Recently I was given a book by a pretty hardcore Christian friend of mine called The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place In God’s Story. Before I get into the book, first a little background about me and the friend. As you probably know, I’m an Atheist. My friend is a coworker who I have known for almost seven years and in that time he has frequently tried to convert me to his religion and way of thinking. The past year or so he has grown even more Christian, going as far as to recently get rid of cable television because it, essentially, does not bring him closer to God. Now I should clarify that while I am an Atheist, I was raised Catholic, but not heavy Catholic; in other words while I went to CCD every Saturday morning, I did not go to a Catholic school and we did not go to church, well, ever. So it is not like Christianity is a completely foreign concept to me. While I have never read the Bible cover to cover, I have read very small bits and pieces of it. This book that he gave me, though, is supposed to be kind of like a summary of the Bible.

Contrary to the common misconception of people’s opinions of Atheists, like other Atheists, I have always been open minded to other people’s views. In the past, I have read other books on Christianity, including a book given to me by a coworker who was a Jehovah Witness. My theory has always been that nobody knows for sure what, if anything, comes after we die. The frustrating and beauty of the whole religious argument is that there is no way possible for anybody to be proven right or wrong; anybody who says otherwise is so arrogant and has their head shoved so far up their ass that it comes out their neck. I don’t believe because there is no proof that any of this is true. And those who believe suspend their common sense and reality to believe things that just aren’t possible or have never proven to be possible: the virgin birth, the talking snake, the resurrection and for Muslims, the promise of 72 virgins upon dying. None of it seems plausible or even close to being even slightly possible. Perhaps I’m being difficult here, but why is it that when it comes to religion, to have faith, you must believe the irrational.

So back to the book. I can certainly see how and why hardcore Christians become believers and are so good at convincing people to become believers; they essentially brainwash people. The pound home the same talking points over and over, some exactly the same, some the same but just worded differently. This book, along with the Bible and followers, start by recruiting people with the promise of God’s love and then rule by fear; fear that if you do not live a God like life, then you will go to hell, where nobody wants to go. The God they write and speak about is the most egotistical, selfish, self centered, bipolar, schizophrenic, being who has ever existed. What’s more, they seem to intentionally leave many questions unanswered and purposely contradict themselves countless times as to add confusion so that people are left too intimidated to question their stories.

And why is it that people are supposed to be judged by their God based on their treatment of others and if they have done good on this earth, but on the other hand, sexual immorality get’s scored much worse than anything else. Are they just trying to sexually suppress people so that they can more easily control them? Look, if their God created us to be special and different from any other beings and part of those differences is being able to have sex for joy and pleasure, then wouldn’t it make sense that sex should be okay?

Another thing I noticed is the warped rituals that seem to come out of nowhere. God is talking to somebody about life and being holy and then all of a sudden out of the fucking blue he tells him to cut off the tip of his baby’s dick. Circumcision is everywhere in the Bible. God seems to have an uncontrolled fixation on the cock. While I am certainly pro circumcision from a visual standpoint, I have yet to learn from the book or anybody else why or how deforming one’s penis makes you more holy. I guess it is a good thing they stopped with the tip of the dick; hell they could have decided that having two balls was wicked and you would have to cut one of those off too.

I had to decide how I wanted to go into this book; should I go in with the thought that all of it was true and it would just be reconfirmed or should I go in with the thought that I’m an Atheist and this is God on trial and the book is the evidence being presented and so the burden of proof is on Christianity. I went with the latter, because, well, it is what I believe. And as you might have guessed, my opinion and beliefs have not changed; in fact it only reconfirmed and strengthened my belief that religion is the biggest scam ever perpetrated upon mankind. Honestly, the whole thing just seemed to be one load of shit piled onto another heaping load of shit, piled onto more stinking pile of shit.

In conclusion, certainly there is nothing wrong with having faith. There is nothing wrong with being a believer; whatever anybody chooses to believe is their own personal business. Everybody should have the right to practice what they want to practice and believe what they want to believe. It is when people try to force their beliefs onto others and try to force people to live the way they believe they should live. Look, who am I to tell people how to live their lives; what is the right way for me to live might not be the right way for others to live and vice versa. Yet, this is something that seems to be missed by those extremely religious people like my friend who insist that they know the best way for me to live my life. All I can say to that is you live your life the way you see fit and I will live mine the way I see fit and know that in the end, nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Once again, I say that nobody can be proven correct or wrong in this whole debate, all we can do is live the best life we can based on what we feel to be proper and leave it at that.

