3/6
The angel stares at me from the gates of Heaven.
“Name?”
“Uh… Joseph.”
“Well Joseph, you can be judged for all your sins, mortal and venal. We weigh your soul and it must be lighter than this feather.”
“I can be judged this way. Is there another option?”
“Or you can roll these two dice. Six or higher, you get in. Less, and you have to wait outside the gates for all eternity with the other losers.”
I think about it for a second. “Give me the dice,” I say. Even if I lose, I’ll probably have better conversations with the losers than I ever would with all those weightless-souled tightasses in heaven.
Rattle rattle rattle. Roll!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Sam - Religion
You know, we talk a lot about religion and if we’d be better off without it. We talk about atheism and how god doesn’t exist, or that he does. But some times, late at night, I have to wonder. What if it’s not that God does or doesn’t exist, but that the Gods are absent? Religion tends to be a twisted and dark thing at the extremes, but, that doesn’t mean its wrong.
Or something. This was deeper in my head.
Or something. This was deeper in my head.
Joseph
3/5
The Jewish people were the first to successfully claim that “my god is the only god, and it’s better than yours”. Christians and Muslims are the Jews’ bastard redheaded stepchildren who appropriated the old testament for their own purposes. No wonder many of them hate the Jews so much. They want daddy’s love but won’t realize that they already have it. Abraham is looking down on them in heaven like “What the fuck?”
The Jewish people were the first to successfully claim that “my god is the only god, and it’s better than yours”. Christians and Muslims are the Jews’ bastard redheaded stepchildren who appropriated the old testament for their own purposes. No wonder many of them hate the Jews so much. They want daddy’s love but won’t realize that they already have it. Abraham is looking down on them in heaven like “What the fuck?”
Friday, March 4, 2011
Joseph
3/4
“I can’t live with the fact that 90% of the world is suffering from a mass delusion” –Contact
I can live with that. I can live with the fact that 90% of the world are, while not stupid, scared as fuck of death and so make hasty and stupid decisions. How can someone possibly listen to someone else tell them what will happen after we die? No one knows. That’s why it’s called “Faith” and not “knowledge”. I can live with the fact that 90% of the word are okay with the murders, stonings, inquisitions, molestations and genocide that have been committed in His name. But you know what I can’t live with? I can’t live with the fact that you want me to believe the same bullshit delusions that you do. Call me a nonbeliever, a sinner, an infidel. Tie me to a stake and burn me or just throw me on the fire with the other faggots. Make me go to a school taught by nuns, or imams, or rabbis, or Buddhist monks, or hindu-ites. Lash me. Crucify me upside down, force me to undergo death by a thousand cuts. Punish me. Because I will never believe what you believe.
Unless you’re an agnostic. In which case, let’s have a beer and talk about what all those stupid people who believe in god and organized religion are going to do next.
“I can’t live with the fact that 90% of the world is suffering from a mass delusion” –Contact
I can live with that. I can live with the fact that 90% of the world are, while not stupid, scared as fuck of death and so make hasty and stupid decisions. How can someone possibly listen to someone else tell them what will happen after we die? No one knows. That’s why it’s called “Faith” and not “knowledge”. I can live with the fact that 90% of the word are okay with the murders, stonings, inquisitions, molestations and genocide that have been committed in His name. But you know what I can’t live with? I can’t live with the fact that you want me to believe the same bullshit delusions that you do. Call me a nonbeliever, a sinner, an infidel. Tie me to a stake and burn me or just throw me on the fire with the other faggots. Make me go to a school taught by nuns, or imams, or rabbis, or Buddhist monks, or hindu-ites. Lash me. Crucify me upside down, force me to undergo death by a thousand cuts. Punish me. Because I will never believe what you believe.
Unless you’re an agnostic. In which case, let’s have a beer and talk about what all those stupid people who believe in god and organized religion are going to do next.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Mar. 3, 2011
Reference: Book of Disquiet
Create someone outside of yourself, taking an aspect of yourself and amplifying it to the point of caricature, or to the point that it might be the exact opposite of your original trait.
