There is no place to hide

FROM CHRISTIANS.

I wasn’t even hiding.

Today, after breakfast, I sat outside at a table and enjoyed a cigarette.  Once I finished, I got out my Cultural Anthropoloy textbook and pulled out my cell phone to keep an eye on the time.  I had about 45 minutes to read my assigned chapter and get to Russian class.  I knew I had plenty of time to complete the chapter and reflect because it was rather short.  16 minutes into my reading, an older gentleman walked up behind me and asked, “Studying hard?”  “Well, yes, of course.”   “What are you studying?” “Anthropology.”  “Ah, yes, the study of man.” “The study of humans,” I replied with slight disdain.  I attempted to get back to my reading, but I quickly realized he wasn’t going to let me after he sat himself down beside me.  Without even being polite enough to ask if it was available, might I add.  (The nerve of these people.  Their tunnel vision is so great that it depletes them of their ability to be considerate, polite, civilized individuals.)

But anyhow, enough of my bias.  Let’s discuss his.

He didn’t take long to reveal his agenda.  I felt it coming in the air tonight – or this morning.  He started his disjointed question by mentioning something about popular religions and conducting a survey.  I thought this might be fun and interesting.  I LIKE SURVEYS.  But then he segued (rather poorly) into something along these lines:  If you were standing before God, what would you say to avoid going to hell?

Whoa. WHOA.

(I KNEW I SMELLED A CHRISTIAN!@@#*@!)

What the hell?  Christ, couldn’t he have finessed his hidden (or not so) agenda a bit?  Is that too much to ask?

I get irked when people answer a question with a question, but he forced me to.

“What perspective are you asking from?”

“Any perspective”

“Uh, you can’t ask it like that.  Some religions don’t even believe in hell.  Some believe you can’t speak directly to God.  And others don’t even have a God or have more than one god.”

I could tell he didn’t want to say he wanted the reply from  a Christian perspective.   I pretty much had him fumbling all over himself until he asked another question about what my thoughts are on Jesus Christ.

I went on to say I think he was a charismatic, influential figure/prophet who will probably be remembered and written about for possibly several more millenia.

He didn’t like that very much.  He also didn’t like me comparing Jesus to The Buddha, Confucious, Martin Luther King, and he REALLY didn’t like me comparing him to the prophet Muhammad.

I started enjoying this conversation a bit, especially when he proclaimed Catholics aren’t Christians and that there’s is a religion unto themselves.  And he separated Protestantism as well, saying they believe good works get you into heaven.  Last I checked, that was reversed.

After getting under his skin some more he attempted to argue that Jesus is unique.  He is unique because he was the only one of those figures who said he was the son of God.  But he didn’t go far down that road because I think he realized that wasn’t gonna get me anywhere with him.  Unless he wanted me to tell him right then and there that I am Zoroaster reincarnated or that Jesus actually sent me, a hispanic female as his stand-in/understudy – Lawl (lol).

He at one point even asked me if I thought what Hitler did was right.   I don’t know where he was going with that, but that argument also faded as quickly as it was commenced.

After looking at my clock and seeing it was past 30 minutes after, I said I had to get to class because that bastard interrupted my reading.

He got up and handed me a cd.  He said, “Here, listen to this.  It’s about all the world religions.”

I looked at it carefully and read the text: The Uniqueness of Christianity.

“All religions?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, bye.”

I wanted to throw it inside the nearest receptacle, but something within me kept me from doing it.  My curiosity, I suppose.  I just wanted to prove him wrong.

I went to the library and started playing it.  I only got to listen to about 5 minutes but within those 5 minutes it was quite evident this was not an objective account of world religions.  The man speaking on the audio cd started his lecture stating that in regards to religion Christianity has no competition.  And that other religions are wrong and he backed it up (yeah right) with: In mathematics, there might be many ways to arrive at a solution that is close to the right answer, but there is only one right answer.  Uh…excuse me?  From what I recall, and some of you know mathematics isn’t my forte(pout), but there are many times when you can use different formulae/methods to arrive at the right answer.

I  quickly pulled the cd out and put it in my bag, satisfied with the knowledge that a Christian just pulled a car salesman lie on me.  But according to his beliefs, he’s still going to heaven.

Shame on him.

