Stupid Things Xians Say

Stupid Things Xians Say

March 31, 2024

Don’t Wander [AI creation based on original 2010 photo]

Christianity is getting a lot of attention today (and all this past week) because of it being Holy Week. However, as they so often do, some pseudo-Xians just don’t seem to understand the whole concept of peace, love, and inclusion. They prove this by opening their mouths and saying some really inappropriate and ignorant things.

Take for instance, please, that time this week when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said, “If you don’t like our religion [xianity], then we don’t want you in our country.” What this part-time Bible salesman is saying is that he’s more than willing to implement a religion litmus test for anyone wanting to come into the country. Now, where that gets interesting is trying to narrow down what he means by “our religion.” Obviously, he doesn’t like Muslims, Hindus, atheists, or Buddhists. However, he links religion to politics when he says that a Jewish person who votes Democratic (and most do), “hates their religion” and “everything about Israel.” So… are Jews getting in or not? Now, any reasonably-minded person knows that such a litmus test is a violation of the First Amendment. However, let’s just go crazy for a moment and assume he could get away with it. How long would it be before he tries to deport, round up, or terrorize anyone who doesn’t fit without his narrow (and farcical) religious expectations?

Then, there was all that hullabaloo today over the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Somehow, pseudo-Xians just noticed this year that religious themes are not allowed on the decorated eggs used for the roll. Cue right-wing outrage because they’re an ignorant bunch of people who don’t seem to realize that the ban has existed since 1978. Take another look at that. 1978. Over 40 years ago. And they’re just now realizing it. And all this over a fictional rabbit that allegedly places eggs all over the yard. Apparently, these pseudo-Xians are also ignorant of the fact that Easter Eggs are a pagan tradition that predates xianity. Seriously, do these people ever pull their heads out of their asses and take a look at the world around them?

Taking the ugly lamb-shaped Easter cake is SBC megachurch pastor Josh Howerton who told his Dallas-based Lakepointe Church congregation that, on their wedding night (actually, he specifically emphasized “his” wedding night), the women should: “Stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do.” Incredulous, isn’t it? You would think, especially after all the abuse and marital cheating scandals the SBC has endured, that such misogyny would, at the very least, be kept on the down-low. Nope. Here it is, right out in the open. We even have it on video.

Dismantling this statement a bit, first, let’s realize that, by most accounts, fewer than 30% of people, male or female, are virgins on their wedding night. Most sane people realize that sexual experience is a good thing; find out what you like and what you don’t, take away the mythology of losing virginity, and hopefully avoid the pain and mess of your first sexual experience. If 70% of men are not virgins (and the real number is likely higher), then they have not necessarily been planning for their wedding night their entire lives.

Second, this is putting wayyyyyy too much pressure on the wedding night for it to be pleasurable. Weddings are a big deal and by the time the happy couple gets away from the reception and all the people and checked into the hotel for the night, they’re fucking exhausted! Why put all that pressure on the wedding night? It’s insane to create those kinds of expectations that are almost certainly going to lead to disappointment.

Third, and perhaps most important, if your spouse is telling you where to stand, what to wear, and what to do and this isn’t a sex game to which you’ve both agreed, then you’ve married a misogynist and need to get out of this marriage as soon as possible! Abuse, emotional and physical, is right around the corner. Nothing good comes from being in a relationship with a misogynistic person. Nothing. Get the fuck out while you can. PLEASE. A chocolate bunny would make a better partner.

If it seems like I’m picking on pseudo-Xians it’s only because they’re making so much noise as they show us how incredibly ignorant, thoughtless, and cruel they actually are. There’s no true spirit of love here. There’s no intention to bring peace. There’s no desire for inclusion. Everything they’re doing is fake and they’re loud enough with their actions to make sure we don’t miss them. As long as they keep doing and saying stupid things, I’ll keep calling them out for it.