I’ve really got nothing right now so I’m going to take questions. Any questions. And I mean anything. Doesn’t have to be about me. Can be about anything. Cars. Sex. Toothpaste. How to mix ash, used heroin needles and apple cores to make a Thanksgiving centerpiece.  When you are going to die. When Alice Rottenberg of Billings, Montana is going to die. Who the Fuck is Alice Rottenberg. I mean any questions. And I will answer them. And if I don’t know an answer, I will make one up. Cuz that is how I roll!

Boy, I really hope that there isn’t an Alice Rottenberg of Billings, Montana, otherwise that can make me look like a real fucking weirdo. I mean, even more so than already.

Okay so let me explain something to you and you tell me what this means. There is this lady I work with who sits right near me. Anywho, she is always making faces at me. Or sticking her tongue out at me. This is on a fairly consistent basis. I mean like damn near every time  I look in her direction. She also is always ripping on me and poking fun at me which I go along with as I do find it funny. A couple of weeks ago she invited me to a party at her house and said I was hilarious. Then last week she came up to me and asked if I knew a guy on Facebook who  has the same last name as me and lives near her and not far from me. Now I should clarify that my last name is not exactly common; I mean if you look people with my last name on Facebook in my area chances are good that they are related to me. Oh, and the guy she found, is my twin brother. So she is clearly looking me up on Facebook.

So what exactly does all of this mean? When I present you with that evidence, what do you think? Awwww fuck it, I know I said that I was going to let you tell me what this means but I just going to come right out with it and you tell me if I’m wrong: this chick has a crush on me. Although I do have a considerably large ego, I’m also not one of these guys who thinks that EVERY girl likes him. Quite honestly, many times I’m oblivious to it entirely until somebody points it out to me. But, I think I would have to say this one is pretty obvious, she likes me and her way of showing it is acting like a third grader.

Now you tell me, am I being a little too stuck up and self centered or does she like me. Or hell, maybe it’s both.

I’ve gotten away from writing a lot about politics on here because I know that most people don’t like to read about it or find it boring. But, this whole debt ceiling business really has me frustrated. As much as I would like to sit here and explain to you what the debt ceiling is,  honestly, for starters you should know what it is and secondly, if you don’t know what it is than you probably are not going to read this post. So with that being said, I can skip what it is and just get to the point.

I’ve been following this whole raise the debt ceiling debate very closely over the course of the last few months. And now we are down to just a week before the deadline. The whole time, the NFL was embroiled in the middle of their own dispute complete with a deadline and I was wondering who would reach a deal first; the NFL and the players or the Republicans and President Obama. Well, today the NFL lockout ended so now it is only the more important, U.S government that needs to reach a deal.

Tonight the President gave a speech followed by a speech from Speaker of the House John Boehner. Both speeches really summed up their stances and attitudes on this debate. Obama is attempting to be conciliatory and  get the Republicans to compromise and Boehner and the Republicans want to blame the whole thing on Obama in the hopes of preventing him from getting reelected.

Look, I hide no secrets, I’m a total flaming, Republican loathing, fucking liberal and proud of it. And while I have been deeply disappointed with Obama on many issues, this is not one of them. But, he is a horrible negotiator. And he has a history of folding like a cheap tent whenever the Republicans refuse to bend on issues. They know he is spineless like all Democrats. So they know eventually he will give in. Except this time, I don’t think he is caving. He even said that he would risk his presidency on this and at first I thought he was full of shit, but now, I think he is dead serious.

But the Republicans? They refuse to bend. They are childish, petulant, babies who refuse to compromise on anything. And while part of the blame does go to the Democrats for being such spineless fucking pushovers, it certainly does not give them the excuse pull this bullshit in which it is their way or the highway. Obama is willing to meet them in the middle on this issue, but they remain difficult.

