The Salamander

A little more than a decade ago, I was a young man in college despairing of what seemed to me like the injustice of living in uninteresting times. I mean, my parents spent their youth during the Swinging Sixties, by Jove. They were young and full of life and standing at the dawn of the moral and intellectual uprisings that would reshape the face of the globe in the coming generations. Never mind that my parents are generally of conservative temperaments and display none of the firebrand world-fuckery that the Sixties is known for. At least, none to my recollection. My parents are into Nat King Cole instead of the Beatles, Milo instead of LSD, Sunday mass instead of transcendental meditation, and the missionary position instead of clusterfornication. Of course, that last one was just an informed guess. The point is that they were there. Even if they did not really participate in it, they were bathed by the scouring fires of revolution.

I was born in the middle of the Seventies and can recall school kids in public schools singing the Martial Law Anthem. I can also recall Marcos’ televised speeches on our second-hand black and white television set. I can recall Voltez V, Daimos, Mazinger Z, and some other Japanese cartoons. I can recall some disco tunes. But the Seventies wasn’t my age. I was too young to have an opinion about it.

I spent the Eighties in school. EDSA happened and fizzled out; leaving the country worse off that it had been during the supposed dystopian Martial Law Era. I grew bigger and started listening to some New Wave and a lot of Bighair rock and roll. I was both attracted and repelled by the punk ethos. I was circumcised. Still, the Eighties wasn’t my age. I was too young to fuck around with it.

Then came the Nineties. This was the start of my time. I first fell in love in this decade. I grew hair in strange places within its handful of summers. I lost my virginity in its embrace. I met the woman who was to be my wife while jerking around in its electric currents. I bloodied my mind’s fists against the swirl of left-of-center ideas that marked the beginning of the end of the twentieth century. Yes, this was the genesis of my time. And it sucked.

It sucked because the only thing I can think of during college that marked the Nineties was the hideous amalgamation of fashion called retro. It sucked because there were no more revolutions and no more ideas worth dying– or killing– for. It sucked because the Nineties was the spiritual child of the Forgettable Fifties, trying to appear bigger and more meaningful than it really was by hyping up the fucking leftovers of the previous decades.

And then came the Internet.

Of course, the Internet had been there for years but it was merely a sophisticated toy for most of us back then. We had email addresses and used it occasionally. We surfed porn and shit, but that growing beast was not yet an integral part of our lives. Not yet, and not for long as it turned out.

I can forgive the Nineties its drollness for this reason alone. The first decade of the twenty-first century is quickly becoming as exciting, frightening, exhilarating, alarming, and electrifying as both the Industrial Age and the Hippie Sixties combined. Suddenly, there is a new frontier for people like us who are willing to cast aside our old school flesh and trade it for the ungodly robes of the cybernaut. We are barbarians walking over lawless lands, my friends. Our weapons are words and pictures and sounds and ideas and opinions made incandescent by the power of instant connection. We are among the six million mad prophets who make despots tremble. Ours is the tide that tyrants vainly attempt to hold back.

And so I go back to making retarded internet articles. I love teh intarnets!

Memory is a strange beast.

Recently, a buddy of mine related to me a story going around in the entertainment business’ gay community. This tale is among the most celebrated of this community’s apocrypha, mind you. It stars a celebrity hairdresser and a respected dramatic actress’ man-child from her previous marriage with a bigshot veteran comedian. Now, for prudence’s sake, let’s call the mother DB, the son OBS, his comedian father VS, and the hairdresser Mr. Queer. The tale goes thus:

When Dina– er, DB– hired Mr. Queer to do her hair in all of her film and television appearances, she trusted him so much she’d leave young, impressionable OBS with the hairdresser whenever she’s on the set. Mr. Queer, being a decent and God-fearing faggot, wrestled daily with his desire to molest the boy. In the end, though, Mr. Queer proved himself righteous. It wasn’t that he was afraid of getting into trouble. The virtuous queen just didn’t want to introduce his young charge to such filth.

Years later, OBS– now a teen star in his own right– met Mr. Queer and had a long chat with the old family friend. OBS told Mr. Queer of the time when the boy and an unidentified bud of his went to a disreputable movie theater and met a funny little guy who gave the two teenagers the best blowjobs they’ve ever had. Imagine how Mr. Queer must have felt when he heard this.

