Hey Religious Extremists, Why is Your god Such a Wimp? (or, A Male's Guide to the Impending Lesbian Apocalypse)

I've never understood the common usage of the word macho.

To be clear, I'm referring to the dictionary definition (ultimate masculinity) and not the informal one popularized by The Village People (ultimate gayness.) The word macho is intended to define the pinnacle of tough, but it ends up representing supreme insecurity.

Understanding that contradiction, it's clear that extreme religion is precisely macho. Because I live west of the Prime Meridian, extremist Muslim behavior is more easily noticed, since Islamic tradition isn't intertwined with our culture and considered a part of just how things are. Examples of Islamic macho/insecurity may be more obvious to us Westerners, but anyone who opens their mind even slightly will notice there is little if any difference among Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the extreme.

At their distant ends, all three focus their restrictions on women. When it comes to the religious fringe, it's all dudes all the time. Yet these are the same people who are also violently homophobic.

Another paradox, yes, and it gets worse. Even the gods of extremism reflect the bi-polar nature of macho. A classic example is when the Taliban claimed they had to destroy Buddhist statues in Afghanistan because the statues were just too much for the mighty Allah to gaze upon. (Link.)

Now I'm just a mortal, but I'm proud of the fact that I'm secure enough not to demand my friends blow up anyone who doesn't worship me. Hey, that's their loss!

So here's my question for religious extremists: If your god is such a badass, why does he need mortals like you to fight his battles? Why is your god scared of statues? Or cartoons? Or same-sex love and marriage? Or women thinking, saying and doing what they want?

Silly extremists! Either your faith in your god's power is lacking or your god is a total wimp.

Actually, we all know the real reason for macho's split-personality, why men (and male-like gods) talk tough but act fragile. I'll break the rules and say it out loud: Because females have all the power. They can do anything a male can except make sperm.

That's not to say I would complain if the world was taken over by women and we men were used simply for sperm harvesting. To the more sultry and flexible of our female conquerors, I say harvest away! Sadly, with advances in reproductive technology, even sperm isn't necessary.

A lot of reports and studies appear to support the idea that extremism is on the rise. How much is being fueled by insecure men, aware of their accelerating (or already present) obsolescence? I swear it's only a matter of time before lesbians take over. Name me a single lesbian that isn't damn good at what she does. You can't do it! That's right, men. We are biologically useless! Accept it! Or make a fool of yourself by acting macho.

One who works against the efforts of power-hungry people of their same "race" are often referred to as race traitors. So, being a male who admits to male pointlessness, does that make me a sex traitor?

I hope so, because frankly, I'm down with that. Oh wait, I thought you said trader. Dang it.

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Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.

Your Resolution for the New Decade

New Year's Resolutions often follow three steps. A person comes up with a goal. They assign themselves that goal. The goal is adhered to for the coming year or (more likely) dropped before the year ends.

I'd like to rework the whole thing. I'll design a goal and have others help me, and by others I mean all of humanity. Lastly, instead of for the coming year, our challenge will span the entire coming decade.

So it brings me great pleasure to announce that as we transition from the roaring zeroes (200x) to the swingin' ones (201x) I will be assigning all of humanity a new decade's resolution.

All right, already! If you've read this far, you're okay with my being pompous (I prefer the term BOLD) enough to give a decade long homework assignment to all of humanity. You're getting sick of the pointless verbosity (What is this? A James Joyce novel?) and just want to know what the hell the resolution actually is so you can get busy working on it, or get busy laughing at me. Okay. Here it comes.

Adapt.

That's it? One word? You could have been reading World Net Daily's tabloidian eVomit and I give you one stinkin' word? Well, packed into that one word is a lot of suggestion, so I'll elaborate.

Here's what I want to happen: I want humanity to stop approaching the inevitable changes, surprises and revelations of life with fear, hatred and anger. Instead, I want everyone to approach those events with curiosity, enthusiasm and love. Can a brotha get a witness for the Serenity prayer?