Now I’m quite certain that if a deal isn’t reached things will not be as bad as Obama claims it will be. But, on the other hand, you have some Republicans who are running around saying that he is a liar and things will be completely fine if we don’t raise the ceiling. When you have two major credit rating agencies say they will lower our credit rating if a deal isn’t reached, then you know this is going to be a big fucking deal. And let’s face it, we are slowly working our way out of a recession, so why on earth would we want to do anything to potentially hurt an already fragile and unstable economy.

Could it be because the Republicans, as Mitch McConnell said last year, were dedicated to doing anything they could to prevent Obama from getting reelected and that his defeat would be their primary goal? In the history of the debt ceiling (which goes back to the 1950s, I believe) we have voted to raise the limit every single time, why is it that when a Democrat gets into office the Republicans all of a sudden remember that they don’t like debt? They almost seem to care more about beating Obama then the health of the country. Of course, on the other hand, when Obama was a senator, in 2006 he voted against raising the debt limit, so I guess he isn’t any better then the Republicans now is he?

I will say this much though, I have gained a lot of respect for Boehner these past few months. He actually seems likeable and a good guy. He seems to genuinely want to work with the President on this issue. And I really think if it weren’t for the other members of his party he would have reached a deal by now. If there has to be a Republican Speaker of the House, I’m glad it’s him.

Of course, the reality is that in the end, there will be a deal. I mean, there has to be, right? Nothing like this has ever happened in American history so the odds of a deal are very likely. The question is, which side blinks first?

I had a fairly busy, non stop weekend starting Friday night with poker. Saturday was a family reunion/picnic with my mom’s side of the family. Those of you that don’t know my mom’s family well they are…………………..let’s see, how should I put this? Uhhhh, fucking nuts. Some people might call them eccentric. Maybe that’s it. But, I’ve been told that when you are rich and nuts they call you eccentric, but when you are not rich and nuts they just call you nuts. They fall into the latter. I can tell you stories but honestly, you just have to meet some of them. And the funny part is that I haven’t even met a lot of them; I have cousins in California that I’ve never met. My mom was the youngest of nine and now there are only four of them still alive. And between all nine of them they had 36 kids. Many of the nine were nuts. Damn near all of the 36 grandkids are nuts. And I can’t even explain the kind of nuts they are, they are just goofy, not in a fun way, but more in a………….uhhhh, laugh at them not with them kinda way.

I used to have a very poor relationship with my mom’s family, but a couple of years ago, we reconciled and have had reunions last year and this year. So yesterday actually went really well. It sprinkled for about the first 15 minutes but after that, outside of being sticky and hot, it was fine. I’d hate to say it, but for most of the time, the guys played horseshoes while the ladies sat around and talked. Yeah, that’s right, I said horseshoes, what can I say they had some pits there and we love horseshoes. I know everybody plays beanbags/cornhole these days and while we certainly do a lot of that ourselves, it is still nice to play shoes every now and then. And I kicked ass at shoes yesterday too so that made it even better.

Last night after the reunion I watched Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Of course, it was every bit as good as I thought it would be and then some. Shortly after I started the movie though, it started to storm something fierce. And shortly after that, the power was out, so I just went to bed fairly early too, just after midnight. I didn’t sleep well though as there was no AC or fans so it was hot in the room and the storm was loud. I woke up at about 8 in the am to another loud ass storm and of course, the power was still not back on.

Eventually, it did stop raining and I had plans go golfing for my best friend’s birthday. Now I should mention, I am nothing if not a horrible golfer. And being that we had a whole shitload of rain the night before and this morning, it made for a soppy, wet course. In fact, by the time I was done my shoes and socks were soaked like I had been swimming with them on. Still, we had a pretty good time.

After golf my siblings and I had dinner with a couple of cousins of ours who were in from Tennessee for the reunion. Again, I can tell stories, but it was my mom’s goofy family so I’ll just leave it at that.

This is it people! After decades of searching and hoping, I’m finally in love! I have found the man of my dreams. I know who I want to spend lot’s of time with and grow old with and all that bullshit. I can’t believe that I’ve searched for so long and it turns out it is somebody who has been around all along. Isn’t that how it always is though? You search and search and go through a lot of shit and it turns out to be somebody who was there all along. Well, that is how it was for me. I am happy to say I have fallen madly in love with…………..