Now, I’m not saying this is a true story. I just heard it form a source, is all. And when the internet Gestapo starts breaking my door down I’ll tell them you people are a bunch of cunts for believing all you read on the internet. The reason I told you this tale is not to malign Oyo B– er, OBS– but because hearing it fired up some synapses in my brain and triggered a long-repressed memory: a memory of darkness, of depravity, of a hairy armpit, and a grown man’s salty nipple.

I always thought my history of misogyny can be traced back to two things, namely: my horrid interpersonal skills and my lack of pride in the proportions of my penis. The former made me incapable of flattering women when they’re being dumb. The latter made me hesitant in actively seeking sexual friendship for fear of being ridiculed. And with pickup lines like:

Would you like to taste the Cup of my Iniquity?

And:

Would you like to take a sip from my Chalice of Perdition?

You’ll understand why I wasn’t a big hit with the ladies… at least not the ones worth hitting on. The living dead, on the other hand, is a tale for another time.

The childhood memory of molestation may be a third reason which led to my loathing of women; I don’t exactly know how but it’s always cool to blame your childhood for your present failures. Here’s how it happened…

Let’s call the man Pedro. Pedro’s family and mine were friends. They owned a compound of apartments a block away from our house. When he was in college, Pedro’s parents moved back to their hometown in Palawan or some other shitty, ass-backward island where people still live in mud huts, hunt boar with bamboo spears, and eat fist-sized jungle snails. Pedro was left to manage the apartments alone. My mother, being the gracious neighbor she’s always been, would often invite Pedro to share our meals, watch television, or just hang around and mess with us kids.

One weekend morning when I was six or seven years old, I asked Pedro if I can hang out at his house. I thought his place was a treasure-trove of cool stuff like big college books, kitschy paintings and posters, and the like. He assented and off we went to his place. When we got there, there was no electricity. It was a warm summer morning so he took off his shirt like most men do in their own homes. He stretched out on a ratty old sofa and asked me to pluck the hairs off his armpits, which I gladly did because I thought it was funny. Another thing I thought funny was his large, brown man-nipple. I already knew then that milk comes from a woman’s nipple but I was clueless, as eggheads still are today, as to the purpose of male tits. I asked Pedro if milk also comes out of a full-grown man’s nipples. He told me to suck the horrible thing and find out. Which I did. And no, milk didn’t come out from it.

Did I feel defiled? Violated? No. Defilement and violation are concepts I understand intimately whenever I bring out the biodegradable trash with what’s left of last week’s pork chops still festering in it. The experience was unimportant to me and so my mind just filed it away in the bottom drawer of my memories. This would lead many to believe that it wasn’t really molestation. I beg to differ. It’s important that I make as many credible professionals believe that indeed it was molestation that destroyed my sanity. When they finally haul me kicking and biting in front of a judge and try to smite me with the terrible Book of the Law for attempting to convert ohsocutsie lolitas to the Church of Coercive Love, I will simply say:

Hi, I’m Squid Villanueva and I was molested as a child.

And then I’ll hear the ungracious sound of criminal charges being dropped. I so rule, bitches.

You’ve heard my argument against writing as a profession. You’ve learned how unprofitable it is. Or at least how large the odds are against you. If you were anything else, you’d have been discouraged by now and would have cast your sights upon more realistic ways of making a living. Yet you’re not. That’s because you are a writer and you’re stubborn that way. Because you omnipotently create small universes in your stories, you think you can grab the reins of your destiny and turn yourself into a rockstar through your art. Hell, you say, print may be out of the question but a combination of TV shows and the occasional movie is not a far-fetched plan. A man can live comfortably on that arrangement. And that same combination may just be the thing to propel one to fame and fortune.

I agree that you can make a living as a screen and TV writer. A decent living, where you won’t slip into the lower economic class status, a thing many of us in the middle class are too horrified to even contemplate. If you get a movie gig in-between shows and if you don’t get a stroke due to all the caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, hallucinogens, and stimulants you’ve consumed; yes, it’s possible. But fame and fortune? That, me foine lad, has a prerequisite called respect; a quality of which screen and TV writers all too often find a serious shortage.