Strip away all hopes, goals, temptations, pleasures, and productive activities—what are you? How does your life still have purpose? This purpose may be quite different, or outside of the box, from what you had hoped or expected.
Joseph
3/3
Is nothing more impermanent than memory? Tryout this experiment: do something extremely memorable. This is the hard part. Many people live their lives without doing this. Not memorable for others, but just memorable for you. Then, don’t think about it for ten years. This will also be hard. Purposely not thinking about something is in its own way even more difficult than meditation. Now, once you’ve done so, try to remember it. Events will have changed, become more blurred yet also more vibrant. Now wait 20 years. 30 years. 40. Then, get Alzheimer’s. The experiment never ends. But as long as you remember this one event, this one action, this one thing, you’ve proved me wrong.
Is nothing more impermanent than memory? Tryout this experiment: do something extremely memorable. This is the hard part. Many people live their lives without doing this. Not memorable for others, but just memorable for you. Then, don’t think about it for ten years. This will also be hard. Purposely not thinking about something is in its own way even more difficult than meditation. Now, once you’ve done so, try to remember it. Events will have changed, become more blurred yet also more vibrant. Now wait 20 years. 30 years. 40. Then, get Alzheimer’s. The experiment never ends. But as long as you remember this one event, this one action, this one thing, you’ve proved me wrong.
Joseph
3/3
Cliffs are impermanent. Eventually, after eons of esve, water, and wind-borne particle action cliffs become sand, dust and dirt. Sand is impermanent. Eventually, after years of buildup, pressure, and heat it becomes sandstone, or glass.
Glass is impermanent. Bottles are broken over heads. Stained glass windows are broken by rocks thrown by the unbelievers. Bongs just get broken, period. But broken glass is still glass, even if it’s ground into powder and added to a fellow inmate’s oatmeal for them to eat and internally hemorrhage from. But glass becomes lava, just like anything else.
Everything becomes lava. Bone, flesh, grass, glass. Except water, which when combined with lava eventually becomes obsidian cliffs overlooking the ocean. Perhaps topped by a church with stained glass windows. Impermanence is a cycle, and the absence of a true end.
Cliffs are impermanent. Eventually, after eons of esve, water, and wind-borne particle action cliffs become sand, dust and dirt. Sand is impermanent. Eventually, after years of buildup, pressure, and heat it becomes sandstone, or glass.
Glass is impermanent. Bottles are broken over heads. Stained glass windows are broken by rocks thrown by the unbelievers. Bongs just get broken, period. But broken glass is still glass, even if it’s ground into powder and added to a fellow inmate’s oatmeal for them to eat and internally hemorrhage from. But glass becomes lava, just like anything else.
Everything becomes lava. Bone, flesh, grass, glass. Except water, which when combined with lava eventually becomes obsidian cliffs overlooking the ocean. Perhaps topped by a church with stained glass windows. Impermanence is a cycle, and the absence of a true end.
Joseph
3/3
It’s hard to talk about impermanence without mentioning death. It’s easy to talk about impermanence without mentioning love because love is eternal. How cool is that?
It’s hard to talk about impermanence without mentioning death. It’s easy to talk about impermanence without mentioning love because love is eternal. How cool is that?
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Sam - Religion
Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try.
No hell below us, above us only sky
Imagine all the people, living for today
I wonder some times if the world wouldn’t be better if there was no religion. It’s been such a hugely divisive thing through out our past. And yet, at the same time, it’s intrinsic to humanity. We anthropomorphize everything, and baring evidence of true divinity, the outgrowth of gods from that are obvious. Gods answer deeper questions, give a reason to the random chance of life, be those chances good or ill. I don’t think it’s something that can ever really be absent. Even atheists seem dedicated to convincing others that there’s no god, sometimes to the point where they sound just as zealotic as a religious man.
