Boo!

Warning: rambly off-topic post ahead. I cannot help myself. I am rattled, addled, befuddled, bamboozled. You see, you're just innocently going about your business one day and BAM! a Jesus-freak leaps from behind the bushes.
Jesus-freaks scare me. Any religious freak does, really, but especially the Jesus-variety.

There's this guy I know casually from the dog park (where else do I spend my lonesome hours while Speedy toils at the clinic. I ask you? Nowhere. I am always found at the dog park, usually swinging a bag of poop and yelling at one of the dogs.)

ANYWAY, I know this guy from there and I like him. He's got a rescued pitbull cross which says to me: compassionate, not afraid to commit to a big project. So this guy, we'll call him Michael (because most people do and it seems like a fine enough name.) Michael is nice and single. Very, very single. Like, always, always alone. The guy who eats at the restaurant alone. The guy who says "we" and means "Me and my dog." And even though he's kind of a dork, he's a sweet non-threatening harmless dork who is not at all bad-looking and has a decent job, so I always kind of think to myself whenever I see him, "do I know any straight girls for him?" (Nope.) Even Speedy once set him up with a woman from her work (a 36-year-old virgin, fer real!) and that went horribly wrong, but we think about him, sometimes, me and Speedy. We want to find him a woman.

So, this a a very long story already and I haven't even gotten to the point! But Speedy & I are having a housewarming party and well, we invited him because we thought we might meet some straight women that we could also invite (not yet-- know anyone?) but I sent out an e-vite and I noticed that he hadn't opened his invitation. So I googled his e-mail address to make sure I had gotten it right, and there it was on this guy's blog and

BAM! JESUS FREAK. GOTCHA!

Michael had (unwisely) posted his e-mail address (with other identifying information) on a blog all about Jesus love and he, himself had quoted the bible chapter and verse and offered his contact information if anyone wanted him to pray with them "and Christ himself"...and then my brain died.

Ok? Okay. I know. I know it's wrong to be so intolerant, but you know what? Even though HE certainly thinks it's a completely altruistic offer to pray for people's souls with Jesus Christ himself, when people offer to pray for other people, there are two implicit things that they are saying: 1) I am saved; 2) you are going to hell.

To which I say: Look, I want nothing to do with your God. First off, I categorically reject the idea of a god. So there's that. And then there's the fact that religion is nothing more than a powerful tool that powerful people use to frighten and oppress other people (usually at a tidy profit to the powerful god-pimping people themselves) So there's that.

And then when I say these things out loud (which I try not to) these people always come up with the implicitly threatening, "What if you're wrong?" line of attack. (Like I better just hedge my bets and sell my soul to a make believe all-powerful dead guy with a crown of thorns JUST IN CASE they happen to be right?! I better shut up and cover my head and wash my man's feet just in case?!)

Indeed, I have no absolutely proof of the total absence of god (unless you count just looking at the state of the world) But if I am wrong, then I want nothing to do with the god that does exist (again, look at the state of the world!) and a god who would damn me to hell for living a pretty friggin' decent life full of compassion and trying my best to leave the place nicer than I found it, then that god can go screw its own damn self. That's all I'm sayin'.

(Oh, but Michael, you're still okay-- you've never pushed Jesus on me. You just scared me.)

I do have friends who are "spiritual". I even have friends who go to church. That's fine, but leave me out of it. It is the prosletyzing ones I cannot stand.

Hrrm. Rant much?

Speedy's officially trying to wean me off coffee. She bought decaf!! DECAF! This is going to be interesting.