Of all “artist” types, screen and TV writers are the most despised, especially by fellow writers in the literary discipline. Never mind that, monetarily, even semi-successful scriptwriters are Zobels and Ayalas compared to poets, novelists, and their sort, who are almost universally dependent on mommy and daddy to feed them, clothe them, and put a roof over their heads since the money that comes from writing literature can’t even feed mice. No, you’ll hear the fashionably cynical snoterati say, screenplays aren’t art. They’re degenerate, commercial products for mass consumption. A lot of times, they’re right, of course.

Even the biz hates writers. When a movie is good, everyone praises the director. When a movie sucks, everyone asks who the fuck wrote this steaming pile of filth. You watch a movie, the credits say: a film by so and so director. Never the writer. Never. It’s like everyone in the biz thinks the writer is just a necessary evil. It’s this auteur theory bullshit going around, making everyone think the director is everything in a movie.

Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time I wrote a decapitation scene in a script. Yes, I’m an optimist that way. I detailed how the shot would look like in this manner: the sword falls but we don’t see the actual decapitation. We just see the body falling, something like a head rolling, and then the last shot is of the actor’s head in the foreground with what seems to be his body falling in the background. Worked like a charm onscreen. After seeing that series of shots on the editing room, a producer praised the director for a great job. The director then said he just followed what was in the script. The producer looked at me and changed the subject. Not out of malice. It just wasn’t interesting anymore since it’s the writer who thought that up. Besides, hotshot directors need to be flattered while writers are a dime a dozen.

No, dear aspiring young writer, you won’t find fame and fortune in this biz. Writing for a living sucks eggs.

…

I was about to end this long-ass rant on that note but something came up. I saw a friend of mine who I haven’t heard from in a long while and we started chatting over some paper cups of cheap, awful tasting, machine-brewed coffee. We were talking about our jobs and I was telling him about how a lot of young writers nowadays think they’ll actually make a name for themselves in this biz, like they think that that one shot at literary or film rockstardom is theirs by virtue of their stars. He laughed and then asked me why I kept at it myself. I shrugged and told him that, quite frankly, I think it’s my destiny. I’m going to be a fucking rockstar, man, just you wait.

PREVIOUSLY
Writing for a Living Sucks Part I: Print
Writing for a Living Sucks Part II: Television
Writing for a Living Sucks Part III: Movies

In the first two parts of this long tirade against the folly of writing for a living, I have shown you why you, my dear aspiring writer, should think twice about turning your hobby into a job. Maybe I’m just nasty that way and relish the act of dashing people’s hopes and dreams into the hard, barren bedrock of my bitterness and disillusion about my own career as a wordslinger. Or maybe I’m trying to increase my odds at making it in this business by killing the competition through propaganda. Whatever my motive, you will agree that the logic behind my argument is entirely sound. In a country as poor as ours, your fiction and poetry won’t sell jack shit. Selling out by writing for magazines and by churning out horrible romance novellas won’t earn you enough to feed your nicotine addiction, which you’ll inevitably develop because cigarettes deaden the pang of hunger. TV, on the other hand, may be your ticket. Not to fame and fortune through your art as you once dreamt it would be, but to a decent living as a writer at least. The only problem is that shows last only for a couple of months on the average and that period of time in between shows will murder you.

By this time, other people would have taken it into their pointy little heads and would have gone on to do something else. Like find a real job. You, on the other hand, are still here reading this. Because you’re a fucking artist, by Jove. To my ‘never’ you’ll say ‘nevertheless’ and to my logic you’ll rage, haggle, beg, and parlay for an alternative. You ask: what about movies? Surely, film scripts are worth much more than TV scripts. Film is a chance to be recognized and to get rich, motherfucker. Oh yeah, sixteen-year-old groupies, here I come.

I say yes. And no.

When discussing your potential career as a screenwriter, we must look at the sad state of the Philippine movie industry. It is a beast once mighty but now felled by piracy. Yes, you had a hand in it. You may rationalize that art is for everybody and piracy just evens out the opportunity for all to see movies; that now even the poorest of the poor has the means to watch Great Films. No, man, the poor don’t watch Great Films. They watch Pinoy mainstream flicks, which have been formulated for them, and which employs workers no better than wage-earners. When we think about movies, we all have the highly-paid stars and directors and producers in mind. A few thousand pesos in loss won’t hurt these people, right? What about the lightmen, then? What about the script supervisors and the gaffers and the grips and the utility guys? And yes, what about the scriptwriters? These are the people most hurt by piracy, not the big-earners. Stars and producers and big-shot directors have TV jobs that you can’t hurt. Not unless you’re a psychic with the uncanny ability to burn on VCDs TV episodes that have not been taped yet.

