Who is your god now?

"Being a talking horse leaves me with plenty of time to ponder these big issues. No one rides me, because I just tell them to get off."

lets get into this quick: it’s been a pandemic for our entire waking memory, the light at the end of the tunnel is only illuminating our resultant tubby sloth and lack of motivation and frankly also our fear of the unknown that comes in the After Times. we can and will all climb out of this together, but for now we are still stuck beyond the thunderdome. thank you for joining. if you like this, please consider subscribing. for less than a carton of cigarettes you can get an entire year of this whimsical prose, and it helps me continue to be able to do things like feed my children and bathe in liquid gold (by which, of course I mean Velveeta sauce). Anyway, love y’all. Lets get to it.

It’s wild that religion exists as a universal thing. I mean, I understand why back in the olden times, before we knew about Enrico Fermi and shit people would see the sun going across the sky and say things like “well, that’s clearly the wheel of some guy who lives in the sky’s chariot.” They had nothing else to watch and they had nothing else to think about and when you don’t know ANYTHING about how shit works, that’s as good of a conclusion as any that you’re gonna come to. It’s definitely much easier to invent a god than to figure out barometric pressure or the circumference of the earth or whatever.

Good for them. I’m glad those ancients had a way to deal with the notion that literally everything from fire to stars to lightning to brightly colored berries to crib death to various shellfish was terrifying, and some of the bullshit they came up with was pretty cool. The Egyptians, the norse, the greeks and their absolute rip off half steppers the romans all had cool ass gods who did wild shit (one guy turned into a swan just so he could more easily rape someone named Leda, which makes sense because women notoriously hate all-powerful gods and are wildly horny for swans). did I already mention the norse (bc, pretty radical)? And there’s also that whole West African “the universe is a turtle” thing, which is cool too. these were all perfectly good ways to deal back when there was no science. But it all looks kinda obviously not real now, due to uh…astrophysics and biology and common sense and literally everrything and so on, right?

And more to the point, here’s the thing: there are other religions that have risen up to take these ancient religions’ places. We (most of us) look at the idea of a science fiction writer saying that a bunch of DC-10’s flew into a volcano seventy five million years ago thereby spawning some sort of alien offshoot species here on earth and we say “um, seriously motherfucker?” and we look at the turtle universe or Thor or Mount Olympus and we say “that was adorable of you to believe” but truly all religions are equally ridiculous including all the current ones. You just got born into one. If you laugh at Scientology and simultaneously decry the legitimacy of Zeus as king of the gods, I got bad news for you regarding being a Pentecostalist, buddy.

But it happens to all of us. I was born into Catholicism (for the record, as beautiful as I used to be, I was never given the old ‘catholic how do you do’ as it’s called) and I somehow still find it to be a fairly stalwart religion compared to most, at least on paper (I mean, none of it is real so who fucking cares at all but you get the idea).

So, with that in mind, let’s do a rundown of religions, shall we? Great!

Jewish

A real OG religion. There are a lot of different strains of Judaism. Hasidic Jews, for example, are famous for being wildly unreceptive to outsiders, being outer borough landlords, dressing very traditionally and smelling even more traditionally (this is NOT the opinion of the author here, I'm just reporting what I’ve heard, as I have literally zero hasid experience).

Orthodox Jews wear the semi traditional head coverings at all times and are very traditional without going all the way to being Hasidic while reform jews KINDA party and then there are secular jews who you definitely made out with and blew a few lines with if you went to college.

Fun fact about jewish lore: this ‘torah’ that everyone is so fond of talking about is actually the ‘Old Testament’ of the bible and the guy who stars in the ‘New Testament’: actually a jew. There are a lot of theories about how jews secretly rule the world, which, and I can’t be clear enough on this point, I don’t agree with. But man, if you DID want to posit an argument about the jewish conspiracy, look no further than a singular hippy jew getting a bunch of conservative shitlicks to all march lockstep to the beat of a drum he never even owned and then getting them all to draft legislation and general directives that would go on to affect and shape the entire globe for um..I dunno…Since we’ve known the word ‘globe’ at least and right up to now. If there is a “jewish conspiracy,” folks, jesus is behind it.