Art / Holidays / Photography

Ghosts Of Photos Past

December 24, 2016

Memories that won’t scare the Dickens out of you

It’s Christmas Eve. The kids and Kat are all in bed. Even the dogs have snuggled down for the night. Only one kitten, the calico, still roams around, chasing some piece of fluff that is invisible to the human eye. We’ve managed to play it as low-key as possible tonight. Grandpa Bob stopped by for a dinner of ham and dressing, gave the little ones their presents, and watched The Polar Express with them before leaving.

A glass of scotch and a fresh cigar await me. No milk and cookies, thank you. I fear the bump in blood pressure from the cookies more than I do getting cancer from the cigar. The holidays are exhausting and I’m not the one who has to make 28 stops-per-second in order to deliver toys to every child on the planet. The way I figure it, Santa is that alcoholic CEO who barks orders all year and then sobers up just in time to make an impressive showing at the annual stockholders meeting. The elves secretly hate him but he has a face that’s good for business.

Digging back through the archives, again, I came across a couple of photos I didn’t know I still had. They’ve not been seen in almost ten years. I found some others I’d intentionally been ignoring. Between batches of cookies and an absolutely dreadful last-minute dash to the grocery store, a trip that might have cost me my life were Kat not so incredibly calm in a crowd, I managed to edit the set, or re-edit in some cases. They’re not new photos by any means. They’re ghosts of photos past, reminding us of people who were once in our lives with great frequency. As Scrooge missed the merriment of his youth, so we miss the friendships represented in these photos.

Damn it, the little dog just barked at that fat Kringle fellow. I had to ask him (Kringle) to make another loop around the state while I put the fuzzy little beast back in bed. I hope the kids don’t stir. I don’t have the energy to hide the presents. One has to be careful about where they store coal.

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pop culture / Social Commentary / studio nudes

Try A Different Angle On Thanksgiving

November 22, 2016

charles i. letbetter - try something different for Thanksgiving

Tired of doing things the same way every year? Try out something a little different.

Nope, we’re still not ready for Thanksgiving. Not quite. Kat or I will be making another trip to the store this evening to gather the final bit of supplies we need to get us through the weekend. Once we’re all home Wednesday evening, none of us are planning on leaving before Saturday at the earliest. That means that, in addition to everything for Thursday’s dinner, we need to make sure we have other food and supplies for the rest of the weekend. Having everyone home all day is challenging.

When we think of Thanksgiving we tend to think of tradition. Much is made of what they did or didn’t have 400 years ago, and then family traditions fall on top of that. Some people run in early morning races so as to prove their insanity. Other families spend time helping to feed the poor and homeless, which is a noble gesture requiring that one must have children who listen and obey. I have no idea what that is like. I have even met people who spend the day in protest. They find something to fit on a placard every year. I’m just assuming they’re all being unlawfully mistreated at Standing Rock this year.

For me, however, there are really only two traditions that matter. The first is to make sure there are enough leftovers so I don’t have to cook on Friday. I’ll cook the hell out of Thursday, but Friday I’m sleeping the entire day. The second, however, is to not follow tradition but to do at least one thing different; something that we’ve never done before. There are a lot of ways to be different, of course, but they generally fall into three categories: a different place, a different food, and different people. Let me give you some examples.

A Different Place

For us, this will be the first time Kat and I have stayed home for Thanksgiving. We usually would go to her Mom’s for the holiday, but Little Man’s birthday is this week as well so we’re doing birthday/Thanksgiving over there on a different day. This means we get to just enjoy/endure each other on Thursday. Big Gabe, my 18-year-old, said he’s pretty sure this is the first time he’s not gone anywhere for Thanksgiving, and he may be correct. He wasn’t born yet when I was on this roll of doing exotic meals for the holidays. Any other time we were at one grandparent’s house or the other. So, just the idea of staying home on Thanksgiving is a bit awkward and certainly different.

Over the years, though, we have utilized some other non-traditional locations as well. Back when our entire extended family would gather in Wichita, no one had a house big enough to even begin holding us all. So, we rented enclosed facilities at different city parks as long as at least a couple of our parents were still living. The facilities would include stoves and ovens and sinks so we could cook those last-minute items that are only good when fresh. Meanwhile, there was always plenty of room to toss the youngsters outside so they could run off energy and build up an appetite for the meal. After Poppa got to where he couldn’t make the trip, we used the great room of the retirement facility where they lived, invited others there to join, and had a wonderful time sharing Thanksgiving with older people who had nowhere else to go.

