Josh Almighty's Blugh List
It is a horrible, mixed-up, no-good, very bad day. It is also the best day of my life.
It seems as though I ought to feel like reconciling those two things, but I don't. Maybe I am becoming a mystic, able to live within dichotomies and paradoxes, reveling in the mysteries and enjoying the freedom that comes from ignorance at its best.
This is not the best mental environment in which to write well. A long-dead romantic dude once described poetry as something like "passion recalled in tranquility". The same could be said of prose. Unfortunately, when I am in one of my funks of awesomeness and bipolar emotiveness is jerking me hither and yon, these moments of tranquility are hard to come by. I find that at times such as this the freewheeling approach to narrative structure that I generally take when I'm tranquil and the brain-gerbils are going tickety-boo ends up resulting in nothing more than an unstructured, vomit-splotch of words. Nonetheless, I still have the urge and commitment to write and to feed this blog, so the only solution is to revert to my favorite no-brainer literary form of all: The List.
Ergo - in no apparent order...
Things I can Think of that I'd Do Right Now if Morgan Freeman was God and I was Jim Carrey and this was the Movie, "Josh Almighty":
1. I would cancel the entire NASA space program.
2. Everyone with a non-working animal in this country would be required to eat it, with Worcestershire sauce.
3. I would make all schools Art schools, with optional tracks for the sciences.
4. Racists, homophobes, bigots and all other extremists would be drug into the street and shot (or at least, given a shot of tequila and threatened by large men brandishing rolling pins).
5. Anyone who called someone else fat (in a mean way) would instantly find that their left arm had turned into a wiener dog.
6. I would require all North American Churches to set up Booths of Shame outside their front doors, where they would be forced to apologize profusely while handing out money until they didn't have anymore.
7. I would hire welders to make sculpture and playgrounds out of every SUV and sports car in America.
8. I would make it illegal to say derogatory things about Pablo Picasso, unless you had at least minored in Art in college.
9. Every Monday would be declared a Huggy Day, and every Friday would become "High-Five-Friday".
10. The Presidents of the NBA and the NFL would be required to pay obeisance to the President of FIFA.
11. I would become Chief Potentate of Television Programming, and I would cancel almost all shows - probably even the ones you like.
12. I would fwidgle the rules a bit so that anyone who tried to use sexy models to sell evil things like antiperspirant would find that in pictures or on film, the models would turn into maggots and boogers.
13. I would switch the United States to Metric, build more traffic circles, and insist that everyone buy a bidet.
14. In my munificent wisdom, I would bring the following people back to life and install them as a Ruling Pentavirate over the United States and Canada: Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Malcolm Muggeridge, Martin Luther King Jr., and my grandmother.
15. I would cause all the video game consoles in North America to turn into Banyan Trees that would grow into mighty playgrounds, complete with treehouses a la Swiss Family Robinson.
16. And finally, I would invert pretty much anything else I have missed, so that last would be first and first last, with enough popcorn for everybody.
It seems as though I ought to feel like reconciling those two things, but I don't. Maybe I am becoming a mystic, able to live within dichotomies and paradoxes, reveling in the mysteries and enjoying the freedom that comes from ignorance at its best.
This is not the best mental environment in which to write well. A long-dead romantic dude once described poetry as something like "passion recalled in tranquility". The same could be said of prose. Unfortunately, when I am in one of my funks of awesomeness and bipolar emotiveness is jerking me hither and yon, these moments of tranquility are hard to come by. I find that at times such as this the freewheeling approach to narrative structure that I generally take when I'm tranquil and the brain-gerbils are going tickety-boo ends up resulting in nothing more than an unstructured, vomit-splotch of words. Nonetheless, I still have the urge and commitment to write and to feed this blog, so the only solution is to revert to my favorite no-brainer literary form of all: The List.
Ergo - in no apparent order...