Yes, "adapt" is rather general and I'm not a conservative teabagger, which means my ideas don't reside solely in a world of abstract labels, oblivious to what they mean in the real world. So I'll get specific about two of the many items that led me to suggest this assignment. Our assignment. I refer to The Kindle and The Gays.


The Kindle

The most obvious source of scary change today is technology. Advancements in gadgetry and medical tech come faster and faster. Before Windows has fully slowed down your computer, a new version is available to slow it down in cool and innovative ways.

As a writer, the recent 'thing I could not change' (as the Serenity prayer would say) was the advent of eReaders and eBooks. I'm often asked, 'Hey writer stud, are you scared about the impact that eBooks will have on writing?'

I was at first, until I realized that someone still needs to write the books, whether they are delivered on paper or on a screen. In fact, a strong argument can be made that eReaders are good for authors. They provide wireless on-demand bookstores, which means fewer barriers between hearing about a cool new writer (like this guy) and having an opportunity to buy his or her work.

Sure, there will be problems with piracy, and that could render the standard business model of book publishing (sell zillions of copies) obsolete, but the technology is not going away. The publishing business will have to come up with another structure for supporting itself. In a word, adapt.

Xbox Live had an interesting solution to the piracy problem: banning the systems on which it detected pirated software. (Story here.) Perhaps Amazon could imitate that for The Kindle. Upon detection of a pirated book, it shuts down your Kindle, or auto-downloads romance novels until it fills up. That'll learn ya! So yes, the details need to be hashed out, but the bottom line is, the technology is here, it's near, get used to it. Speaking of...


The Gays

What's another phenomenon of recent human history that reminds us our species needs better adaptive skills? The stampede of gays coming out of the closet, followed by the counter-stampede of ignorami who want to shove them back in.

Apparently what consenting adults do behind closed doors is of utmost concern to some. Of them I ask, 'Can you find something better to do than worry about who is getting naked with whom?'

It's entirely probable (almost certain) that over the last week, some people living near to us all have had a different sex partner every night, penetrated every orifice on their person with every appliance they own, and performed all kinds of other sexual stunts with other consenting adult(s) of the same or different sex. Somehow, this has failed to open up a fiery chasm beneath our feet.

Some people act as if gays 'decided' to be gay with the sole purpose of throwing a wrench into several 2,000-plus-years-old mythologies. Wrong! What happened was those worldviews were revealed as inaccurate. It's nothing to get upset about. Try adapting.


The Conclusion

There are many other things to which our New Decade's Resolution applies. For example, religion totally needs a makeover. That shit has jumped the shark more than Tiger Woods has jumped hotties.

So the world isn't like you thought it was. All of reality hasn't bent to your every assumption. The way you envisioned the world is off from the way the world really is. There's no need for alarm, hatred, or anger. It's a cause for celebration. It means you're learning.

So that's what I mean when I say adapt. Accept that your worldview is incomplete and have the right attitude when you find another gap. Just don't automatically reach for the hate button, okay?

I've got a bottle of champagne on ice for New Year's Eve 2019. We'll see how we did then. Happy New Decade!

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Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.

Bruno ist maschterpeizen du satiren! (Translated from German: Bruno is a masterpiece of satire!)

Saw Bruno this weekend. Loved it for many reasons. Primarily because it was outrageous. I also like the blend of scripted scenes and absurd interviews. You can never quite tell what's real and what's staged. Like Fox News.

I recently went on a liberal-leaning website (The Huffington Post) and found myself laughing at all the comments complaining about how they feel Bruno reinforces gay stereotypes. They were in fact, reinforcing the stereotype that liberals are a bunch of humorless analysts who can't cease promoting their agenda for even one second, even to laugh at an obvious over-the-top parody from someone clearly on their side.

The fact is that Bruno is a masterpiece of satire. All topics are fair game, but more than homophobia, the movie hits the phenomenon of celebrity: its insincerity, the self-destructive (and destructive to others) lust for it, its obliviousness to hypocrisy.