There are plenty of options if one just looks around a bit. Some, you do your own cooking. Others, someone else cooks for you (though those options tend to be more expensive). Either way, if you don’t want, or for some reason are unable to do the traditional family thing and the traditional family place, look around. Try someplace different. You might discover a whole new tradition that’s even better.

Different Food

I mentioned above about going through a period where I insisted on preparing exotic foods for the holidays. I drove my family nuts with that one. Both sides were always very traditional and they just couldn’t wrap their heads around not having turkey and dressing and green bean casserole. In fact, my former mother-in-law actually brought green bean casserole with her one year because she knew that I wasn’t going to fix any and could not stand the thought of a Thanksgiving without it.

Here’s the thing: you don’t want what they had at the first Thanksgiving. It was dry. It was gamey. Even the vegetables didn’t taste anything like what is on our tables now. So, just throw out that whole idea of a “traditional” Thanksgiving menu and have some fun with it. We’ve had duck (which no one liked as much as they thought they would), we’ve had cornish hens (look,everyone gets their own turkey!), and we’ve even had venison (just don’t play a video of Bambi for a couple of weeks). There are plenty of options.

Where the fun comes in, I think, is with the side dishes. Sure, we can have potatoes, but let’s prepare them differently for a change. This year, I’m leaning toward this recipe for slow cooker loaded potatoes. First off, it’s highly customizable. If your family is made up of vampires, leave off the garlic. Double down on the bacon if you wish. You could also toss in some olives and sun dried tomatoes if you’re feeling adventurous. The end result should be much more appetizing than yet another round of mashed potatoes.

I’m also considering this recipe for honey roasted butternut squash. Of those attending our home dinner on Thursday, half don’t like sweet potatoes. So, it doesn’t seem fair to leave them out and I know that at least two of them love butternut squash. This recipe is really simple to put together as long as one has a good, sharp knife. Butternut squash isn’t the softest veggie you’ll ever find. Alternatives like this really liven up a Thanksgiving menu without really risking upsetting expectations.

Finally, try something really different in the bread department. Of course, a lot of people use cornbread stuffing, but there’s still this expectation for some kind of roll or pull-apart bread. One year I got really adventurous and made challah, which the family enjoyed. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much counter space to give a full loaf of braided bread a place to rise. We’ll likely go with something from a local bakery. Just make it different than the store-bought Hawaiian rolls that are way over priced.

Different People

My parents taught us this one. Regardless of which holiday it might be, if we were fixing a lot of food, and my Mother always fixed enough food for a small army, we invited other people, and almost always people who we didn’t know. We never had a bad holiday when we did this. Never mind any religious differences, though the year we had an atheist at the table was interesting, never mind the cultural differences, the addition of new people always made the holiday better.

If you have been paying attention to the pictures we’ve used for this article, you’ve noticed all but one have a preponderance of tattoos. For reasons I have yet to understand, there are still a lot of people who find ink offensive. I don’t get it. That concept is almost always based out of ignorance, as is every bias. When we are celebrating our ability to over-consume while nearly a third of the world’s population is starving, we have a moral obligation to set aside our ridiculous opinions and reach out to people who are as different from us as possible. Build bridges, not walls. Invite that fussy neighbor. Pick up that friend of a friend whose name you can’t remember but you know will be alone. Hell, bring home a stripper. Strippers have to eat, too.

One of the reasons suicides go up during the holidays is because people who have been alone for far too many Thanksgivings just don’t want to go through another one. Try swallowing your fucking pride for a change. Invite someone different. You’ll both end up with a reason to be Thankful.