Wait, you say. I don’t buy pirated Pinoy movies. I buy pirated Great Films! Yeah, well, your demand for pirated foreign movies also serve the impetus for developing piracy technology. The bottomline, dear aspiring writer, is that you’re screwing yourself.

I will not deny it, though. There is big money in screenplays if you can get into that racket. Chances are you won’t. But let’s say you’re lucky enough. Your first shot would probably be in indie movies. Indie, you groan, there’s no money in indie! I say yes, there is.

When I say indie, I don’t mean those awful movies by college students. That is the real indie movement in this country, by the way, but there’s no future in that. Any dumb fuck with a Sony Digital Handycam can make a ninety-minute feature on suckage. The indie I’m talking about are movies produced by companies other than Star Cinema, GMA Films, Regal, Viva, and their ilk. The money comes from the pockets of TV stars who want to go into directing (and some of them are pretty good), politicians trying to be visible for the coming election (thus, from our own pockets as well, har-dee-har to you, motherfucker), etc.  They pay relatively well. These producers expect to profit from their endeavors so the product has that mainstream flavor mixed in with the artsy-fartsy. It’s a great way to make movies, I must add. This is the real Pinoy movie industry now, and I’m hopeful that this will improve the quality of our movies and TV shows. New blood, new styles, new ways of making commercial movies. And, as I said earlier, there’s money in it for the screenwriter if he can get into that racket. But that’s the hard part.

Let me explain:

Indie movies are made by groups. They’re more like Satanic covens, usually helmed by their Head Priest, the director. With the director there’s the writer, the technical producer, the production designer, etc. Most times the indie group is just a handful of people, maybe even two: the director and the writer. Always, there’s the director and the writer. The writer’s the guy who writes the proposals for potential producers, concepts, storylines, letters, and such. Writers are indispensable this way. That seems to make your chance of getting a writing gig even higher, right? No. Because like directors, there’s only one writer per coven. Being a ronin writer is like being a vocalist without a band. And a writer who does have a group is very protective of his position. I, for one, would murder you the moment I suspect you’re trying to usurp me in my group.

Let us suppose you do find a group and get a gig. The newbie screenwriter gets fifty to eighty thousand pesos. Not exactly chump change, no, but no one makes his bread by movies alone. You don’t get a movie gig every month, my friend. If you’re really lucky you’ll make three a year. People are very rarely that lucky. You should look at screenwriting like you look at virgins: it’s great when it appears on your lap but don’t hold your breath waiting for one. If you want to be a screenwriter, you must supplement the dearth of movie gigs with a TV show, which, we have seen in the previous article, isn’t very profitable in the long run.

And there’s also the issue of respect, which makes this series a four-parter instead of the three-parter I had planned.

PREVIOUSLY
Writing for a Living Sucks Part I: Print
Writing for a Living Sucks Part II: Television

NEXT
Writing for a Living Sucks Part IV: Respect

Television is a medium that makes zombies out of the masses. It is an invention so horrible that anyone working in it and inflicting it upon the populace is marked by the Devil as his own. Yet TV is where the money is. TV is where you can make a decent living as a writer. Forget about your dreams of rockstardom and fame and fortune. If you make it long enough as a gainfully employed writer, you’ll realize that it’s a state that only one out of every one jillion writers would ever achieve. Chances are you won’t be on that happy wagon even if you live to be a hundred years old.

Let us look into the economics of television writing. A script, say for a thirty-minuter show that airs once a week non-primetime in a decent station will get you about seven or eight thousand pesos. Whoa, that’s a lot, you say, considering that there are four weeks in a month. That’s like thirty-two thousand a month, man. For a dude who’s been living on Skyflakes and instant pancit canton for the past couple of months, that’s a ginormous pile of Aztec gold.

Hold up, genius.

A show has a stable of writers. Usually, you’ll have three more writers with you in that stable. That leaves you with one episode a week. Not much, I know. But let’s say you have two shows. Finding even one show is hard enough, but let us say you’re really pesky so you finally got another one. You’ll have the time to write for two shows because you won’t be coming to work everyday, anyway. Sixteen thou. Not bad. Won’t turn you into another Bill Gates anytime soon, but it’s a decent living.

