Purple Rain

I saw this video not too long ago on The Best of Saturday Night Live. Prince had obviously come out of his hyperbolic chamber, had the studio fumigated for alien bacteria, had a shaman perform a cleansing ceremony, brought in his high priest to perform an exorcism on the rotting corpse of Sheena Easton and put on a kick ass performance that made me think, what a shame this guy went all weird on us because he still fucking rocks. I think Dave Chapelle (or Charlie Murphy) said it best in this piece about the power of TAFKAP back in the day.

Where are you?

Last night, while I was working, I had a thought. Here I was, a little boy from Worcester, Massachusetts,in a loader, at a gold mine in New Zealand, in the pouring rain, while my partner and two boys slept, proofreading a paper, in English, from my best friend in Holland about Leprosy in India. I thought, if I ever write a book I'm going to call it "How the hell did I get here?".

Snookilove

I don't know if you guys know of, watch or have seen Jersey Shore but I'm absolutely loving it. I know, I know. My last post was about wrestling with the very existence of God and now I turn around and profess my love for one of these idiotic MTV reality big brother knock off television shows, but I can't help it. It's like crack to me. Actually, I don't know what crack is like. It's like a ten piece meal from KFC. So good when you're eating it but you feel horrible afterwards. Jersey Shore is my guilty pleasure, my ten piece meal. Anyways, a quick overview for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about. Put 8 Italian-American kids("guidos") in a house on the Jersey Shore for a summer and make sure the cameras keep rolling. I know we've all been down this road before and this model is a little tired so I'm at a loss for words as to why I'm so addicted. My main theory is that MTV tweaked this particular show in one tiny little way that has made all the difference in the world. Most reality type shows throw in mix of personalities to stir the soup so to speak. We all know this. Jersey Shore doesn't do this. All the personalities are the same! They are all shallow,self-centered,cocky,spray on tanned, hair gelled maniacs. I think the result is that when they go in a direction there is no one who pulls them back and they end up going to extremes that aren't born out of conflict but out of common purpose. Each of the characters do have one sort of characteristic that that separates them from the rest. For example, Mike "The Situation" D. is the ladies man that lives to "creep" on girls. Pauley is a sweetheart that would take a bullet for the team. Sammi is a....well, a bitch, really. I was originally smitten with Jwoww. She seems to make sense when she talks (as in she uses whole sentences), she's got attitude (which I like) and she would make the world's hottest bouncer if she ever decided to do that. As the the series has gone on though, I have slowly fallen truly,deeply madly in love with Snooki. I can't help myself. Like Pauley she is a sweetheart, she talks nonsense, is unlucky in love, likes to have fun be seems to find trouble and somehow has stolen my heart. I confessed my Snookilove to Ms. Finndego last night. She took it quite well. It went down better than the last time she told me that she would leave me in second for Sting. She asked me who I would leave her for and I said I quite liked the girl who cut her hair. That didn't go over well. So I'm trading up for Snooki and she can have Sting and go save the Amazon with him. I going to eat pizza with Snooki and spray on each others tan and I'll spend my days just trying to figure out what the hell she is trying to say. Holla!

Bothering God

Prayer for the modern man:
Dear God(if you exist)
Please save my soul (if I have one)