Current Issues / Mythology / PotD

Hiding From The Glare Of Our Own Sins

September 22, 2016

charles i. letbetter - hiding from the glare of our sins

Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another. —Homer

charles i. letbetter - hiding from the glare of our own sins

We’re quick to find fault in others, but we are hiding from the truth

An entire professional sports team took a knee during the national anthem last night. Notice, as often as we’ve seen people using the national anthem as a means of protest, it’s always been limited to a few members here and there. This was the entire Indiana Fever WNBA team, on a knee. Why? Because they’re tired of us hiding the prevalence of institutionalized violence against black people.

Charlotte, North Carolina is still rioting this morning. The governor of that state has called out the National Guard. Hiding the systemic hate and violence against black people in that state is no longer an option. The sins of the state and its cities have come out of the shadows where they have existed for the past 160 years and good folks down there are taking to the streets to end the nonsense.

Meanwhile, the Republican nominee told supporters at a rally yesterday that he supports a stop-and-frisk policy, illegally detaining people simply because a police officer doesn’t like the way they look, or the way they walk, or the color of their skin. Only one person walked out. The room should have been empty, but we’re still foolishly trying to hide our racism.

We, Americans, have become quite talented at hiding our sins, especially those we commit toward people groups that are different from us. We have created institutions to perpetuate those sins and even ingrain them in our educational methods that ignore the presence and contributions of marginalized people. As the light dawns, however, those sins become far too clear.

Hiding Behind Tradition

“We’ve done things this way for years and no one’s every complained before.”

Maurice Maeterlinck, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, wisely said: “At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.” We don’t give up on tradition easily, no matter how horribly flawed we know it to be. We hang on to these “sins of our fathers” as though they were some kind of sick birthright to which we have no choice but to uphold.

Hiding behind tradition is a lazy excuse, though. We dump tradition in a heart beat when it suits us. When we say, “It’s always been that way,” what we are in fact saying is that we want it to always stay that way. We invoke tradition because we are comfortable with our sins. The traditions are so much a part of us that we even try to claim them as part of our culture and heritage. Yet, we know damn good and well we’re wrong.

Remember this song by Bruce Hornsby and The Range from 1986? Even then, as the song pointed out the sins we are trying to hide by saying, “That’s just the way it is,” we listened to the song and just dug ourselves in deeper. Here, let me refresh your memory.

Hiding Behind Religion

Talked about entrenched. When people have been misinterpreting a writing they’ve declared holy, whether intentionally or through ignorance, the shadows created for hiding our sins run deep. We find it all too easy to excuse our behavior, and often our indignation and intolerance, with the simple phrase,”The Bible tells me so.” Conveniently, there are plenty of places throughout the holy texts of multiple religions where deity instructs us, or someone eons before us, to behave like complete assholes. That whole “go here and kill those people who don’t believe in me” concept is something we’ve translated into an excuse for hate, discrimination, abuse, imprisonment, wars, and other atrocities too horrible to mention.

Ironically, while providing these deep shadows for hiding our sins, religion simultaneously tells us we are supposed to love each other, to be tolerant of the strangers and foreigners among us, to embrace those who are different. This is the message that makes us feel good on a Sunday morning. We look around the congregation at the end of the service and proclaim, “I just love everybody.” Yet, before you’re even out the door you’re casting side glances at old Mrs. Talkstoomuch so you don’t get stuck listening about a lonely old widow’s aches and pains. You drive past 15 perfectly good restaurants to get to the one whose wait staff has the right color skin. Then, after dinner, you sit in your easy chair to watch a ball game and complain about how “those people” are ruining the game. Tell me again, please, just exactly who it is your religion told you to love?

Hiding behind religion is inexcusable. If you think your religion tells you that some people are inherently worse than others, you need a new religion. No holy book covers your sins. You’re guilty and you know it. You want to clap your hands about that?

Hiding Behind Ignorance

One of the greatest sins of my generation is that we have intentionally institutionalized hate by only teaching history from the perspective of a white, anglo-saxon protestant existence that was never more than horseshit in the first place. For far too long, everything we taught in school was based on a white-washed, brain-washed, hand-sanitized view of the world designed to marginalize, criminalize, and oppress anyone who wasn’t white and middle class. While the textbooks have changed in some places, there are still plenty of instances where the secession of Confederate states is justified, where the holding of slaves is taught as an economic necessity, and the Ku Klux Klan is referred to as a religious civic organization.