Alfred Hitchcock! For years I have been curious about his movies. Probably about eight years ago or so I saw about half of the amazing Psycho and wanted to see more of his movies but for whatever reason, I didn’t. But a couple of months ago I could not find a good movie to watch so I watched Strangers on a Train which for those of you who don’t know the 1951 classic Hitchcock movie, you might know the very loosely based Billy Crystal-Danny Devito movie from 1987, Throw Mama From the Train or even more recently, it was referenced in the current comedy, Horrible Bosses. Nevertheless, Strangers was riveting and captivating; I was on the edge of my seat for most of the movie. And to think, I was worried it might not hold up today seeing as though it is 60 years old.

So the next one I watched was Dial M For Murder and that too was good. Not just good, but very good. So then I watched Vertigo which, truth be told, started off kind of slow but before I knew it, I was pulled in and it turned out to be so intense. Vertigo is listed as the ninth best movie of all time by the American Film Institute. While I don’ t know if I would put it that high, I can certainly see its appeal.

So what would be next? A couple of weeks ago I decided to see a movie I’ve heard a lot about and always wanted to see: The Birds. It too started kind of slow but it continually builds and builds until you are squirming in your seat cringing at every peck. That night I laid in bed trying to fall asleep, jumping at every sound I heard thinking it was a bird. I have not looked at birds the same way since that movie.

They call Hitchcock the Master of Suspense and I can totally see why, he is amazing. One can make the argument that he is the greatest director of all time. I mean, just look at his list of movies, besides all of the ones I already mentioned, you still have North By Northwest, The Wrong Man, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, I Confess, Notorious and many many others. I’m just trying to decide which one to see next. I’m thinking Rear Window or North by Northwest. Or, I can go back and watch all of Psycho. I guess it doesn’t matter, all would be great choices I’m sure. Now if only I could find a Hitchcock film festival……….

I recently watched a documentary on HBO called Hot Coffee. The movie was basically about lawsuits and how sometimes, they are needed and yet sometimes, the people doing the suing are viewed as villains. While they go into several different lawsuits, the one that the movie is based on is the most infamous one. I’m sure many of you remember the overview of the case that the movie primarily deals with: the old lady who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself. Everybody knows about this case; in fact, you could make an argument that this was the most famous lawsuit ever and maybe even one of the most influential cases ever.

Of course everybody has their opinion, however most people believe the case was bullshit and frivolous. Although that was generally my opinion on it, I also was not very opinionated on it unlike most other things. I thought that maybe the lady had a little bit of a case, but I certainly could not understand how she got something like two million dollars from the case. I remember hearing years ago that the lady originally wanted to settle for about $900 which was the cost of her medical care but McDonald’s said no. Turns out I was kind of wrong on that point. She wanted to settle for the cost of her medical care which totaled about $10,000 and McDonald’s would only pay $900.

But perhaps you all have your own opinions and misconceptions about the case. Allow me to point a few things out and you tell me what you thought was true or if the lady had a case. First of all, most people think she was driving down the road with the coffee in between her legs and spilled it on herself. Turns out, she wasn’t even driving. And the car wasn’t even moving. She was in the passenger’s seat while her relative was behind the wheel. He parked the car and they sorted through the order. This is when she spilled the coffee.

McDonald’s always had a policy of keeping their sitting coffee between 180 and 190 degrees. Even a McDonald’s VP stated that nobody would want to consume something that hot if they did not want to get burned. He said this in a video that was played at the trial. Prior to this case, McDonald’s had received over 700 complaints about burns and the coffee being too hot. Yet, they never did anything.

All of that was an eye opener for me. But,the most damning evidence for me though was the pictures of the burns on her legs and inner thighs. I wish I had a copy of the pictures to post because they are shocking. Quite honestly, once you see them, it would certainly make you think about, if nothing else, that the coffee was indeed too hot. The debate though is the accountability factor; critics say how could you reward somebody for being an idiot and spilling coffee on themselves. While that might be true, the liberal in me says that McDonald’s shares in the accountability for knowing there was a significant problem but not doing anything to correct it.

Like all documentaries, this one does of course, have a bias and in the case of this movie, a liberal bias. But if you get a chance, you should check it out for several reasons, among them to learn that companies have found a way to prevent employees and customers from suing no matter what the situation. I now open this up for debate.

