Get In the Box

4/2/05

Warning: The following text is of a caustic, sarcastic, sacrilegious and salacious nature and probably shouldn’t be read by anyone who has a soul. Proceed at your own risk and save your hate mail for someone who deserves it like Jerry Falwell.

Why are the hyper-religious Christians always the people most afraid of death? You’d think they’d be the first ones signing up to go hang out with God, but you’d be wrong. Specifically, I’m thinking of Pope John Paul II (the original was better than the sequel, it had a better plot) here. He’s been hanging on deaths door for some ten odd years now, just steadfastly refusing to get into the coffin despite the fact he can’t talk, feed or wipe himself. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s been dead already for some time now and the Vatican is using a complex system of fluid-filled bladders to animate his corpse. To date I haven’t been able to prove it. At any rate, as I write this his holiness The Pope is stubbornly holding onto Death’s doorframe, arms and legs pinned against it, refusing to acquiesce like a dog who just knows you’re taking him to the vet.

Ten, count ‘em, ten of my television channels are devoted to Pope Death Watch ‘05. Not that I’m completely unsympathetic to the fact that many, many people around the globe have some manner of vested interest in The Pope’s condition, but ten channels? Twelve percent of my cable programming jammed with, essentially, a bunch of priests you’ve never heard of speculating about how long ol’ John’s gonna grip that thin filament of life with his gnarled claw. A life, mind you, that essentially consists of a lot of shaking and shitting yourself interrupted by incoherent babbling at crowds from a window. Yeah, I’d wanna hang onto that for all I’m worth. And don’t you just know all the priests are practically wetting themselves hoping the next dude in that pointy hat abolishes the practice of celibacy? Bet your ass. I happen to be with them on this one, with any luck it’ll cut down on the number of alter boys penetrated in confessionals. But I doubt it; call me a pessimist. So ten channels full of sexually frustrated dudes in black talking about things that may or may not happen; waiting for a man to die. Great.

What is it, a slow news day? We’re concerned with one fucking guy, no matter how important, possibly kicking the bucket? Anyone remember that there’s a goddamn war on? How many people are dying over in the desert right now? I don’t know either, but I bet it’s more than one. I wonder how many soldiers, Iraqi civilians and religious extremists would have to die all at once to break into Pope Death Watch ‘05. A thousand? Would a thousand be enough? Probably not. No, it would have to be something like three thousand normal people dying horribly real close together. Or five hundred children, but they’d have to expire real special like; maybe flogged to death and lit on fire by a mob of midgets high on Moonshine and PCP. Or maybe three really hot celebrities in a plane crash. Not normal celebrities, mind you; no, these would have to be real stars like Britney Spears, (hey, she’s pregnant, that’s a two-for-one deal!) Brad Pitt and maybe a real wildcard like Harvey Keitel. Or a celebrity could kill somebody! Imagine Paul McCartney strangling a hot dog vendor to death with a length of cat intestine! That might break the stranglehold one 84 year old has on the media today.

Closely linked to this whole fiasco with The Holy Father buying the farm is the case of Terry Schiavo. You remember her, she was that chick in a persistent vegetative state for the past fifteen years who recently “expired” (nobody dies anymore) when the courts ordered her husband had the right to remove her feeding tube despite her parents’ wish she remain alive so she could, I dunno, drool and look vapidly into a news camera. Living in an Orwellian state as we are under this administration, naturally the President and his lunatic religious cronies found this a prime opportunity to argue about something that doesn’t concern them and just generally not get anything done in Washington for a few months. The Republican-controlled Senate even went so far as to consider calling Terry the Veggie as a witness before Congress just to force the hospital to replace her feeding tube. What a staggering collection of assholes. Here’s what they and the Prez must have been thinking:

“Health care reform? Social Security hemorrhaging funds and on the brink of being privatized? The war in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden on the loose? Nah, fuck all that, we wanna stick our big fat Christian noses into a private concern that has nothing to do with us. I mean, we can’t be allowing people to go unplugging family members who have the brain activity of a sea cucumber! Those are our prime voting demographic!”

Something like that; I wasn’t in the room for the conversation so I don’t know. I’m baffled by what right-wing Christians define as “life.” They’re anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia, so they hit the market from both ends; the years in between really don’t concern them. Unless you commit a crime. Then you’ll ride the lightning even if you’re retarded; don’t mess with Texas!

So you can’t suck out a tiny collection of cells from your womb and you can’t decide to die if you want when you’re old or infirm. I think if they had their way men would be arrested for jerking off and women for having a menstrual period because both of these things are “potential babies,” and you couldn’t be declared dead until several weeks after your heart stops; don’t mind those circling vultures. They say it’s because all life is precious. Uh-huh. What world are they walking around in? I have been a human on earth almost all my life and I can tell you that most of the homo sapian flotsam mindlessly wandering around the streets and just generally being assholes to each other are not precious. Just off the top of my head I can think of no less than ten precious little darlings that could have done with a little aborting much earlier in life. Had Barbara Bush availed herself of such a service I don’t think our country would be such an increasingly non-secular economic wasteland disliked the world over. But that’s just a guess.

We’ve covered a lot of ground here today, and if you’re actually still reading this I’m impressed. You have an uncommonly high tolerance for some of the darkest thoughts I’ve ever put to paper. We should get together for dinner. But right now, if you’ll excuse me, I think The Pope has finally given up the ghost and I have to turn the TV off before it implodes and rips through space-time as every single station converges on one subject. I can hardly wait to not watch tomorrow as Christians the world over hold their breath waiting for the Phoenix to rise from the Pope’s chest or whatever the fuck happens to choose the next guy in line. I’ll be drinking heavily. Have a nice day.