We were raised with readers that only contained illustrations of white children with names like Dick and Jane. We were taught that the extermination of native peoples was necessary to “advance the frontier.” Even in television programming and movies taught us that the “indians” were always the bad guys, nothing more than blood-thirsty savages. With such ignorance being taught in schools is it any wonder we’re now faced with situations such as the Dakota Access Pipeline where far too many people don’t seem to have any problem with polluting tribal water or desecrating tribal land? We justify our sins with the claim that, “we didn’t know,” or even worse, “I don’t understand why they’re so upset.”

One member of the Oglala Lakota Nation said yesterday:

“We’re not just some hashtag out there just making a scene. We want to be heard. We want you guys to understand that we are fighting for our lives, for our children, for our people, the way we have, our culture, our identity.”

There is no excuse for our ignorance and that shadow is insufficient to hide our sins.

We Are In The Wrong

Let’s get real: If you can justify police murdering an unarmed man in Tulsa, you are wrong.

If you think that police have a reason to be afraid of a person just because of the color of their skin or the neighborhood in which they live, you are wrong.

If you think it is okay to take away the land and culture of an entire tribe in the name of profit, you are wrong.

If you think that it’s acceptable to spit at, hurl insults toward, or even commit acts of violence against someone because they are gay, lesbian, bi, or transgendered, you are wrong.

If you think that people who profess a religion different from yours should be barred, banned, or given a different set of rules, you are wrong.

These are the sins that justify the protests in Charlotte. These are the sins that have thousands camping and protesting at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. These are the sins that, if allowed to linger in the shadows, will most certainly become the justification for an uprising of marginalized people who just aren’t going to take our horseshit anymore.

Maybe we should step out of the shadows, confess our sins somewhere other than a fucking closet, and change the situation. Don’t wait for anyone else. We must be our own leaders.

End this nonsense now.

Current Issues / PotD

Respect For Being Human

June 1, 2016

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. —Jackie Robinson

When it comes to listing one’s faults, those qualities that are the result of being human should never be among them

Humans are imperfect beings. One of the fears expressed in developing artificial intelligence is that as computers begin to realize just how inept and flawed we are they might consider us a blight on the planet that needs to be destroyed. There are days I tend to agree with the computers. We are selfish, mean, greedy, slothful, undependable, gluttonous, prideful, envious, disrespectful, racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, thoughtless, and absolutely despicable.

Even worse, we attempt to mask our failings with false justifications such as, “I’m just keeping it real,” or, “He’s just speaking his mind,” or, “I’m only telling you for your own good,” and, “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.” Each of those statements is designed to cover for the fact that preceding and/or following statements are likely to be rude, insensitive, inaccurate, distasteful, inappropriate and downright mean. We have conned ourselves into believing that if we label the trash coming out of our mouths as “truth” then no one can argue against it.

Bullshit.

One of the things that make being human respectable is that we can change. Once our flaws and weaknesses are pointed out to us, we have the ability to correct our actions, to make amends, and we even have the ability to apologize. Just because we make a mistake once doesn’t mean we have to continue making that error. We can learn and improve. It’s called progress.

Unfortunately, we too often fail to utilize that benefit. Instead of improving ourselves and working on our own flaws, we would rather pick on other people, attacking aspects of their humanity over which they have no control, such as body size, shape, skin color, gender, sexuality, language, nationality, and other hereditary factors which come with the package of being a unique being. Too often, we see what we don’t like in ourselves and project that dislike onto other people, saying and doing things that are totally unacceptable and, in some cases, even illegal.

The 14th amendment of the Constitution reads in part:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The most important, and frequently litigated, phrase from that section is “equal protection.” What this amendment ultimately means is that no citizen is to be discriminated against for any reason. There are no exceptions made, no allowances for differences of opinion. All citizens of the United States are to be treated equally. Period. While the amendment was adopted in 1868, though, we are still having an extreme amount of difficulty understanding that there are no exceptions to being equal.