Those of you not from the Chicagoland area might not be familiar with our legendary radio station Q101. The station was started back in 1992 and was, to my knowledge, the very first alternative radio station in the entire country. Not liking alternative music when it first came out, I did not listen to Q101 and actually did not like it for quite a few years. But, as happens, my musical tastes changed over the years and eventually I found myself listening to it more and more and quite frequently actually. Unfortunately for the station though, less people started listening to the station less frequently. It got so bad that a few weeks ago I read in the paper that their ratings were something like 23rd out of 25 stations in Chicago. This of course, was not a good sign. And it was even a worse sign when the new owners of the station decided that being 23 out of 25 really sucked ass and decided to pull the plug on the station. So, this past Thursday, the station died

The article I read in the paper stated that more and more younger people who used to make up the bulk of Q101′s listeners were now going elsewhere for their music, like on the world wide internets and whatnot. What sucks for me is that I primarily listen to the radio while I’m driving and unlike most people, I don’t have a computer hooked up into my car. So now where am I going to go to get the same music that Q101 played? Oh sure we have other stations that will play some of the music they played, but none that will play the harder edged stuff that I like. For a city in the middle of the damn country we seem to have an awful lot of country and Spanish stations.

In my group of friends, we have quite a few that have birthdays in the month of July. So we traditionally have a birthdays in July party every year, which, if nothing else is an excuse to have a party. So yesterday was that party. As expected, it wound up being a really good time and left me wanting more parties with my friends.

So one of my friends came up with an idea some time ago in which we would all sign into a pact that we would each take turns every month doing repair work at each others houses. So we signed this sacred parchment with our blood and seamen and chick juices called it Project Days and off we went. This really works out well for me as I have a TON of stuff that needs to be done at my house but I have no clue how to do any of it. Also, I have no desire to learn or do it either. And I also don’t want to pay for it. So this presents the perfect opportunity for me to show up at their houses, pretend like I’m working hard and act like I know what I’m doing and then eventually they get around to my house which has the serious shit that needs to get done.

Well, today was the first day of projects at a friends house. We had to do some landscaping work in the front and backyard. As fortunes would have it, today was well over 90 degrees out and with the heat index it was pushing 100. It didn’t stop us though, we still worked about six hours. Oh sure, I wouldn’t have been offended in the least if the weather decided to be oh, I don’t know, 10 or 15 degrees cooler, but hey, we still made it through. I’m proud to say that the yard looks pretty damn good; hell it almost looks like it could have been done by professionals. Shit, I can’t believe people pay other people thousands of dollars to do this sort of thing. I’m looking forward to the next Project Day.

Imagine you are a teenager with all the normal struggles and bullshit that comes with being a teenager. You have the pressures of school and pressures from parents and siblings and friends and maybe a job. Being a teenager you have your typical teen angst and typical teen emotions. You are moody and you don’t know why. Everything seems to get blown way out of proportion. Life is just generally miserable from time to time. Now imagine you are gay.

Perhaps you have always known or perhaps you realize at the onset of puberty that something isn’t right or at least not the same right that you have been taught to believe ever since you were in diapers. You are in the gym locker room at school and the other boys turn you on. You don’t know why. You don’t want them to turn you on but you can’t help it. As you change your clothes, you try to hid your slight erection from seeing the other boys. You are worried that one of them might see this and beat the shit out of you. What is worse is that many of the other boys in the very same locker room routinely use the words fag, faggots, or homo or use the word gay to describe things they don’t like.

Now imagine yourself at home. Your parents are the Christian conservative types who not only believe being gay is wrong and gays go to Hell, but also have long said that no child of theirs would ever choose to be gay and if so, they will be kicked out and disowned from the family. Yet, you know being gay is no more a choice then your height or skin color. You know that while everybody in your life is telling you it’s wrong and you will go to Hell, you can’t help but be turned on by other guys. You try to suppress it and even fake an interest in girls, but it only makes you sick to your stomach tying to force something that just is not natural for you. You know for you, being gay is right and to live any other way would be to live a lie. Yet, you can’t tell anybody for fear of being ostracized, hated, or bullied just for being what everybody can be: yourself.

