Grief is the new black

Pain, grief and despair: these are the things that make a Lars Von Trier joint so much fun. It is a wonder his actors don’t all blow their brains out on the red carpet of his premiers. I have felt shitty,  guilty, and depressed in my life, but for my money, The AntiChrist is a blue-light special of misery.

Imagine a world where all men are arrogant brutes and all women are self-serving witches. Director Von Trier will re-enforce every misanthropic notion one might have and then rape it to death just to make sure you did not miss the point. If one believes that ambiguous subtlety makes a great indie feature for cerebral types like oneself, stay far away from “The AntiChrist.” If you like the notion of two bony, over-educated people having tons of hate-sex in the woods for an hour and a half, this is the movie for you.

Here is the way this thing works:

Starts with blame and anxiety>Next phase, lust>leads to self-mutilation>Observations on the Law of the Jungle>Proves the theory of the heroine, who looks like her crow totem , that nature truly is “Satan’s Church”

Chaos Reigns

Hell’s Waiting Room

On xx/xx/09 I attended a Statewide  Atheist Convention, which is a regional tentacle of American Atheists under the false assumption that I would not feel like an alien with a third eyeball where my mouth should be. My comfort level around these godless brethren was shaky at best and an excercise in paranoic attentiveness at worst. A goddamned Atheist also stole my good pen. So much for the Golden Rule.

Since I am in my late thirties, it was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment to be the second youngest in the room, by my super scientific observation method. The crowd skewed something like 80% over 50 and half of that was probably over 70. I did not find that lonely 20-40 year old woman with whom I would make an instant connection, and then relocate 300 miles to be near because her shiny black mane and enthusiastic lack of belief in the supernatural had hopelessly bewitched me. The whole affair just made me kind of sad. The worn-out ballroom in a one-star motor lodge made the whole event seem half-baked. The constant interruption of the video presentation projected  on a 10-year-old ThinkPad with an Atari video card was also a large time waster.

I really did want to have a nice time with interesting people, and their many PhD’s, but I just had to leave before the final speaker, Dr. “Ed” Buckner, who in a secret coupe, replaced the former president of AA with himself because of personal disagreements only last winter. I have a feeling the attendance was so low and so aged because many younger people walked away from the parent organization in disgust at the ousting of the beloved and beautiful Ellen Johnson. This is only speculation based on the voices of internet trolls that clogged the message boards of AA and it’s affiliates a year ago.

Another “My Family is so Fucked!” post

Thanksgiving dinner is the biggest dysfunctional family cliché set-up and the fodder for jazzillions of mainstream and indie film melodramas.

So naturally I just have to describe how everybody in the  room, whence we broke bread, was certifiably mentally ill after some fashion in my family. This is not just a… my family is so crazy…the turkey was so dry…everybody avoids auntie Blah Blah’s special moose wafers…Grandpa Kadidlefuk got so drunk and…the dog knocked the turkey off the table…15 year old Joe Bob was so mad that he had to sit at the card table with the little kids…Grandma had a senior moment and sat Uncle Pat next to his homophobe brother who could not stop making cracks about purses and buttsex…Sissy showed up late on  the bus from Seattle, with a tattoo and a habit, talking loudly about her black boyfriend…

No, that probably happens in all families. They act out. They all love or pretend to love each other despite the disdain they feel.

The unspoken and the unthinkable hangs like a surreal cloud at my family gatherings. There are filthy terrible grubby secrets in the broken mind of  every single unwilling participant. They are trapped by ignorance and shame and socio-economic factors that they only rudimentarily understand. It is a wonder any of them remember how to wipe themselves. Everybody is mildly pretending to smile through stone and the only words are occasional cackling and jabbering. Failure, unemployment, autism, manic depression was  passed to these people like the gravy on their instant mashed potatoes. Nervous ticks and other movement disorders are common. I am afraid to look to closely at family trees, for fear of the close relationships I might find. The criminal records are glossed over as if it is just an easy way to get one’s GED. These people are the reason I will never have children of my own. To disappoint my mate with more defective spawn would just be another reason for the inevitable third divorce. To drag my child to a gathering of these mutants would be an excercise in nervous protectiveness and unbearable shame. Uncle Feelyfingers lurks around every corner and the lessons he has taught his own children my be their undoing.

At least the turkey wasn’t dry.

Stalking UU2

It has actually been a month since I drove by the UU Church. I woke up today and put on what passes for sunday best in my disorganized mind. I then realized I could never walk through those doors. I do not want to tell strangers with actual faces my story. I do not want to trade clammy handshakes or nervously fish for the fiver I put in my front pocket when the plate, or whatever passes for one in a heathen church, is passed around.

 

So ends the second stage of my “spiritual” exploration. The towel has been thrown in, and I am ready for my next un-finishable project. Bring on the disappointment!

Stalking UU

I don’t know what the heck I am thinking. I am totally atheistic and kind of hostile to religion in general, and xtianity specifically. The last time I semi-willingly went to a church was a midnight mass at Our Lady of Concrete, in order to please the parents of my first ex-wife. Needless to say, I was not married in a church either time, and the second time avoided any mention of the G-word, save a brief reading from Ecclesiastes, or something, to avoid the tittering of the extra-xtian family and to keep my “sainted” grandmother from having a heart-attack on the spot. So why did I shave, spray on cologne, comb and tie my hair up, put on slacks, a collar shirt, a neutral sweater, almost a tie, and drive by church at 10:15 this Sunday morning?