Organized Chaos

Upon the cessation of a private review session I had with a fellow classmate before World Religions class, I realized I was really pumped for the midterm we were going to have.  I walked into the auditorium thinking “I’m totally going to ace this!”  Around question 61 I realized the GTA lied when I specifically asked if there would be questions that weren’t covered on the crib/review sheet.  Fortunately, those incredibly specific questions regarding obscure passages in the readings were quite limited, so I have no excuse for not receiving an A.  The first 90 questions were multiple choice and the last 10 were short answer.  I left one answer out of 102 blank because I couldn’t for the life of me recall what important figure brought communism to China.  It was not on my review sheet and it was part of a reading that was not mentioned in class.  I sat in my chair for 5 minutes mentally scanning names of important figures we learned about and couldn’t even conjure up some semblence of a good guess.  I was quite ashamed for leaving an answer blank, but, I had to get over it.  So, I attempted the bonus questions.  Of course, one just had to ask what family Ganesha was a part of.  Since I know Brahma is generally overlooked, I narrowed it down to Vishnu and Shiva in the Trimurti.  And being such a fan of the counter-culture, I chose Vishnu because Shiva is so blasted popular.  Curses! I was wrong.  I could have hung myself, but the second bonus question asked to explain how Buddhism rejected Upanishadic and Vedic Hinduism.  Thankfully, I knew that answer.  I just hope it was what they were looking for.  I found myself trembling whilst testing and at some points I thought I’d go mad.  At first I thought it was just my desperation for the grade, but several hours later I remembered I had about 18 ounces of coffee earlier in the morning. 

I walked out of the exam with a lot less arrogance, realizing the exam had humbled me.  But I respect DeChant more for it.  This class is not an ‘easy A’ and if I eventually attain it, it will because I put forth the effort.  At best, I’ll find out my grade on Thursday, but most likely it’ll be Tuesday before I know. 

I walked my anxious self to the library after class, as I regularly do and worked on some Anthropology homework.  I completed my readings for tomorrow but have yet to complete my project.  It shouldn’t take too long.  A 3 to 5 page essay and a kindship chart should take but 2 or 3 hours of my time? 

On my drive home my head swirled with what I still have to accomplish before this week is over: a kinship project, Russian homework, completion of the eastern religions reading, and a couple poems for a certain Poetry Jam to be had on Thursday evening.  My mind wandered from school to recreation and contemplated what my compositions’ focii would be.  I thought of incorporating my studies into the poems.  And an idea to express music as a religion was born.   I hope to work on this tomorrow after classes.  But it, of course, will take a backseat to my studies.  And with all that I still have to make it to the nearest computer with a decent internet connection and headset tomorrow by 5PM BST to hear Shardcore’s interview.

I <3 USF’s Bull Market

I have never held/seen up close/read a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics until yesterday afternoon.  Though, I certainly didn’t read it all yesterday afternoon.

