This last time when I was up visiting my folks we were discussing doing favors and having expectations of appreciation afterwards. My mom was telling me how one of the issues she deals with is having expectations after she does something nice for someone, and how this isn’t what a true favor is. Doing something for someone shouldn’t have any expectations, and this is something she wants to improve on with herself.
I agreed fully, even elaborating that it’s not even a favor or a gift once you’re expecting something in return. She agreed, of course. I have to admit now that I was baiting my mother. I elaborated a few more times saying that the truly gracious act is one that even refuses repayment, or blushes at thankyou’s. In fact, the most gracious act is doing a favor anonymously so that you’re not given any sort of credit at all. It’s something done for the soul purpose of gift giving, and nothing else. That’s the true heroic act.
Then of course, after I got my mother to agree with me several more times I pushed her face first into my trap explaining how that was for me a flaw with God. God expects a great deal for the gift he gave us. The gift He’s taking full credit for giving to us. In return for His present to us He has a long long list of payments he expects in return. He expects us to believe far out stories that defy all logic. It’s a requirement! If I were the Son of God that’d be the last thing I’d expect. I’d see the lies and misleadings people had to deal with on a daily basis. The last thing I’d expect from them is their absolute belief in what I say is true. In fact, I would completely understand where people were coming from. I would expect them to doubt and to question, and be critical of all the things I told them. Only an immature person would be hurt by doubt.
Kicking her while she was down, I told her that this is another bad lesson that Christianity teaches. It clearly justifies having tremendous expectations after you do a favor for somebody. In fact, it even justifies expecting absolute devotion and worship for the “favors” you give. It certainly isn’t being an example of grace or mercy. It isn’t a favor at all.
My mom had no response for this. I feel a little bad when I do these sorts of things to my mom, but later she assures me that I shouldn’t because she appreciates where I’m coming from, and it shows her how much thought I’ve given my beliefs. When it comes to religion and her beliefs my mother is a very strong woman. I respect her for this.
I was in rare form last night. I took on a whole team of Christians and sent them packing. It was a sight to behold to say the least.
Normal Bob Smith’s Crucified Satan tattoos
When I arrived at Union they had their booths already set up on both sides of the park. I sat down directly in front of the one on the west side of Union Sq South, and immediately one of them in their yellow smocks came up to me and asked if I would like one of their pamphlets. I replied “No thank you. I don’t believe in God.”
They love that answer a lot.
And that began what was probably a 40 minute discussion with this girl. Then her coworker friend came over, both of these girls were from Alabama and probably 19 years old or so. And her friend, let’s call her Amy (because I forgot her name), was total cult member status. Trained with the best of ’em to repeat phrases like “God made it that way,” and “I don’t believe in fantasies. I believe in Jesus!” She even, at one point said, during a discussion of a good father going to hell, and a murderer going to heaven, that this was a beautiful thing!
Anyhow, this was all as usual. No new exciting arguments from their side.
“He’s not gonna change his mind. Did you see the tattoos on his arms? You’re both wasting your time trying to convince each other.”
One interesting thing that happened was when this blond lady sitting to my right spoke up and said, sort of agitated “Why are you guys bothering to discuss this? Neither of you are going to change your minds? Why don’t you just believe what you want to believe, and you girls believe what you want, and be done with it?” All this said in a tone that you could tell she was irritated having to listen to what we were saying.
The girls, of course responded with, “Because I want him to go to heaven.”
The lady replied, “He’s not gonna change his mind. Did you see the tattoos on his arms? You’re both wasting your time trying to convince each other.”
I said to her, “I’m arguing this because that’s what we should be doing. Discussing differences of opinions is what’s going to save the human race. Not shutting up. Not war, or violence, or flying planes into buildings, but discussion. That’s what we all should be doing. Not believing whatever we want to believe, and remaining ignorant of each other. That gets us nowhere.”
That lady hung around and listened after I said that, and the girls were stunned. She even jumped in later and asked why God didn’t make it so good deeds get us into heaven. I made her care.
Their cult-stare showed extra bright when I presented them with the “Heaven is Hell” question. They couldn’t respond with anything other than “That’s why we’re out here tell people about Jesus.”
But they could never look the question dead in the eyes and respond. No matter how I spelled it out.
“You’re going to heaven, right?”
“Yes!” They gleefully responded.
“And there are people in hell, right?”
“Yes.” Less gleeful.