Things I can Think of that I'd Do Right Now if Morgan Freeman was God and I was Jim Carrey and this was the Movie, "Josh Almighty":
1. I would cancel the entire NASA space program.
2. Everyone with a non-working animal in this country would be required to eat it, with Worcestershire sauce.
3. I would make all schools Art schools, with optional tracks for the sciences.
4. Racists, homophobes, bigots and all other extremists would be drug into the street and shot (or at least, given a shot of tequila and threatened by large men brandishing rolling pins).
5. Anyone who called someone else fat (in a mean way) would instantly find that their left arm had turned into a wiener dog.
6. I would require all North American Churches to set up Booths of Shame outside their front doors, where they would be forced to apologize profusely while handing out money until they didn't have anymore.
7. I would hire welders to make sculpture and playgrounds out of every SUV and sports car in America.
8. I would make it illegal to say derogatory things about Pablo Picasso, unless you had at least minored in Art in college.
9. Every Monday would be declared a Huggy Day, and every Friday would become "High-Five-Friday".
10. The Presidents of the NBA and the NFL would be required to pay obeisance to the President of FIFA.
11. I would become Chief Potentate of Television Programming, and I would cancel almost all shows - probably even the ones you like.
12. I would fwidgle the rules a bit so that anyone who tried to use sexy models to sell evil things like antiperspirant would find that in pictures or on film, the models would turn into maggots and boogers.
13. I would switch the United States to Metric, build more traffic circles, and insist that everyone buy a bidet.
14. In my munificent wisdom, I would bring the following people back to life and install them as a Ruling Pentavirate over the United States and Canada: Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Malcolm Muggeridge, Martin Luther King Jr., and my grandmother.
15. I would cause all the video game consoles in North America to turn into Banyan Trees that would grow into mighty playgrounds, complete with treehouses a la Swiss Family Robinson.
16. And finally, I would invert pretty much anything else I have missed, so that last would be first and first last, with enough popcorn for everybody.
If you run for president, I will vote for you.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading a good portion of your blog posts tonight, and I wanted to tell you that you've made me rethink a lot of things.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to sign up for an art class next semester. This is my first semester at college, and I only took hard sciences because I thought art was a worthless pursuit, and would have little place in our society by the time I graduated. I'm going to take writing classes as well, because I love writing, and I want to write, but because I thought I had to make every class count for as much as possible, I dropped it, giving the rationalization that it was silly and useless.
I don't agree with you on religion/abortion, but I feel like I can now respect someone on the opposite end of the spectrum because I've seen the thought you've put into this, and given what you believe, it all works.
I don't really understand how you can rationalize being a Christian, but you're the only teacher at CDS who I could stomach from a faith perspective. A lot of your fellow teachers try to be 'hip' or 'edgy' or whatever with their faith, and 'blend in with the world,' but that comes off as so fake, and it made me want to puke. I just want people to be real and honest with me; if people just cut the BS and were honest about Christianity, rather than making it out to be about apologist tactics and desperate rationalizations, I'd feel a lot less negative about the subject.
I was at CDS for 4 years, and I remember when you first came. Tonight I'm disappointed I never took any of your classes. Thanks for everything.
Austin, I did run for President. Last year. On youtube. My campaign was a dismal failure. America was not ready.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - wow.
I had a poo-type day yesterday, and your comment this morning cheered me up immensely. I think maybe the need for love manifests also as a need for significance, and I absolutely LOVE feeling that I have made a difference. It's a little scary to think I may have helped inspire someone to take a different course in life, but there are less terrible things than having the courage to do what you really want to do. I applaud you.
As to my fellow teachers, I can only say that I tend to feel that Christianity (as it has been perverted in our place and time) tends to engender a culture of fear, and that if some of them are in fact being fake (and I'd be really hesitant to apply that to anyone but myself), then it seems really likely that they are doing it because they are scared.
I understand your frustration - it's really difficult for someone like me, attempting to live and work in this bizarro culture - but I do think that the best possible response to people who are living in fear is pity. They're missing out on being alive, and that is tragic.
It does anger me when people who are afraid try to pass on that fear to others. But you're free of that, now, so for what it's worth I think it's a good idea to forgive them and move on. Don't let them have any power over you as you live forward in your life.
Enjoy the adventure.