Now let us imagine you left that station and finally got into the major leagues, the big-ass networks. Your scripts would now sell for ten thousand. If you get a primetime, one-hour weekly show, you’ll get fifteen to twenty thousand per episode. The big money, though, seems to be in soaps. Those dudes get around thirty thousand. Thirty thousand, you say. Oh holy fuck! Soaps air five days a week! A hundred and fifty thousand pesos a week… I’m set for life!

No, you dumb fuck.

Soap scripts are written on a weekly basis. You submit more than a hundred pages of script that would span for the entire week. Considering that you get paid twenty thousand for around twenty pages in an hour-long weekly primetime show, soap writers are shafting themselves.

A TV show, nevertheless, is a steady source of decent income. That is, while it lasts. And that’s about two months. Yep. TV shows here recently tend to last only one Philippine season. That’s thirteen episodes, as opposed to the more than twenty episodes per season in the US. With three other writers, you’ll get four or five episodes out of a Pinoy TV season. When the show gets canned, you’ll be looking for another show. The network won’t give you one out of respect for your loyalty and the fact that you did not leak sensitive developments to rival networks. And with the way more and more aspiring young writers are getting into the biz because the network can pay them less than what they pay writers who’ve been around for some years, you’re in a town called Screwed.

And then there’s the abomination called the SP/writer.

A segment producer, or SP, is the little director/producer of a documentary. Their job is totally different from a writer’s job. Usually, SPs go on to become producers or directors. Television managers, however, thinking that writers are not that necessary in documentary shows, began scratching away that position. SPs are writers too now. They shoot the footage, they write a script to tell the story, and then they edit the material. I’m not going to go into detail about how the product usually sucks when done that way. The consequence of the SP/writer phenomenon upon both writers and SPs, though, is that instead of SPs competing with other SPs and writers competing with other writers for employment, writers and SPs are now in a clusterfuck bitchfight over who gets that single position in a show. If you’re a writer who knows nothing about segment producing, you’re done for. If otherwise, you’ll find yourself earning less than what you’d have earned as a plain old TV writer. SP/writers get paid SP wages, not writer wages. And sometimes, just sometimes, there are more than four SP/writers in a show. Meaning there will be lean months ahead for you should you be lucky enough to get that job.

A niftier job would be as a head writer. You get that job if you impress enough big people. Or suck enough cocks. As a head writer, you’ll get paid for reviewing each script. That means you’re getting something each week; roughly the same amount they pay for each script. Say you’re the head writer of a not so prominent show, you can get forty thousand each month. Plus you have another show that pays twenty per ep with one ep per month. Sixty thousand pesos, then. Again, decent, but it won’t make you rich. And getting to be a head writer is really really hard. Unless you’re a fucking genius, prophet, and ninja all rolled into one.

TV, then, is good. But shows rarely last more than a season nowadays. Nope, you’re still better off in a call center.

Or movies maybe?

PREVIOUSLY
Writing for a Living Sucks Part I: Print

NEXT
Writing for a Living Sucks Part III: Movies

Every young writer like you, my friend, dreams of getting rich and famous through his art. A writer who claims he isn’t doing it for the possibility of fame and fortune isn’t much different from a blogger who claims he’s not doing it for the attention: they’re both lying curs. Oh, yes, it’s about fame and fortune. I’m not saying that the need for self-expression isn’t a big part of it, but the overpowering desire for wealth and recognition is as much an incentive as the desire to make art. Who wouldn’t want to have more money than he can spend? Who wouldn’t want teenagers lining up to suck his cock like it was the golden rod of Jehovah? You may go to bed with an empty belly, but it is your dream of being a fucking rockstar that feeds your heart, isn’t it?

The sad fact, though, is that writing for a living sucks. The hungry young writer isn’t hungry because it’s cool. He’s hungry because he can’t sell shit. Every young writer, at one point, has heard of this. Every young writer, at the back of his mind, knows that this is true. Yet you stubbornly refuse to accept this. You think that that one in a jillion chance of actually getting a break and becoming successful through it is yours by destiny.