One of the challenges is that many of the discriminatory and anti-human attitudes and activities that still persist are encoded in both tradition and the regulations we have made for ourselves. We have told ourselves that appearance matters, that certain traits are acceptable while others are not, and that some aspects of one’s personal being should be accentuated while others should be downplayed, hidden, and even surgically altered. In short, we fail to have respect for the fact that we are human.

We often refer to incidents of body-shaming. There have been plenty of such problems hitting the media lately. One of the most recent comes from actress Kate Beckinsale claiming that she was body-shamed by director Michael Bay while filming the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor. Ms. Beckinsale states:

I think he was baffled by me because my boobs weren’t bigger than my head, and I wasn’t blonde.

If we have made any improvements over the past 15 years, it may be that men, at least those who are in public on a regular basis, have been conditioned to, at the very least, keep their mouths shut when it comes to making statements about a woman’s physical appearance. When one does step out of line, the Internet, especially Twitter, is very quick to respond and call attention to any inappropriate statements.

Where we’ve not made such an improvement, however, is how women mistreat other women, and men actually seem to encourage their bad behavior. Catfights on reality television, which are considered ratings gold, only perpetuate a culture of disrespect and even physical violence between women and men do nothing but stand on the sidelines cheering them on! How do we not see how absolutely repulsive and repugnant our behavior is? Disparaging another person for aspects of simply being human is wrong on every conceivable level.

Some of you have been following our story from last week regarding the woman we named Lenore and the nipple shaming she had received from her employer. We then updated that story yesterday upon discovering that a second employee, whom we’ll call Julia, had received an even more harsh reprimand because of her Philippino accent. Never mind the fact that Julia has worked hard on her English and probably speaks better than 70% of the Americans who walk through the business doors. Because someone had complained, the owner of the business considered the accent a problem.

After we made that update, the owner of the business called Lenore and proceeded to thoroughly shame every aspect of her physical appearance, from her face to her footwear. Lenore was left in tears, totally humiliated for simply being human.

Earlier this morning, we received a message from Julia announcing that she was quitting her job. Lenore has not yet given official notice but plans to do the same later this morning.

We need to get it through our thick heads that we are all human and we need to show respect for those aspects of our humanity that are inherent to our being. We need to stop fat-shaming people who have thyroid and other physical conditions that make it impossible for them to safely lose weight. We need to stop beauty-shaming women who refuse to damage their skin by wearing an overabundance of makeup. We need to stop making fun of people’s language accents; at least they are bilingual, something the people doing the shaming can seldom say. We need to stop drawing attention to people’s body parts; whether breasts are big or small is totally irrelevant, as is their nipple size.

Showing respect for human beings means taking a look at things such as dress codes and eliminating gender bias and unnecessary restrictions that do not have a direct correlation to the duties being performed. We need to move beyond the Disney-induced notion that the less attractive a person is the more evil and unacceptable they must be. Disparaging people simply for being human is not something a progressive society can allow to continue.

Unfortunately, in far too many cases, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction. We actually have a leading contender for the office of President who routinely shames and makes fun of other people. His comments about women and minorities have been absolutely deplorable and represent the absolute worst aspects of being human. There is no excuse. There is no way to justify such deplorable behavior on the part of anyone.

While you may have a right to say what you wish, you have a responsibility to know when to keep your fucking mouth shut. If what you are about to say shows disrespect and/or discrimination toward another person, shut the fuck up! The circumstances are irrelevant. The media is irrelevant. Even the actions of the other person are irrelevant. You have a responsibility to show respect to all people, regardless of physical appearance, gender, race, national origin, sexuality, mental acuity, emotional stability, medical ailment, or physical challenges. If you fail to live up to that responsibility in any way, shape, or form, then you are WRONG.

Humans can be absolutely horrible creatures and do well to fear the presence of a more objective and intelligent being that might consider our faults justification for our demise. The only thing that stands in our defense is that we have the ability to change and to move beyond our shortcomings.

We need to get busy and start changing. Show respect for being human. Learn when to keep your mouth shut and start supporting other people rather than looking for ways to tear them down.