No hell below us, above us only sky
Imagine all the people, living for today
I wonder some times if the world wouldn’t be better if there was no religion. It’s been such a hugely divisive thing through out our past. And yet, at the same time, it’s intrinsic to humanity. We anthropomorphize everything, and baring evidence of true divinity, the outgrowth of gods from that are obvious. Gods answer deeper questions, give a reason to the random chance of life, be those chances good or ill. I don’t think it’s something that can ever really be absent. Even atheists seem dedicated to convincing others that there’s no god, sometimes to the point where they sound just as zealotic as a religious man.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Joseph
3/1
Ironic that cupid makes people fall in love with an act of violence. The hippies want to pretend that love is the opposite of violence and war; that war is the utter absence of love, that the simple power of love will conquer the demons of hate and fear and the military industrial complex. I believe that love is (maybe not first and foremost) an act of violence. It doesn’t hurt, not at first, but it tears the heart in two. It’s an act of violence, and so help me if you even look at her the wrong way I’ll tear your fucking face off.
Ironic that cupid makes people fall in love with an act of violence. The hippies want to pretend that love is the opposite of violence and war; that war is the utter absence of love, that the simple power of love will conquer the demons of hate and fear and the military industrial complex. I believe that love is (maybe not first and foremost) an act of violence. It doesn’t hurt, not at first, but it tears the heart in two. It’s an act of violence, and so help me if you even look at her the wrong way I’ll tear your fucking face off.
Sam - Religion
I am not a religious person. I never have been and I never will be. Well, no, that’s a lie. I have my own little cycle of beliefs that are somewhere between an ideology and a religion I guess, but that’s about it.
Once upon a time I was raised Jewish, but I never really liked the religion. I spent my Wednesday afternoons going to religious school, preparing for a bar mitzvah I didn’t want, and spent my speech blasting the section of Torah I had to read for having a shitty plot, bad characters, and a stupid message. I don’t remember it, but apparently I did it well, even if the rabbi was less than thrilled.
Is something really absent if you don’t miss it?
Once upon a time I was raised Jewish, but I never really liked the religion. I spent my Wednesday afternoons going to religious school, preparing for a bar mitzvah I didn’t want, and spent my speech blasting the section of Torah I had to read for having a shitty plot, bad characters, and a stupid message. I don’t remember it, but apparently I did it well, even if the rabbi was less than thrilled.
Is something really absent if you don’t miss it?
Joseph
3/1
When you murder someone, you need to do it right.
If you use a gun, for example, all you’re really doing is moving the trigger. You pull the lever, and someone dies. There’s an unhealthy disconnect there, a disparity between the action and consequence. Because it’s not your consequence. It’s the poor sap getting murdered who pays the tithe. There was a science experiment once, that asked people what they would do if runaway train was heading towards a group of people working on the tracks. Most people asked would pull a level and change the train’s path so it only ran over one person, rather than the whole group. But, when asked if they would push someone off the bridge above the tracks in order to stop the train with their body, they would. Same amount of lives saved and lost in both situations. The only difference is that in one example you end someone’s life by pulling a lever, in the other you actually have to push them off a bridge. For some reason it seems like one is murder, and the other isn’t.
It’s for this reason I feel that using a gun to kill someone is too easy. I’m not saying you should choke the guy to death, and I’m not saying you should look them in the eyes as the life leaves them. That’s morbid. But you should definitely get hands-on with it. Gain an appreciation for the act of death. It doesn’t get easier. It does, however, get more meaningful.
When you murder someone, you need to do it right.
If you use a gun, for example, all you’re really doing is moving the trigger. You pull the lever, and someone dies. There’s an unhealthy disconnect there, a disparity between the action and consequence. Because it’s not your consequence. It’s the poor sap getting murdered who pays the tithe. There was a science experiment once, that asked people what they would do if runaway train was heading towards a group of people working on the tracks. Most people asked would pull a level and change the train’s path so it only ran over one person, rather than the whole group. But, when asked if they would push someone off the bridge above the tracks in order to stop the train with their body, they would. Same amount of lives saved and lost in both situations. The only difference is that in one example you end someone’s life by pulling a lever, in the other you actually have to push them off a bridge. For some reason it seems like one is murder, and the other isn’t.
It’s for this reason I feel that using a gun to kill someone is too easy. I’m not saying you should choke the guy to death, and I’m not saying you should look them in the eyes as the life leaves them. That’s morbid. But you should definitely get hands-on with it. Gain an appreciation for the act of death. It doesn’t get easier. It does, however, get more meaningful.
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