Cohen's satire smokes The Onion's groin-kick obviousness or The Simpson's spoon-feeding subversion. Why? Because Bruno shows by example. Witness Paula Abdul live as she talks about human dignity while sitting on the back of a Mexican. Note the consultants advising Bruno on the hottest charity to get into so as to become famous-er. Feel your jaw drop as you watch show-biz parents willing to pimp their children out at any cost.

This behind-the-scenes look at the Fame Industry is eye-opening enough to be almost documentary-worthy.

With every work of satire comes complaints that boiled to their essence are concerns that people are going to take the work seriously and incorporate it into their world-view. The role of knee-jerk is currently being played by GLAAD, who despite their admirable agenda, are pushing the complaint that Bruno reinforces gay stereotypes.

So surely GLAAD must be violently opposed to the Bravo network, where every other show features gay people as fashion-designers, interior-designers or hair-designers. No such luck. A quick (and admittedly lazy) search on their site finds an essay titled Where We Are on TV: 2007 - 2008 that calls Bravo "The gold standard of LGBT representation on reality shows." (Link.)

But I'm not here to pick an internet brawl with an organization I mostly admire. I'm here to say that Bruno is a great film, funny and clever and ridiculous all at once. It even takes a few shots at homophobia, as Bruno visits gay-converters, taunts the cruel "God Hates Fags" people, and pulls the ultimate prank on a proudly straight crowd expecting a cage fight.

The real target of Bruno was fame and those who reach for it.

Now for some humility. The Huffington Post's Guide to Blogging instructs bloggers to "write on top of the news." That is, in order to get more site hits, you should hitch your blog to a rising news story, which I just did. So, despite my critiques, I suppose I'm not immune from fame-lust either. Bruno was right!

Ach mein suchen butockenkopf! (Translated from the German: I'm such a butt head!)

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.

How many times do you have to have gay sex before you're officially gay? (or, Change isn't always good, but that's no reason to be a judgmental jerk)

There are just way too many clichés designed to discourage experimentation with your life, your identity and your habits.

When you're young, whatever you feel like doing is not really what you feel like doing. It's described by others as just a phase. When you're older, anytime you try something new, it's a trend. Then you're going through teenage rebellion. Then you're finding yourself. When you're older still, you're not trying to enjoy life's infinite variety, you're going through a mid-life crisis.

Can't someone just do something new because they feel like it and not have it categorized like a mental illness? Isn't it okay if something is a passing phase, why are the above clichés packed with such scornful judgment?

I mean really, can't a dude wear a dress once in a while just to try it? Does that make him a transvestite? Surely there must be a limit on how many times you can have gay sex and still not be officially gay. Please say it's more than ten times so I don't have to change my Facebook profile… to Republican.

Where is the line between a passing phase and your identity? Isn't any experimentation a part of your identity anyway?

I've never understood the mocking of our past selves for harmless preferences or even noble goals. How many times have you experienced some variant of this conversation: Oh my gosh, did we really used to X? (Where X equals any previous activity now discarded: wear legwarmers, listen to [a band fallen from fame], use gallons of hairspray, aspire to be vegan, try to live off the land, etc.)

Why is a phase sometimes viewed with such reverent awe (see Piccasso's Blue Period) and other times viewed with such mocking disdain (see glam metal)?

One of the rare clichés I know of that supports change is the dogmatic, and therefore wrong statement, "All change is good." That one is best debunked visually, as seen below.

[Cartoon first published in QECE #3 page 3.]

This rant got started because I wanted to kick off my new website logo and blog name with an explanation, but there's not much to say except that I want to have more fun. I didn't like the old stuffy design, and I wanted a more snazzy title. I wanted the posts to be shorter and to gravitate away from gravitas and drift toward more fun.

Then I ditched the idea of posting about the rebranding (as it's called in the dot biz) because the last thing the world needs is a blog entry talking about the blog itself. Whoops.

So, is calling my blog The Semi-True Adventures of Lar just a passing phase? Almost certainly. Is it part of who I am? Almost definitely.

Clichés usually annoy me, because they're levers pulled by the reflexive and lazy mind, but there are some I can live with, like this: Variety is the spice of life, suckas.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.