“How can you enjoy any kind of paradise while your brothers and sisters from earth suffer and burn forever?”
They couldn’t even hear the question. They were stunned. I stated, “All I want you to say to me is ‘Yes, I can enjoy a heaven while others burn forever in hell’ But you can not say it. Why?”
Of course they couldn’t respond.
Then when they said they wanted to pray for me, I said, “Please don’t. When people pray for me, it’s like wishing me to be in that horrible place you call heaven. Praying is you wanting to separate loved ones from each other. I don’t know how anyone could ever want that.” They were paralyzed. Utterly speechless. And I was elated! I’d just discovered what to say when someone wants to pray for me! Something that paints their prayer in an unmerciful, vomit-colored light!
And when these girls couldn’t answer my questions anymore, I said “I wish you could get someone over there to answer my questions for me.” And boy, they jumped on that invite to get away from me. They ran back to their booth and told on me.
They sent over this big, giant, fat, black man who stood above me (mind you I remained seated on the steps of Union this entire time), and said, “Hello brother. My friends told me that you needed some questions answered?”
And his response to the “Heaven is Hell question” was? “When we get to Heaven we no longer worry about those things. God said that in Heaven we will be given a new body and a new mind. We will not have the same feelings we had here on Earth.”
“We won’t remember our loved ones?” I asked.
“No, I’m not saying that. We’ll remember them…”
“We just won’t love them anymore? Like we did here on earth?”
“No. I didn’t say that. We just have to move on. We have to get on with our lives.” He was getting angry with me.
“Heaven sounds horrible. I don’t know why anyone would want to go there. We seriously forget about all of them?”
“No, now if you refuse to believe what I’m telling you then you won’t go there!”
“I don’t want to go there! Being on a throne in heaven while my brother burns in hell forever? It sounds like a nightmare!”
He too wanted to pray for me, and I said that I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to go to this horrible place he called heaven. After a while of this he got quite frustrated with me and stomped away saying things like “I guess you won’t get to go to heaven then!”
“Why would I want to go there?” I replied. “I love people.” I was honestly saddened by their heartlessness with the matter. And let me say, I was not speaking to them sarcastically, but as openly and curious as possible while he was totally trying to intimidate me, standing over me as I sat on my ass on those steps. I rather enjoyed it. I had no fear at all. And when someone is doing their biggest display to intimidate someone 5 feet below them, and it still doesn’t work, it really makes them look really bad.
So I was left alone for a little while longer. Then this guy from Faith4Living.com came up to me (very much the kindly Ned Flanders type), and greeted me, “Hello. A friend of mine, Amy, was crying over there, and she told me she wanted me to come over here and pray for you.”
We shook hands, and I said, “I’m sorry to hear she’s so upset. I just told her that I didn’t want her to pray for me because to me that’s basically wishing me to go to heaven. And the heaven she told me about sounded like a horrible place to be.”
This all took the usual turns that I’ve told before, but this guy, who seemed so calm in greeting, got the most agitated! His face was turning red, veins popping out all over his neck and face, and he was shaking saying some of the most outrageous things! Like, when presented with questions about Noah’s Ark, said that every species of animal lived there on that continent at the time. They didn’t have to travel across oceans to get to the ark.
“Kangaroos were in Iraq?!?!” I retorted.
And he tried to explain how some species of every animal was there on that side of the world, yet he also argued angrily against evolution with me too! It was crazy crazy.
He got so frustrated with me that he finally had to end it. I know he’s going to email me. We exchanged emails addresses, and he was dying to show me some intro to some book where the guy who invented evolution said that there was no proof for it.
So I made Amy cry. And as they were leaving, Amy, looking sad but not crying, waved to me. I looked the same waving back to her.
Well, today it happened. Today the Scenesters exacted their revenge on me. No kidding. And I was caught off guard. It was an ugly display. Here’s what happened.
iPod street ads trying to appeal to Scenesters in 2006. Nick Purdue claimed to be the model.
I was sitting at Union Square this evening, just hanging out as usual, and in front of me walks one of the Scenesters. He’s lookin’ at me all funny, and I’m lookin’ at him. Then, OUT OF NOWHERE, he whips out a camera and puts it in front of his face and takes a picture of me! I only had time to grin and flip him the bird, but then he walked by me and took another picture of me! Just out of nowhere! And I smiled and flipped the bird to that one too.
