only other person he could find, a man half-heartedly pushing a broom around.

“Hey, buddy,” he shouted, “you know anything about these disappearances?”

“Yeah, my brother disappeared last week!”

That was convenient.

“Anything you can tell me about his disappearance?”

The man moved closer to him. “Yeah, it happened right over there.” He pointed at a small empty space between two portable toilets.

“What do you mean it happened over there?”

“Well, I saw it. He was standing over there, then there was a flash, and then he wasn’t standing there no more.”

“And the place he was standing, it was that little nook between the port-a-potties?”

“That’s it.”

“Why was he standing there?” Dick rightly asked.

The man shrugged. “Derek was always fond of tight, smelly places.” Dick could have used this opportunity to make a crude joke at the man’s expense, but he refrained, instead thanking him for his time.

Dick quickly worked his way into the small gap, wedging himself into a very stinky crevice. Realizing the impact of what he was doing, but unable to come up with a suitable witticism, he simply muttered the word “anus” under his breath. The moment he spoke it, he was instantly blinded by a bright light, and he felt his stomach pulled sharply downward. Before he knew it he was falling freely, surrounded by total darkness. This was particularly surprising, as he had still been trying to come up with poop jokes, and was having a little trouble processing this all.

Before long, the falling stopped, and Dick’s eyes had to readjust to the white room that had formed around him. The first thing he noticed was the eerie quality of the walls, if you could call them that, because they did not seem to have any substance, just endless white, stretching off into the distance. He also was not sure what he was standing on, as there was really no discernable floor. The second thing he noticed was that he was not alone.

Standing near him was a silver-haired man wearing a dark suit. The suit, like the man, had something of a timeless style about it. It had no buttons, yet that did not stop it from remaining firmly closed. An odd thought entered Dick’s head, that it was as though the suit had evolved beyond the need for buttons. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but that was unmistakably the impression he got. The man seemed young, monochrome hair aside, yet there was an ancient and knowing quality about his eyes.

“Good evening, Mr. Shandley,” said the man. His voice was soft and reassuring, yet there was a kind of menace there too, like the translation of a nightmare. “It was very nice of you to visit speak the ancient word so you could visit me.”

Dick was curious about how the man knew his name, but there was one thing he was even more curious about. “The ancient word is ‘ANUS?’”

“Oh yes, you see I was imprisoned here long ago in this place, the Trilogic Dimension. Those who trapped me here sealed the rift with a word that they knew nobody would ever say. The most unpleasant word they could think of.”

“Well, apparently they fucked up. After all, I said ‘anus’ and I’m guessing all those other people who I think might have gone missing, maybe. Right?”

“Indeed, you are correct, Mr. Shandley. These others you speak of, they became my prisoners. You see, I am the Game Master, and the only way out of this place is to defeat me in a game of skill!”

Shandley let out a deep laugh. “Are you serious? The Game Master? Did you come up with that name in your parents’ basement?”

“Fine. My name is Steve, okay? Are you happy? To leave this place you must defeat the ancient and powerful Steve.”

“So to get out of here I have to play Dungeons and Dragons with the Great Steve?”

Steve laughed. “If you’ll recall, I said we would play a game of skill.” Steve snapped his fingers, and suddenly a table appeared, with what appeared to be a chess board with triangular spaces, and a sawed off shotgun next to it.

“The game,” declared Steve, “is known as pan-dimensional shotgun chess. The rules are similar to standard chess, except each space has a light component, and a dark component. This affects which pieces can be captured, and when. Also, the knight moves six spaces instead of the standard five, the queen can only capture while moving diagonally, and the bishop must change between light and dark configurations on every turn. Do you understand?” Dick did not understand.

“Don’t worry,” Steve continued, “either you will pick it up when we start playing, or you will lose and be trapped here forever. Another thing to be aware of is that at the end of each turn, you will be transported to a sub-dimension where you must face a challenge of both wits and physical ability. Try not to die during these, because they can be quite dangerous. Finally, you will notice the shotgun on the table. This can be a great asset to you, but be aware you can only use it once, so make it count. In order to use the shotgun...”

He did not finish, because at this point Dick picked up the shotgun and fired it into Steve’s chest, killing him instantly. As soon as Steve’s bloody corpse hit the ground, a rope was lowered from the sky. Dick climbed it, and soon found himself back at the Speedway.

Dick Shandley wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but then again that would be an assumption, and Dick Shandley was an unassuming man. He hadn’t found the missing people, and he wasn’t even sure that more wouldn’t wind up missing. But then, Dick knew that chasing perfection never led to anything but madness. There were just some mysteries better left unsolved. With that, Dick made his way to a little restaurant to get a bowl of clam chowder, and then returned to his hotel one last time to steal the sheets before catching the next flight home. It was a good day.