Others take a more realistic approach towards their desire to make a living as a writer. They get day jobs in call centers and other such places as devoid of art as my perpetually grimacing asshole, thinking that this is just a stepping stone; a rung in the ladder that would lead to their dreams.

Let’s take a look at your chances from an objective point of view, shall we not?

You write poetry. And short stories. And vignettes. And essays. You may even be working on that best-selling novel of yours that would enlighten the world about the true state of the human condition. Good for you. Now, think about this: who the fuck would want to read them? I look around me and I don’t see any arthouse bohemians frolicking about like butterflies on an acid trip. I see pedicab drivers, fish sellers, government employees, construction laborers, maids, factory workers, and others of that ilk. You won’t sell that collection of poetry, good sir. You’re better off writing horrible romance novelettes that Inday likes reading so much. That shit sells, man.

But not much. Usually, a publishing house would hire you to write two of those pocketbooks that I wouldn’t even wipe my ass with. You have to submit your manuscripts within a month’s time, after which they’ll pay you about seven or eight thousand pesos. Way after. Like when they get around to publishing and distributing them. They won’t even give you complementary copies, so don’t even bother asking about royalty. I know eight thousand pesos a month doesn’t grow on trees, man, but it’s not much either. You’ll be better off in a call center. They even have dental plans, if you can dig that.

You think: eight thou a month wouldn’t be so bad if I can get a writing assignment from one of those glossy magazines too. You’d be right if you’re shallow enough to appreciate a whopping two thousand pesos as additional income. You won’t even get that within the same month that you finished your article. Magazine pre-production starts at what, two months before the issue is published? That means your piece would get printed about two months after you’ve submitted it. You’d since be long dead from starvation to be able to appreciate your byline.

Never mind fame and fortune. If you really want to make a living as a writer, then print is not the answer. What you really want to get into is something that everyone consumes every single day. Something that has a semblance of gainful employment and steady income. Something so bad there’s no way in this thrice-blessed earth that it can’t sell.

Television.

NEXT
Writing for a Living Sucks Part II: Television

I was reading the comments on my last post here, Closet Atheist, and I found Carl’s comment, which goes thus:

Hey, I couldn’t agree more. It’s high time we do away with established religion. Let’s do a V for Vendetta on the Vatican!! That’ll show ‘em!!!

Posted by: Carl | January 8, 2007 11:22 PM

And I was like, whoa, pare, hold on. I typed this comment to answer the guy:

I don’t think I can agree with that, Carl m’boy. The religion-challenged must work together with the religion-abundant. If we go around ridiculing people (or worse, assaulting them) because of their religion we’re no better than the Nazis. Or George Bush. Besides, I know a lot of open-minded Christians. As I said in a previous post, I think religion is useful. Yes, even the Vatican. The Catholic Church nowadays is much better than it was before the time of Pope John Paul II. Religion is generally a force of good, methinks, and I for one wouldn’t want to live in an officially atheist state like Stalinist USSR. I want a world where people are free to believe or not to believe in God (or gods, spirits, and divine microwave ovens, for that matter). Besides, V wasn’t fighting for a faithless world. He was fighting for anarchy. Militant atheism is not the same as anarchy.

And you’re also making Baby Jesus cry, Carl.

And then I pressed POST. To my utter disbelief, I got this message:

Your comment has not been posted because we think it might be comment spam. If you believe you have received this message in error, please contact the author of this weblog.

Please correct the error in the form below, then press POST to post your comment.

Oookay. Maybe it was a glitch (no, not you, Glitch), so I tried posting it again. Again I got the comment spam message. What the fuck is going on here? Why can’t I post a comment on my own goddam blog?

I then went to Janice’s blog and posted a test comment there (sorry, love). Whaddayaknow? The comment appeared. So people can post comments on other people’s blogs but not on their own blogs then. Anyone else experiencing this?

Anyway, there’s your answer, Carl. And thanks for adding me up. By the way, for comments to the said post that aren’t flattering, check out how baby_winter reacted to it when I posted it on the long-suffering FilipinoWriter.com. She felt so strongly about the post she even commented THRICE. So much energy people waste on internet retards. That, coupled with my snappy retort makes me one bad-ass motherfucker! I love the intarnets!