So on top of all of the other pressures of being a teen, you have to deal with being gay in a not so gay friendly world. Life is agony; being forced to suppress who you are eats you up inside. There are many sleepless nights; sometimes you stare aimlessly up at the ceiling wondering, hoping you can change what you are; sometimes you lay awake crying because you have nobody that you can  go to in hopes of unburdening  this powerful, life changing secret. You dread going to school in the morning because you see how those fuckers torment and bully the other gay teens who are not so fortunate enough to be able to conceal their homosexuality under a thick veil of masculinity the way you can. Yet, you fear that one day you will become one of them: bullied for being gay. Your heart bleeds for these other victims and you want so bad to stand with them and say “you are not alone, I’m gay too, now let’s pull ourselves up, get strong, and fight back against those evil bastards.” But you can’t. People finding out the truth means you lose everything: your friends, your family, even a place to live. You suffer in silence, wondering when your own personal hell ends.

Sounds awful doesn’t it? Well, lucky for teens, it gets better. Look, high school fucking blows for everybody. But you know what, eventually, it ends and you don’t have to see those motherfuckers again until you see them being hauled into a police car on the evening news. And meanwhile, you turn into the rousing success you always knew you would become; successful in life and happily in a relationship with the man of your dreams.

And as fellow human beings, we can all help kids overcome such hell by visiting  http://www.itgetsbetter.org/ and either making a video or donating or just spreading the word. Even the Chicago Cubs made a video, which is ironic since it never gets better for the Cubs; only progressively worse. Been 66 years since they last went to the World Series and 103 since they last won one? Well no problem, it gets worse by being damn near the worst team in baseball. But even the Cubs realize that things can get better. The Cubs, who’s co-owner, Laura Rickets, is quite possibly the only openly gay owner in the history of professional sports. So go and help make a difference, I did and I will soon be sporting my brand new It Gets Better t-shirt just by donating.

Here is the link one more time:

http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

Recently I’ve realized something about myself: I’m more animal than man. For the most part, animals have a two track mind; food and mating. They live their lives with two primary organs, the stomach and the cock/pussy. They go to great lengths to eat or fuck. Well, I’m kinda the same way. I’m either constantly thinking about food or sex. It is all just a big cycle. When I’m hungry I’m all about the food. Shit, even when I’m not hungry but know I’m going to be having a good meal that is all I can think of. Then, once I get full on food, I instantly switch to thinking about sex. Ohhh, gotta have an orgasm. Sex, sex, sex!! Then I have the orgasm and it is all about the food again.

Then there are the times when I think of both at the same time. Like when I’m on a date. Of course, I’m thinking of the food I’m about to eat, but the other half of my brain is thinking of the sex I’m going to have. Food and sex on the mind at the same time? Well, shit it doesn’t get any better than that. Hell, it is like sensory overload; I don’t know whether to hump my chair or eat the cloth napkin at the dinner table. Fortunately for me the waiter keeps coming over to distract me.

But it is like I’m all out until I get full or empty, depending on which mode I’m in. For example, at night right before bed, I give it three tugs and then an explosion and then as soon as the clean up is done I’m excited to go to sleep because it means I get to have Coco Puffs in the morning. And then as soon as I’m done eating, boom the excitement comes again because soon I will be naked in the shower. And on days when I’m not overly horny, it’s food all day long. Look, I don’t have three orgasms a day, but I sure as hell eat three times a day. Hell, I love to eat; if I didn’t exercise so much I would be a really fat fuck. But, because I burn off a lot of calories it keeps me thin and always hungry. Or horny. Take your pick.

I just finished dinner an hour and a half ago so my stomach is quiet and content. But, you know what that means, my penis is begging for attention. Fucker. I swear he is such a drama queen. The only bigger drama queen is my stomach, who never shuts the fuck up when I’m hungry. FEEEEEEEED ME SEYMOUR!!!! (or in my case, Mike). Hungry. Horny. Hungry. Horny. It is a never ending cycle.

And it’s not even that I’m as hungry or as horny as I claim to be in this post, but it is what my mind is on; sausage or, well, sausage. I seem to have an oral fixation, obsessed with always shoving something in my mouth, be it food or cock. They say the sex drive is the third most powerful drive in the human body after hunger and sleep. All I know is that when I’m hungry, look out, I have a one track mind and don’t stop until I get food. Sometimes, the same can be said of orgasms. Ahhhhh, food and sex, I guess it doesn’t get more simpler than that.