Catholic

Yes! The only religion [besides judaism] that isn’t traditionally embarrassing (if you don’t look at the insane amounts of kid fucking and child abuse/murder perpetrated by these corrupt and horrifying shitheels). There is no single organization that’s contributed to the downfall of the human spirit harder than the Catholic Church, all the way back to the crusades and whatnot, but even if they didn’t specifically cut off your head or make you blow them it’s still terrible. It is a completely irredeemable organization. Nazis have more wiggle room for forgiveness.

Also, consider this:

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to catholic mass, but I’ve been to a zillion of them and let me tell you about it: it SUCKS. You stand you sit you kneel you stand you sing you hold hands with some creep you hand over your money you let some asshole put a piece of bread in your mouth and then you get buttfucked backstage. huh. Sweet religion. Oh? it’s also the largest corporation in the world? and the main guy lives in a sovereign nation that’s literally made of solid gold? Cool. seems super legit. And this is all somehow still about the altruism of the jewish dude, right? Hmmmmm…..

In closing, if I were a pedophile and I heard about a job where I got exclusive access to all the kids I could fuck, and when I got found out by an angry dad or whatever, they’d move me to a whole new pasture of fresh kids, I feel like I’d probably take that job. This is your fucking Catholic Church…a LITERAL recruitment center for kid fuckers. neat.

Christianity

First read the above entry again. then we can start on this one.

Ready? Okay:

Mercy goodness. How embarrassing is being a non-catholic christian? It’s like “I love the shiftiness of the Catholic Church and the deeply stupid ideas but I’d like to do it in such a way that we can have a church in this strip mall.”

I HATE Catholicism. But I’d rather die than go to some bullshit ass non denominational nonsense service with pastor greg or whatever. fuck that. Can you possibly imagine showing up at the pearly gates and dealing with Saint Peter and being like “yeah I vaguely did this but in a sort of Olive Garden way. What? No! Listen! I WAS raped! But it was by my neighborhood baseball coach who also was a pastor when he wasn’t too busy.” I mean, I’m no big city canonized gatekeeper in heaven, but um, no way. Completely fake religion system. anyway…..

If you’re gonna eschew some stuff so it makes more sense to you, cool. Priests can marry? Okay, nice. All good with the gays? I’m into it. Electric guitars? Uh…I guess? But what about ditching the whole “this guy is god” thing too while you’re at it?

If you’re not gonna be the oldschool bootlicker kidfuckers you may as well cut bait entirely. Fucking dumb. Inspired dogma is about the BIGGEST waste of energy there is, but keep singing, baptists (I’m aware most white baptists don’t sing, that’s kinda the joke, folks). I’m sure it’s gonna turn out fine.

Islam

Whoooooohooooo. (wipes forehead) who put THIS ONE on the list, eh? Sheesh. Um, lots going on here. What we know (as lame ass honkies/americans) is often fed to us through a silo of extraordinary racism and jingoism and a ton of other isms so there’s a real trickiness to discussing this one correctly.

That being said it’s absolutely irresponsible to not address that Islam, a religion of peace by all accounts, has been hijacked in the public eye by a violent and totalitarian swath of society that really…um…I have seen people getting decapitated and/or burned alive in cars because of said swath of society. I’ve never once said “ah, god likes this” while watching immolations or beheadings but weirdly, that’s exactly the pitch this extremely tiny but very vocal perversion of this religion is selling.

and here’s the thing: in theory, Muslims, Christians and Jews, all the same god. does he exist? Oh, heavens no. Not even close. It’s waaaaaay more likely that the Shoneys Big Boy statue is salient and corporeal and knows all about what you’re doing this weekend (and there’s a zero percent chance that that’s true), but here’s the thing: for the big three? same god. That god just isn’t real. Spoiler alert, I guess.

