Tuesday, May 01, 2001 11:54...
I've decided that I will go to no more functions in churches. I get infuriated, and that's not good for me. I should just be able to blow it off, but I can't.
The whole premise of religion is fucking ridiculous. Completely and totally. And I should just have nothing to do with it at all.
Besides the usual blatherings about jesus etc., the preacher brought up a news article in todays paper about Paul McCartney, formerly of the Beatles.
Paul, who recently (1998) lost his wife to breast cancer, said, among other things, that he was compelled to write poetry since her death, including one called Her Spirit in which Linda's spirit visits him in the woods in the form of a white squirrel; Paul said, "You don't know if it's true. But it's a great thought. And it's an uplifting thought. And so I allow myself to go there."
The preacher ridiculed this idea. He said that jesus was real, and that Clark's wife would meet Clark in the great hereafter, and that was real. The squirrel wasn't real.
Now, I'm not really a great Beatles fan, but I do like them. I don't worship them (or anything or anyone else) but... they are real. And Paul's white squirrel has just as much proof behind it as the preacher's jesus or god.
Essentially, it's seems to be a christian trait to ridicule other's beliefs, and, if one has the ability, to persecute them for those "deviant" beliefs. This is just a small-town example of the religious.
There was no murmur of dissent in the crowd, or if there was, I didn't hear it... the pain of biting my tongue distracted me.
I think that his remarks were completely inappropriate. especially considering the occasion.
And his condescension of another faith, no matter how loosely held, was totally inappropriate at a funeral of a man who had many friends of many faiths, with at least one atheist amongst them.
I try to tolerate these assholes, I really do. I shouldn't go play in their houses, I guess.
At least the catholics didn't demean anyone but themselves during the mass/wedding I attended last week.
I found that it was difficult to not bow my head when they were praying. But I will not bow my head to a false god, and they are all false. Humility... yes, I do have some. I am humble before nature, but I can look it in the face and smile. I am humbled by the abilities of some (very few) people, but I am not humbled by any man or woman.
And I find humility extremely demeaning, and I have no respect for people who grovel before their non-existent gods. Do these people just not want to understand their brains at all? Furthermore, a god who demands grovelling would not be, in my opinion, worthy of respect... if he indeed existed.
Why, why, why?
They want to be led... they want... they want... what the hell do they want? Everlasting life? Are they completely fucking blind? Dead is dead. There is no heaven, no hell. What we see is what we get, dammit.
Jesus. Maybe he lived, maybe he didn't. Doesn't matter. What matters is the power structure that has been built around him... the power structure that depends on... humility. Slavish devotion.
Do these preachers and priests really, really believe this shit that they're spouting? I'm sure that some of them do... but I think that most just find it's an easy way to make a living. Fleece them sheep!
OK, enough of this. Back to your regularly scheduled programming...
The morning after.
I slept until 21:30 last night, and I went in at about 22:30 or so. Another busy night.
One more thing about the funeral... I snubbed our administrator. I did it nicely, I thought... but I could be wrong.
When I went to sit down behind a couple of my friends, she was seated across the aisle, and gestured for me to join her. I pretended that she was just greeting me, and I greeted her right back and sat down.
I was pretty sure that I could keep my murmurings inaudible, but I didn't want to take the chance... and I was sure that grinding my teeth and biting my tongue would annoy her. I have very little contact with the lady, but I would rather have her believing that I'm just an eccentric employee rather than an atheistic humanist. Has to do with job security, y'know...
So, I was late getting out of work this morning... the 07:00 tech was off, and the 06:30 one wouldn't have been able to handle everything that was going on. So I left about 08:00, came home and had a bowl of cereal, took a shower and went to see my doc for a physical.
I really like my doc. He's about 40 now, very friendly and attentive. We have a very good relationship, partly due to the fact that I fooled him when I had my first coronary.
We went through all of the usual stuff and he pronounced that I was still among the living. I was pretty thankful for that... we discussed my still-slightly-high blood pressure, and he recommended that I quit smoking, as he does every time that I see him.
Something that I've been wanting to do for years but kept putting off, mostly because of the pain involved... getting my big toenails removed. This was recommended shortly after Karen and I got married, but I never acted on it. My toenails have a fungus disease, and I have to regularly use a rasp on them to keep the pressure from building up. I just file the top of the nail down to less than a millimeter, and that lets the fungus bulge the toenail up instead of down into my nail bed. The cure for this is to remove the nail and debride the fungus, treat it and then let the nail grow back. This will last about 20 years before it grows back enough to be troublesome again.
But I waited too long.
He won't do it because of my peripheral vascular disease, and he says that neither will anybody else.
Makes sense to me, dammit.
So I'll have ugly toenails for the rest of my life.
Worse things could happen, I guess. But I was looking forward to not having to file the damned things.
Anyway, the rest of the physical was fine... prostate exam, lungs, heart, peripheral pulses...
I did talk to him about the depression... he told me that most likely, all RSSI treatments would have the same undesirable side effects. The non-RSSI medications have different side effects, ones that might be more tolerable.
The more that I thought about it, and I've thought about it a lot recently, knowing that I would be seeing him, the less depressed I think that I am.
For one thing, nobody has told me that I'm depressed. Karen usually notices it first, then brother Dan. I talked to Karen after the appointment, and she said that she hadn't really seen any signs of depression lately.
Secondly... I'll be changing jobs soon. And get back on a daytime schedule, and be normal. This might either alleviate what few symptoms I feel now, or it might really send me down the tubes. We'll have to wait and see, I guess. I'm thinking that the former is much more likely, but the latter possibility comes in a strong second. I know that major life changes, be they good or bad, often trigger depression.
Well, I think that I'll get a few hours of sleep now... I go on call for CT at 16:30, so I have to get up by then. Hopefully I won't be having to go in after 21:00 this week...
Went to the funeral. Sat in the church. Mom, you can stop reading now...