I was walking through the Bull Market yesterday and stopping at several booths and learning what their representatives had to say about their organizations.  I enjoyed it but mostly brushed off a lot of the religious hogwash and took to the ‘atheist/humanist’ booth.  We both let out our religious frustrations and even did some debating but then our Rabbi neighbor decided to join in on the conversation.  Mr. Humanist/atheist was going on about how he thinks women should have two husbands so that if one fucks up she will have a back-up.  I expressed my belief in monogamous relationships when considering offspring and how it is beneficial to the offspring to have two stable figures (Ideally yin and yang) in their lives.  I began to provide some examples of such relationships in nature and how I think it is more nurturing to the offspring than to have fleeting parents.  The rabbi liked my example and mentioned we should look to nature to find ourselves, probably thinking I’d side with him.  But instead I decided to go on about homosexuality in nature and how it seems absurd for humans to debase a person for taking part in such things.  He of course was turned off once I gave examples of the Bonobos, which he considered a poor example.  He said, “What about regular animals like cows and sheep? Are they gay?”  Uh…How is the Bonobo not a regular animal?  They’re our closest relative!  He kept asking me if cows and sheep participated in same sex sex.  As if I fucking know.  I told him I had no source and that I couldn’t provide an argument on it so he took that as my admitting defeat.  Which seems ridiculous to me because sheep and cows have been domesticated for fucking ever and shouldn’t even be taken into consideration in my opinion.  They’ve been tampered with.  If you can find me a band of wild cows or sheep and present some research study on their purely hetero lifestyles, I may consider it.  He also kept going on and on about cows and sheep being hetero and wouldn’t allow me a word in edgewise.  I was even planning on stopping at his booth afterward but not after that!  I’m sure he’d think I was only there to give him a hard time.  So eff him!
So then I walked over to the Scientology booth disguised as a Dianetics booth offering a FREE STRESS TEST.  One guy who happened to be foreign with incredibly bad breath said “open your hands and hold this”.  I held two tubes (one in each hand) that looked like they could have been made out of aluminum.  They were attached by some cable to some sort of meter that supposedly measured “upsets in my life”.  First he asked me my name and then asked me to visualize something from my past.  I decided I would make this easy on him and just divulged stressful occurances in my life.  But I also made sure to mention many pleasant things in my life so that I could watch the meter and test how consistent it was.  The wand was going crazy back and forth.  Everytime I projected my voice it would shoot to the stressed side of the meter.  I would mention the stress of tests at school and homework and balancing my life then how fruitful it is to receive an education.  The wand was bouncing to the stressed area the entire time I talked.  I thought it was full of crap, but the Dianetics fellows kept insuring me that it was measuring my stress.  And that it was bad stress it was measuring.  I said, “There’s positive stress and negative stress. How can this primitive piece of technology tell the difference?”  They assured me that it was measuring what has upset me.  Which is crap because the wand shot to ‘STRESS’ everytime I got excited whether or not I was happy or upset. 

After the test, the guy who conducted it showed me a copy of Dianetics and said the answers to my problems are in this book, and this book costs $35.  Do I look like I carry wads of cash around between classes?  This isn’t Cornell or Harvard.  My filthy rich parents (or not) haven’t sent me to school with a couple of Benjamins as my lunch money.   I don’t have $35 to throw away on 1,000 sheets of paper when I can go to the library and check out whatever I please for free.  $35 might be what the messiah of Scientology accidentally finds under his car seat when looking for a tube of Astroglide, but I am paranoid about carrying cash on my person after having my pocketbook stolen in the past and $35 is a full tank of gas.  And I’m sorry, but I find a full tank of gas a hell of a lot more useful than Dianetics. 

He flipped through some pages for me rather quickly but my eyes caught on to the term “Nirvana”, probably because it was recently covered in my World Religions class.  Once I had possession of the book again I went to the glossary to find it again and read the definition.  “The goal of Hindus is Nirvana”.  Uh..What?  Nirvana’s a Buddhist term and Buddhists aim to reach Nirvana.  Hindus aim to reach Moksha.  That’s a grave error in my opinion and this was my first impression of Dianetics.  The man tried to argue this and said I wasn’t reading it in its correct context. Well, yeah, I can pick out a word and create a context for it and that’d be right too, but that doesn’t mean the word is being used correctly.  So then another male chose another angle and decided to blame the error on the editors who wrote the glossary.  So, I had nothing else to say other than that was my first impression and that I’d mostly like spend the rest of the time reading it looking for errors.  So I managed to get away. 

My brain was fairly exhausted by that point and I decided to wind down at the library.  I had Russian club to attend within an hour. 

Thankfully, it wasn’t about anything profound; we just watched a Russian film which was incredibly Americanized.  It was just like American action films – Filler.  But at least the leads actors were hot and spoke in Russian, so I was pretty much mentally masturbating throughout the 2 hours and 11 minutes we watched it. 

It – Shadowboxer – is about a young Russian boxer who loses his eyesight during a fight and falls in love with his doctor who permitted him to fight even though she knew he had torn retina only because he said ‘pretty please.’ She is an ex drug junky that was once involved with a major drug trafficker.  She witnessed his murder and has to run from the law because she has been framed.  Uh, this isn’t meant to be a synopsis.  I am stopping there before I go on for another half hour.  But my favorite part in the film is where she sits on his  lap after they escape from the hospital and he says “I can feel your smell.”  And she replies, “How awful! Like animals!” And then they make out, like, super hard. It made me chuckle.  Still does. 

I spent 10 hours on campus yesterday.  I got home exhausted.

Now I have to attend World Religions – my favorite class.