So, ANYWAY, when you consider the muslim god (as I assume i’m dealing with mostly white judeo-christian readers here) is the same guy as your mom’s god, and while it’s not at all fair to say that your mom’s god was in on the twin towers debacle, it is fair to say that if you’re christian and believe in god and you think those asshole nihilists were religious and talking to god (terrible take, by the way) then you have to reconcile that it was ALSO your god who was, to borrow a phrase, their copilot. Sorry.

the Koran is book 3. Same god. To be perfectly clear: he doesn’t exist but man, if he did, he would be down with watching priests getting blowjobs from 6 year old girls and he absolutely would have put his feet up on his desk on that blue sky Tuesday in 2001. He really doesn’t care according to what his fans seem to be saying.

So, what do you think? you can either believe in this terrible god or not, but first…

Are there muslim terrorists? Short answer: not sure what you should call em. they ain’t too different from our hick friends tho.

Realistically we’re talking about significantly undereducated and/or mentally ill very young men from critically underserved areas. Weird that they’re angry people. Really, this is the basic write up on most violent criminals, regardless of what church you go to.

The truth is that this “muslim terrorist” scene has kinda a bad rap, because every back alley abortion or LGBTQ+ kid that kills themselves because they’ve been brainwashed into believing that they’re subhuman perverts is an act of christian terror in this country, at least (I am well aware that some of the more ISISy regions of the world have their own take on gay rights that’s uh...also extremely bad, but my point stands). We point a lot of fingers here, when it’s alllllll just the same shit with different flies on it. Religious zealots are fucking assholes no matter which god is on their flag. 

That said, yo ISIS, cut it out already with the malarkey.

Amish

Adorable. I think almost all the Amish have herpes. Or maybe it was barns. I know it’s one or the other. It’s cool that the amish have like, a community phone and a wild take on lack of mustaches or zippers and everyone has a little chin business going on regardless of gender and they all dress like it’s a black tie affair in 1865 where everyone is posing for deurrogotype style portraits and that we can make fun of them as much as we want on the internet because uh….amish. What are they gonna do? Log on? HAHAHAHA! Catch my shade in their hat brims? They um….they’re not here. you know this

what’s also cool is that they give everyone Amish a year to go buckwild and just do porn and smoke dope and shit. Rumspringa, they call it. I bet that year is almost worth being amish for. However, I bet it’s not all the way worth being Amish for.

Quaker

Ah. The guy on the oatmeal, right? I mean, that ribbon tie is something, I suppose. I feel like this is a little like amish in that it’s like “yo, the basic idea of christian god but with black and white clothes” but while the amish are a drug dealing mafia (as far as reality tv has taught me) the quakers have a super stringent No Violence situation going on. That’s cool. It’s probably also why you don’t ever see any quakers anywhere. They got their non violent asses whupped right back to shelbyville.

Shaker

I read a book once called “the day no pigs would die” and from what I remember, it was about shakers. They’re called shakers bc they tend to shiver with the love of the lord when the spirit hits ‘em (or some similar complete bullshit) but the big thing about shakers is that they can only marry existant shakers, and because they’re in some kind of weird ass sect where being shaky equals spiritual well being, of course that also means that they can only fuck shakers.

Now, seems fine, until you consider that you can’t become a new shaker. They won’t accept you. And there weren’t as many shakers as there are, say, Harold’s Chicken Shacks in the greater Chicagoland area, so the chances of you having to fuck your sister become very high very quickly.

Anyway, all the shakers are dead now but their spirit lives on in a Cleveland suburb called Shaker Heights which is home to one of my favorite clubs on the earth, the Grog Shop. I hope they’re still hanging in there during this bullshit.

Zoroastrian

The first thing I ever learned about Zoroastrianism was that it was a precursive monotheism that was very popular in the time before the common era but with the explosion of Christianity, many of the rituals and traditions and so on were absorbed into Christianity and now it’s a dead religion. This is gonna be a very age specific comparison, but it’s like go bots versus transformers. One was there first, one is still here.