-Fons Jansen

I don't believe in bothering God. I'm not religious in the first place, so I don't think that He would be of much help. Also, I'm sure he's quite busy these days and I would hate to be a nuisance. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who do bother Him these days and I'm sure he has his hands full. To be honest, He probably hasn't had a decent break since that faithful Sunday a few thousand years ago. I wonder if he regrets that? Maybe He could taken a little more time to finish things off just right. Dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s, if you know what I mean. Anyways, we'll never know and who am I to question Him really.
I guess the age old question of whether He exists at all will never be answered, but let's assume for arguments sake that He does. What does He do with his day? As busy as he is, He probably wishes that he made the day a lot longer than it is. He probably has a lot of prayers to answer in the first place. Does He prioritize these in any way? Pope,cardinals,bishops,priests,nuns,believers,non-believers for example? By non-believers I mean those ones who have gotten themselves in the shit (trapped under a log or lost at sea for example) and suddenly start asking God for help even though they've only seen the inside of a church for weddings or funerals. You never know, God may give these people a higher priority than others since they are possible new members.(Note: I tried this once when I got really drunk and was throwing up in the toilet. I told Him that if He would make me feel better I would never drink again. He didn't help me. I'm sure He heard me but probably thought I needed to be punished. He's like that sometimes). Anyways, it's sort of like when you call up customer service on the telephone but you're getting nowhere. One way of getting through is to hang up, call back and follow the menu for "New Customers". You'll get helped quicker that you can say The Lord's Prayer. But I digress
Getting back to my point about whether God actually exists. My first question would be: Do you think God has changed at all? I wouldn't believe that to be true. He's God, why would he? Then why over the thousands of years that we have followed Him and believed in Him have we changed the way we worshipped Him? Would that really be necessary? Why are there so many different denominations that claim to have followed His true word. He gave us the Ten Commandments and they haven't changed at all nor have there been any amendments that I'm aware of. Are the Jehovahs getting into Heaven but not the Baptists? Or is it the Lutherans or the Presbyterians or is it the 7th Day Adventists because I'm confused. If I did want to join the league I'd have a hard time choosing which team I'd try out for.
The only one that ever actually made the most sense to me is Deism and that basically died out about 200 hundred years ago. Deists, in a nutshell, believe that God created the Universe and then walked away and left man to sort it out for himself. This to me seems like a good idea. 300 years during The Enlightenment man had virtually no way of explaining the natural world around him. This was in fact nothing new. The caveman probably looked at lightning or the stars and in wonderment attributed these things to a higher power. That had gone on for centuries. Then the Deists came along and said "Right, we believe God created all things great and small but we also believe that he left it up to us to be self-determining". The thing I like is that you still have to be good and righteous but you do it for yourself and no one else. A religion for grown-ups really. You didn't have to believe in miracles or prophecy but you still had to be good because God created you. It explained away the mysteries of the universe and didn't feel the need to scare little children of the possibility of eternal damnation.
There are two reasons though why this perfectly good belief system died out. Darwin and Newton. These two guys ruined it for everyone really. Now not only do you have to decide which team you want to play for but whether you're going to play the game at all. All those Deists out there probably saw the logic of what these two guys were saying and were mostly free thinkers themselves (Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were two noted Deist.) and decided they didn't need God at all, we have Science! Here's where I think the Deist missed the boat. I'll try and explain trough an analogy:

Jed had lived his whole life with the fear of God within him.
The Bible told him everything he needed to know.
Jed lived in a trailer park along the banks of the Mississippi.
One day the rains came and the water came over the stopbanks.
A firetruck came by and the fireman told Jed he needed to evacuate.
Jed held up his bible and said "No need. God will protect me"
Later on when the water started to come inside Jed's trailer
a boat came by to pick Jed up and take him to higher ground.
Jed held up his bible and said "No need. God will protect me"
Later in the day when the floodwaters had gone over the top of Jed's trailer
and Jed had fled to the roof a helicopter was sent out to rescue him.
By the time the helicopter arrived only his head and right arm
still clutching his bible were to be seen above the water.
Still, Jed waved the helicopter away and said "No need. God will protect me"
That was the last we ever saw of ole' Jed.
When Jed finally entered the Pearly Gates and met his maker
all he could ask was "God, why didn't you protect me?"
God's reply was "Well, I did send a firetruck, a boat and a helicopter!"

And so it came to pass that the Deist also missed the boat. If the Deist believed that God had created the universe and then walked away why wouldn't He had used science to do all that creating? Both Darwin and to a lesser extent Newton were very religious men who grappled with what they were discovering and what it meant to their belief system. If a Deist had just come up to them and said "That's just the way God drew it up" would that not have lessened any fears about the battle between science and religion so many years ago? Sure, they still would have had to fight the established church who would not want to have given up there right as God's middlemen but who knows. It makes perfect sense to God to create the universe and then walk away and then give man the free will to go out there and try and figure out how he did it. It's not hocus pocus! My God, I think I'm turning into a Creationist! Please God help me! On the other hand, nevermind, I'll just go have a drink instead.