FarmCrack
Okay, goddamnit, I admit it! I love you, FarmVille!
Imagine starting the day wondering how many shovels your neighbors have sent you, how many coins and XP you’re going to gain, and worrying about getting to your crops to harvest them. It’s madness, I tell you! Like little Chinese girls pulling out their hair for Pokemon trading cards.
And I can’t keep up. My partner’s 8-year-old nephew is levels ahead of me, and no matter how much time I invest, I’m still behind.
I made fun of people for playing FarmVille, and now I’m all strung out on it. Crackheads.
What Do I Believe In?
Oh, Lawdy, Lawdy, there’s about to be some church up in here…
Religion seems to be part of the news everyday now. It is so tightly woven into our politics that many people can’t even separate the two. And for all this talk of higher powers, we seem to be growing more and more divided by hate. There’s just so much I want to cover, but I’m going to start with my own struggles with what I believe in.
Is there a god, better yet THE GOD?
I was raised in a strict Catholic household, where shame was embedded in my subconscious at a young age. Catholics feel shame for everything. We’re always asking forgiveness and are taught to believe that we’re sinners as soon as we pop out of the womb. It’s pretty sick stuff.
For the majority of my life, I have strongly believed in God. At the most basic level, I choose to believe there must be something bigger and greater than we are as humans. And I like believing in God. Yes, I’m putting blind faith into the concept that some mysterious force exists high above the clouds. But that gives me comfort.
As long as I don’t use God to justify my opinions, my actions, or to influence the way laws are governed, I feel like that’s okay. Nobody is being harmed, right? So whether I’m right or wrong, if it makes me happy to pray to God, that’s a-okay.
Over the summer, however, I have found myself being more skeptical, analytical, and negative about the whole thing. I’ve found myself losing faith. What if we are all there is? What if nothing divine or superior exists above us?
It was troubling at first. In fact, even entertaining the notion gave me the shakes. But I finally found myself brave enough to explore it, and now I think I’m actually coming back around. I do believe again. I’m finding peace in my beliefs too. They’re mine. All mine. They weren’t forced upon me by family, society, or friends. I came to my own conclusion, once again that I choose to believe in God.
So what about this dead Jew hanging from two pieces of wood?
Okay, I’ll be honest… Jesus disturbs me. How did the imagery of a dead body become an acceptable image in our society? It’s very scary if you think about it. Kids are exposed to this? Whew.
God is a concept that can be embraced by many different cultures and religions. Everyone can decide their way of worshipping God and exactly how they want to integrate God into their lives. But Jesus? How did Jesus become so important? How did we decide that Jesus was the chosen symbol of Christianity (even though Jesus was Jewish) and now he’s the ultimate human representation of God? I’m going to need a moment to take all this in…
My partner Daniel identifies as Christian and does believe in both Jesus and God. I’ve (very delicately) discussed this with him. I had questions, and I was honest about it. I asked him who exactly we were praying to, and why were they interchangeable? People always jump from God to Jesus, but aren’t they separate?
I haven’t resolved how I feel about Jesus. I don’t know if I ever will. Earlier this year, I taught classes to the children at a GLBT-based church. I thought this church would strengthen my beliefs and inspire me. But most of the time, I just found myself laughing hysterically inside as I tried to read The Bible to little kids. Was I really supposed to explain Noah’s Ark to a bunch of impressionable youngsters?
Adults there would be so passionate about their faith. They’d say, “I was once a coke-snorting, crackhead prostitute that liked receiving double anal while I gave head to homeless men. But Jesus saved me!”
Wow. Okay. That’s great, I guess.
But in all seriousness, I don’t know about my beliefs in Jesus, or how they impact my beliefs in God. I’ll continue to think about it and explore it.
What have I learned from all this?
It’s scary to question things. I’d feel much more safe and secure if I just wrapped myself in the stories that I’ve been told since I was a child. But I feel compelled to dig deeper and figure this all out on my own. It will boil down to my personal interpretation of it. We can’t ever claim any part of religion as fact. That’s where faith comes in. Faith is the act of believing in the unknown.
I do want some kind of spiritual enlightenment in my life. What it is and where my source comes from is a mystery I hope to solve.
What do you believe in?
No Autographs, Please
I was so excited to find out about this! Daniel and I were featured in an article called The 10 Most Romantic Facebook Love Stories. They found an article on my blog about how we met and decided it was sweet enough to make the cut.
A major “thank you” to the editors at The Frisky for including our story. It’s worth noting that we were the only same-sex couple profiled, so extra kudos for breaking out of the norm and not just writing about male-female relationships!
You Shouldn’t Stab People in the Eye
Hey, did you hear Nathan’s new campaign tagline? “You Shouldn’t Stab People in the Eye.”
Wow, that’s catchy. There’s an idea I can support. Who would want to stab someone in the eye? It’s just wrong, I tell ya. Wrong. Let’s vote him into office because I agree with what he stands for.
Am I just stating the obvious?
Well, no, of course we shouldn’t stab people in the eye. If we did, everyone would be walking around with a patch on, like a pirate. I don’t know about you, but I just can’t deal with the stress of matching one more accessory to my outfits. It’s enough work as it is putting all this together. Plus, I know some crazy kid would start the trend of camo patches. Sigh…
So once I’m voted into office, will I end the eye stabbing epidemic that is crippling America? Probably not. People are always going to stab others in the eye, and that’s just how it goes. But eye stabbing is illegal in all 50 states, and I can brag as much as I want during my campaign speeches about how I’m going to stop eye stabbing. That doesn’t change anything, does it?
Immigration is like eye stabbing
Okay, stick with me on this. Politicians are going nuts over immigration. It’s one of the key topics in many election ads for 2010. Meanwhile our President is fighting tooth and nail to fix real problems, like unemployment and taxes. But who cares about the poor, sick, and dying? They’re probably black anyway.
The issue that really matters in America is immigration. Do you know that there are illegal immigrants scrubbing toilets to clean up the crusty, dried urine of rich, white men all over the country? They are taking over our gardening and filling up our customer service call centers! You know, basically the jobs that nobody else wants anyway.
I think we have to stop this right now! We should pass state laws to make it okay to pull over anyone we suspect may be an illegal immigrant (translation: anyone with brown skin). We should invest all of our time, attention, news, and resources into fighting the war on Mexicans! Ahem, sorry… I mean “immigration.”
So I guess this is our new distraction, huh?
Oh, how I miss the simple days when the only thing that mattered was a new photo of Britney dropping her babies on their heads. But those days are gone. It looks like the latest and greatest political distraction is illegal immigration.
I wouldn’t mind if there was actually some intelligent planning behind it. I think we can all agree that people shouldn’t live here illegally, just as I hope we’d all agree that you shouldn’t stab people in the eye. But these politicians are going on and on in their campaigns about how they’re going to put an end to it.
Yeah, right. Can you walk on water too? Look, immigration is becoming a problem because our system is very broken. Nobody wants to sit down and actually think about how to make things better. Instead, politicians just sling mud at each other and hope voters will elect them into office. But nothing is really being improved. Instead, we’re just profiling minorities and hoping it will make Americans forget about the bigger problems our country is facing.
Worst of all, this is a topic that seems to stick. Why? Because, just like eye stabbing, it’s so incredibly simple. You just make a statement, such as, “Illegal immigration is bad,” and everyone becomes your cheerleader. Of course they are going to cheer when the concept is easy to agree with.
Welcome to the next 2 years of politics. After it’s all said and done, I just hope that something about the immigration process actually gets improved.