Anyway, the idea of a dead religion fascinated me as a youth, so I’ve always kinda had a soft spot in my heart for old Zoroaster, the lost god. Funny thing: Freddy Mercury was raised as a devout zoroastrian (which, man, pretty chill religion if the “freddy mercury program” is how the devout get down [also, my friend dan just pointed out to me that their last album, Innuendo, if said with a heavy British accent is “in your end hole” and wow. great stuff, Freddy]).

Anyway he apparently had a traditional zoroastrian funeral which I’m almost sure involves some sort of funeral pyre, which is definitely cooler than just standing around in black in the rain while your great aunt sobs. I give Z-ass the thumbs up.

Buddhist

On paper this is great, but I’ve never met anyone that identifies as a buddhist that’s not a complete fucking psychopath or bore, so I dunno. I find it hilarious that a fat little rich boy who decided to go sit on a hill until snails gathered on his head and then he decided he was happy is the most easy to swallow believable religion out there. I don’t think Buddha glows or anything. I think he’s just a dead guy that had enough money to wear a robe and be like ‘eh, fuck it. I’m literally just gonna sit here until I get happy.’

good gig if you can get it.

Hinduism

Lots going on here. There’s Ganesh, there’s Shiva, there’s vishnu and there’s uh….the…other one that I also know who it is and then there’s…I mean, listen, we don’t have to name them all. There are over four hundred gods in Hinduism. Which makes it the India of religions: highly populated, an elephant or two, don’t use your credit card anywhere, even if your water seems sealed the chances that it was glued back together and it’s just water from the Ganges are really high and you’ll shit your pants for eternity if you try it. But they did the Karma sutra, so hey! at least it’s not kid fucking! That should be on a shirt with Ganesh and a priest.

Scientology

Yes. really nice try.

Taoism

Tao translates to “the way” and it really is more of a philosophy than a religion. it’s also vexingly vague and your niece that’s into taoism can’t WAIT to explain that actually the way is life and life is light and the light is inside you and it’s all one thing and seriously, Braxleeene, stop with that shit.

This is a religion that’s so pure and right on but it’s got a distinct vibe of the ‘yes and’ number one rule of improv, in that you can’t do anything that’s not in line with being a Taoist. Whatever. This is the only religion I’ve ever considered myself an adherent of as a grown up, but now I know the truth: we all need to worship odin. Speaking of:

Odinism

This one is….um….it’s cool at first. No, dude! Cool Odinism. The horns and shit are dope and everyone loves Thor and that’s fun but here’s the problem: this is also wildly racist. And since all of this shit (search this entire list and maybe leave a few scraps from Taoism) is real, lets not do a super racist one, eh? I mean…it only seems reasonable that if you’re gonna have a pretend friend system that it could probably be capable of not hating people capriciously. Also, good god, that initial Odinist crop of black metalists…yo. they could probably be worse but I’m struggling to see how. Mayhem is considered good in that canon? Sheesh. Worst music. Odin cries at this.

Vectron

this is me and my family. Google it. Eh, fuck it. Get saved right here:

Satanism

There is no such thing. I do NOT believe that there’s someone on earth who’s not mentally disturbed who legit ‘worships satan.’

The thing about satanism is that it’s a complete middle finger to the rest of these and to polite society in general, which is GREAT, and I’ve told people that I worship satan but I mean, I DON’T, and neither do any of these dorks. Satanism is a dry heave against the rest of this horseshit, in that it’s literally the only way you can talk to someone spiritual and endemically just point out how pointedly stupid the whole fucking exercise is without being overtly didactic.

so whatever. hail satan. Oh shit! Iron Maiden just came on. It’s a sign.

I’m out.

Love you. Leave a comment. subscribe. make your mom read this. Also, have you listened to Sam Russo back to the party and The Bombpops death in Venice beach yet?

If not, you’ve wasted your quarantine.