…

Okay, I was going to sign off when I found this picture in my Imageshack account:

Who the fuck is that? What the fuck is that horrid thing doing in my Imageshack account? What the fuck is wrong with the electronic superhighway today?!

Now, everyone fuck off. I’m going to watch Fiddler on the Roof and ask the same question Tevye the milkman asks:

Lord, who made the lion and the lamb

You decreed I should be what I am

Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan

If I were a wealthy man?

Religion is not a big thing for me. I feel that there’s probably a God up there looking out for us human beings. There’s no scientific basis at all for my belief in an omniawesome God, I know, but I need my invisible means of support. If there’s no God then I need to create one, a being larger than myself to whom I can offer my dreams, frustrations, demands, angst, and all the dirty little things innate in the human parasite. This kind of thinking has led one of my buddies to point out that I am an atheist in denial. I said ‘closet atheist’ seems a more clever way to put it. And maybe I am at that.

That reminds me of a famous saying by some chaplain during the First Great Godawful War: there are no atheists in the trenches (or something to that effect). Most decidedly not. If I was in a muddy trench in the Western Front during World War I, getting shelled by enemy artillery, I’d probably be saying my Hail Marys as often as I’d be shitting my pants. And I’d probably sincerely believe each word too. No, there are no atheists in the trenches. Atheists can be very accommodating that way.

But I’m not in a trench and no one is raining artillery shells upon my skull. My problems are a little bit more mundane than that so I have the luxury of objectivity. I grudgingly believe that there is a God. My spiritual beliefs are suspect, though. If you pay me enough money I’ll profess belief in anything. I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life believing in something as ridiculous as Mormon archaeology if I were to live that life as a very wealthy Mormon. With many wives. Wives who all have perfect silicone tits.

Having been raised a Catholic, I still carry around the baggage relapsed Catholics everywhere probably have at varying degrees. I can’t help that. I’ve been conditioned for too long. Whenever something unfortunate happens in my life, my first thought is always that God is probably punishing me for posting Jesus LOL pictures in one of my blogs. Catholics tend to think of God as a sociopath waiting for people to slip up even a tiny bit so that He can smite them down with a plague. The Old Testament has a lot to answer for.

Let me be clear about this. I think the Bible is an interesting read. I think that it is an entertaining collection of Hebrew and early Christian myths, legends, tall tales, ideological ranting, and such. I enjoy reading the Bible, especially the juicy parts. And if there is a God, I think that it is divinely inspired. I also think Con Air is divinely inspired in that it entertained me for an hour and a half, so my judgment of divine inspiration is dubious at best.

What the Bible isn’t, though, is a perfect guidebook on how to get to Heaven. It’s too screwed up, full of the imperfections of man. In the first place, why does man need a guidebook to get to heaven? Because he’s imperfect and is prone to sin. Why is he prone to sin? Because of Adam and Eve. Why did God make Adam and Eve imperfect enough to be swayed by the serpent in the Garden. Why even put a serpent there? Hell, why put the fucking Tree in the middle of it all? I know that the theological sides regarding this issue are myriad but let us get down to the bone of the problem. If God hadn’t created humans in the first place, there wouldn’t even be a problem. He’s got the angels to work with, doesn’t he? That’s another thing. If the angels are so perfect, why’d one of them rebel? Why does God need angels anyway? Might as well question why God needs man, animals, trees, oceans, mountains, planets, galaxies, the universe, time, et cetera ad nauseum? The only reason I can think of is that He may be bored. Or that maybe there is no God and that everything just fell into place the way it is for no particular reason. At least common sense tells me that.

Common sense. At the end of the day, it’s all you can rely on, isn’t it? Common sense leads to scientific discoveries. Science flips a dirty finger at the Bible. If I was God I wouldn’t blame you for using logic and science to make your way through the muck of your lives because that’s all I gave you that actually works. I certainly wouldn’t send you to hell for it. Of course, common sense isn’t as awesome as it is touted to be. Common sense made people think for centuries that the world is flat.

The believers amongst you would, of course, contend that the Bible is perfect. Since I’m not here to convince anyone to renounce their faith, I’m not going to embarrass you by pointing out how utterly wrong you are. Live and let live.

Okay, maybe you need a kick in the head. Click these links if you think you’re strong enough in the faith… or if you have a growing suspicion that you’re being screwed:

KA-CHING!

KA-CHING!

KA-CHING!