I’m terrified to even imagine what sort of web page they’re all scheming to put together with these coupla pics of me sitting at Union Square givin’ the finger. It’s the not-knowing that fucks with your mind. It’s the same method the Evil-doers use. ie: Terrorism. It’s no different. They’re toying with me. Making me sweat. Who knows, maybe they took a picture of me from behind as well? How can I be sure? I can’t! They could have a hundred pictures of me from behind sitting on the steps at Union, and I have no way to tell if I’m right or wrong.
I have to apologize to my fans! Now you are left with the dilemma: Do you continue to be my fans and suffer through this humiliation I’m sure they have planned for my pictures, or do you just throw away years of dedication and hide from my soon-to-be humiliated self, never to mention that you even were aware that I existed, ever! Jesus or Judas?
I mean, what if they take that picture, write the word “FAGGOT” on it, and make an arrow pointing to me, and post that on the internet?? Or what if they write a whole thing about what a douchebag I am and how I sit at Union and give the finger all the time and am bald, or something like that??? But I’ll tell you, that kid who took the picture strode away like he’d just gotten a picture of me with a booger on my face or some…. OH.. MY.. GOD! Is that it??!? Did I have a booger on my face?!? Jesus Christ! If that’s what he got a picture of I don’t know what I’ll do!! !
I’m sorry, people! I’m sorry! I didn’t know I was this vulnerable to persecution! I’ve never seen before so up close how I am in fact an Amazing Stranger myself!!! It’s over. The site is finished. I am soon to have a long overdue lesson dealt to me. Forgive me. Forgive… me… for.. being.. human…
Today I did it! Just now, I got past the 3rd elevator level on Donkey Kong!!! This is the greatest fucking day of my entire life!!!!! And whereas before my high score was only 95,000 something, today, JUST NOW, I got 125,000!!!!!! I am the all-time highest scoring champion of the universe on Donkey Kong who got to the FOURTH elevator level!!!!!! All you gotta do is just time it out! You gotta wait and be patient with those springy things and count them out, wait for the ones that are too close to pass, then the second the following one is going over your head you just hafta RUN YOUR FUCKING BALLS OFF, climb up the ladder and WAMMO! You got it!!! And not only that but I got to that level with all 4 of my lives and I didn’t even have to waste one on it! I got through the 3rd elevator level on the first try!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unbelievable. I’m only now just starting to come down off the high. Calm down. Okay. I’m better now.
What I actually wanted to talk about in this blog was to explain how I do actually put thought into whose Myspace friendships I approve and which ones I delete, and which ones I hold onto for deciding. First of all, I delete any requests that look like advertisements. If it’s just a band requesting to be my friend, and I’ve never heard of them then they get deleted. If however, the request is accompanied by a message and it appears that they actually care about what’s goin’ on with me and the site then I will approve it. I presently have, like ten or so requests on hold because I cannot tell whether they know what I’m doing or are just looking to promote their business.
By the way, I approve ANY Christian who wants to be my friend. I had Myspace Michael as a friend for a couple weeks, but he couldn’t take it anymore and fled. Myspace Hope, Myspace Sarah and Myspace Vincenzo all ended up blocking me so I didn’t even try to request their friendships. But if you’re a Christian, you automatically get approved.
Obviously I do not approve girls who are just promoting their quest to get into porn, BUT I have been having fun with those friend requests from Web Cam girls with impostor Myspace accounts. You know the ones, they have only one or two pics, generic profile info and links to web cams and porn sites. Here’s what I’ve been doing with those requests. I accept the friendship request, then I go through and write the most horrific comments under their pictures and comments. The last one I told that she was so hot that I was spraying diarrhea all over my room, and reflected on how one forgets the power behind diarrhea until you see it push over a television.
Then once I’ve riddled the site with comments I delete them as a friend and the comments stay! It’s great. Especially seeing your revolting depictions among other guys stupid drooling comments over a picture scanned out of a swimsuit catalog magazine.
So I’m not just approving anybody, and it matters to me that you care.
Oh yeah, and having sex with me gets automatic approval as well (For the guys, I’ll accept handjobs while you talk dirty in a girl voice).
This last time when I was up visiting my folks we were discussing doing favors and having expectations of appreciation afterwards. My mom was telling me how one of the issues she deals with is having expectations after she does something nice for someone, and how this isn’t what a true favor is. Doing something for someone shouldn’t have any expectations, and this is something she wants to improve on with herself.