 

I tell myself that I did not stop, because the picture in my head had me walking through the door to some glad-handing deacon giving me the twice over. I tell myself that I did not stop because the smell of old lady-cologne from someone besides my “sainted” grandmother gives me the heebie-jeebies. I tell myself that, being a solitary male, and this being a Unitarian Universalist church, that I will be pegged for one of the lonely homosexuals that the rainbow banner outside proudly welcomes. I tell myself that My intentions for coming alone will be misconstrued by wary earth-mothers and tweedy-yet-protective fathers. I tell myself that I forgot to pee before I left the house and do not want to immediately ask wherefore is thine restroom at a place where I know no one, and everyone knows everyone else. I tell myself that, despite the declarations on the website that many humanists and atheists enjoy fellowship with other socially liberal, enlightened, and well read people, that I just cannot accept that I am walking into a church, which is the house of God, possibly considered by many congregants, under false pretenses.

 

I tell myself all of these things and drive by sheepishly, hoping the squat woman in khaki pants with a pixie haircut helping her mother out of the backseat did not see me and will not peg me for an acolyte of the pathetic unemployed bigot who cowardly shot at children and the elderly during a youth musical presentation in a UU church down south last year. I keep on driving, telling myself that I will be late anyhow, if I turn around. I will try to take a seat in the back quietly, but the only spot will be two rows from the pulpit, next to three squirming kids who have not been taught lessons about respecting a stranger’s personal space. I tell myself that I will be seated between two slightly infirm octogenarians, whose walkers block my escape route when the panic attack ensues. I tell myself that the warmly smiling and plump suited minister will pause during his homily to ask the congregation to welcome new friends, whence all the unfamiliar faces will turn to me and smiley-nod, while I shrink into a puddle of sweat and neurosis.

 

I wonder what ever possessed me to get up on Sunday morning, purposefully, without a hangover, make myself presentable, and drive across town to this building that I lived three fourths of a block away from for the last three years, without ever going in, save for the annual rummage sale. (this is how I know they are well read; I bought loads of good books there.) Why did I even try? I know it was not to find a god that has been credulously demonstrated to me by the earnest and judgmental faithful of all stripes. I know it was not to prove to myself that I would not burst into flames, or be struck by lightening or receive the holy spirit upon crossing the threshold. I am pretty sure that It was not so that I could demonstrate my spotty knowledge of the scriptures and their many inconsistencies, inhumanities and abominations to a horrified and unwilling audience.

 

I think the only real reason is that I thought that I might avoid being judged too harshly for my lack of eye contact during my uneasy attempts at verbal communication with strangers. I thought that people would not gasp in horror and shake their heads decrying the shame when I answered the question of what religion I was raised in, what I converted from or whether I had AcceptedJesussAsMyPersonalSavior.

 

I thought that my two failed marriages would not be seen as failures of character, communication or compassion, but as necessary stages of learning and growth. I thought I would find people who did not judge the fact that I made a conscious decision never to have children because my genetics stink and I am not emotionally stable enough to maintain a marriage, let alone nurture children in a healthy and meaningful way.

 

I thought that I would find people who might have a built in safety net from the character flaw that some call alcoholism or addiction, without all the twelve-step promotion of pathetic helplessness that only helps people feel like victims, and makes everyone a prisoner of their vices, rather than their master. I also figured that, so far, besotted buddies and bar-stools have not helped me to be a kinder more social person, and have just served to funnel away money, time, health and motivation.

 

I thought I might be welcomed to participate in community projects and service programs that provide what Superior Christians call charity, without hanging the albatross of blood salvation, guilt and atonement around the necks of those they wish to help. I thought I might go because I feel alone, and have little family that can see ,clear-eyed, my point of view. I heard that their was a group of atheists and free thinkers within the UU church who preserved a love of reason and science without hiding in a godless closet, afraid to express their true feelings about supernatural woo-woo to peers and family.

 

So I guess I am still waiting to see if I can stop my car and walk through the door. Will I find a welcoming, but not pushy group to adopt? I guess the only way to know would be to be able to overcome this crippling shyness, that I fear makes me appear to be a stammering lunatic loner.

May 5: Fraud!

Coffee is a hell of a drug. I wish I did not lose the post from yesterday. My typing was so accurate and my words flowed like prose or poetry or something.

A Fine Beginning…or how’d I get my finger stuck in this bottle?

I wish I was that young Master Thomas again, burning the memories of my youth and creating my own persona. I screwed it all up, eating all the acid I could get my hands on and pretending I could get by and succeed through sheer force of whim and spite. Now I just drink a lot. I will try to get it all down, so as to record it before inevitable dementia takes over, led along gingerly by Irish whiskey and American beer.

Sometimes regret is not useful. It can crackle the neurons when sleepytime comes, making rest impossible. I wonder about the nasty thoughtless things I did when I wanted to be so idealistic and forthright. Lies that I am yet to be caught in, or else have been, but are really just incosequential to friends, acquaintences and new enemies. For example, I never actually took heroin or saw GG Allin, playing a show or in casual curcumstances. I am pretty sure that I have never actually stated that I did, but my silence when these things come up in casual conversation as these subjects often do, was underhandedly ambiguous, to be sure. This is a trait I fall back on again and again. Never deny, but do not confirm either.

It just occurs to me that tomorrow is the 31st of October. As popular mythology goes, that is the date that Mr. Allin had threatened/promised/gifted that he would off himself onstage from 1988 to 1991. As luck would have it, I was living on a hippie mountain switchback hill pup-tent in Colorado in that year and heard the news of the impending spectacle, which would have taken place in my hometown punk rock music hall. Unfortunately the event would not take place because the star conveniently ended up in jail in my home state for some sort of sexy aggravated nonsense. This is as close as I got to the whiff of his scabby grandeur.