March Madness

I bet you thought this blog was going to be about basketball right? Nope. But now that I have your attention...

I want to talk about something else that happens in March and involves baskets: Easter. Even though I was raised by the unholy union of a Pagan and a very devout Atheist I love Easter. This is only contradictory if you are one of those people that are unaware that pretty much every Christian holiday is superimposed right smack on top of the older Pagan ones. So basically if you are a Republican congressman from a state that was formerly part of the Confederacy, but otherwise it makes total sense. Easter is jolly good fun, especially if you're not a Christian, because Christians have to bother with all that ecclesiastical business that is incomprehensible to the rest of us. Such as Easter week:

Manic Monday
Shrove Tuesday
Ash Wednesday
Thirsty Thursday
Good Friday
Super Saturday
and....
Easter Sunday.

Or something like that.

I recently saw a contentious debate on a religious tolerance forum the other day where folks were arguing that Easter is not a Pagan holiday, because the historical evidence was rather thin about Eostre, an alleged Anglo Saxon Goddess of Spring whence the holiday got its name. Apparently the only reference to Her in historic documents was by St. Bede, an English monk known for the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and considered to be the Father of English History. So he probably didn't know what he was talking about. I'm far from a Biblical scholar but I'm pretty sure that if during one of our school mandated annual viewings of the seminal 1961 classic King of Kings the rock on the tomb of Jesus rolled away and a bunch of rabbits and eggs came bouncing out I would have remembered.

Also, Jesus was a cracker, obviously

 Easter is on the first Sunday after the Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox. That couldn't sound any more Pagan if you had Bjork ululate it from the top of a volcano clad only in sheepskin and a crown of mistletoe.

Many Christians have tried to eradicate all vestiges of Paganism from their practice or revise history to pretend that there were no religions in Europe prior to the Apostles spreading the probably mistranslated word of Christ to the fur clad barbarians. This is like cutting all the pictures of your husband's old flame out of his high school yearbook. It's petty and just a tad whacko because all structures, either physical or philosophical are built on the bones of what came before, including and especially Christianity. Seriously, Christianity is a sequel to Judaism. It's like the Highlander II of religions, except that Jesus was a really nice person who made the religion friendlier and more accessible than the Old Testament, whereas Highlander II just made you want to cut your own head off.

The story of the dying God echoes through all the religions because that narrative is part of our Collective Unconscious: Tammuz, Osiris, Orpheus, Adonis, Elvis. We need to believe that heroes that are killed are reborn stronger. It's Humanity's ancient way of convincing itself that it's ok to cut down the wheat at harvest time because it will come back in the Spring. And when Spring does return, we celebrate. Let's not be stingy with this joy. The flowers are opening, the birds are singing and dark time is over. Let the God rise from the lettuce patch, roll away the stone, open the gates of Graceland, whatever. There is sunshine enough for all of us.

Diet Catholic

At the risk of seriously dating this particular post I've got to comment on something as we wait for the Papal Smoke to issue forth from the Vatican Chimney like the Holy Ghost took a big ole bong hit. It's funny watching the 24 hour news channels armchair quarterbacking this whole process like it has any relevance at all. The camera pans out over a ginormous crowd of people in the big courtyard of the most pimpin' house on Earth and it's mystifying what they're all doing out there. I mean, there are more than a few nuns in the crowd and I can see why it's such a big deal to them. This guy is basically their new fake boyfriend, whoever he his.

"He looked right at me!"

I had a guest last night in the restaurant remark, "Black smoke today girl! No decision yet!" and I struggled momentarily to compose myself and respond accordingly. Was that a joke? Uhhhh....

But I digress. The latest in a string of absurdities is an article linked here about Catholics wanting their new pope to be more liberal. 

• 71 per cent of Canadians (55 per cent of Americans) want to allow priests to marry
• 62 per cent Canadian (52 per cent of Americans) want women to be ordained
• 57 per cent of Canadians (43 per cent of Americans) want to allow birth control

Now I'm no expert but I think that maybe these guys are misunderstanding how the Catholic Church works. It's not a democracy like California. The Pope says to build the Death Star and they build it, they don't get a vote on it or anything. If they don't build it he puts the squeeze on the Cardinals and they come on board and figure out who's responsible for the delay and use the Force to crush this person's trachea while the other priests look on in mute, subdued horror.

...Or something like that. The point is that the Pope is the king of the church. He makes the rules and the Catholics follow them. No matter how big a pain in the ass. Do you Catholics find that system old fashioned? Yes of course you do, because it is. So is making burnt offerings in a temple and eating the blood and flesh of a dead god. The only thing I can think of that might be more old fashioned is cutting out people's hearts on the top of your pyramid temple and throwing the bloody things down the steps into a pit in the bottom of which lives the Rabbit god that eats the moon.

Western Catholics are gradually ignoring more of the edicts of their Pontiff for convenience. Not that there's anything wrong with that- it's common sense that if you can't afford to feed 143 kids that you should not have 143 kids. But I'm not sure that giving up Twizzlers for Lent is really cutting it.

The idea that Catholics want their church to modernise to the level of current society is indicative of just how much our world has changed in the couple of thousand years since they started. It used to be that the  social standard originated in Rome and the Faithful (and everyone else that didn't want to get burned as a witch) adjusted their lifestyles accordingly. How quaint to think that Catholics now want this reversed. The people whose soldiers still look like this:

"Oh Alphonse, you dapper little minx!"

There is a name for a Catholic church that allows priests to marry and doesn't require the members to be beholden to the whims of an old man in a castle: I believe they're called Episcopalians.

I Have Bigger Issues To Bitch About

So it is with some embarrassment that I realise it's been six months since my last post. While my jet set lifestyle does take up a great deal of my time the real reason for my silence is that since I got a new job at a restaurant that I love I'm no longer filled to the brim with restaurant induced rage that boils over and congeals into blogs. So am I ready to throw in the towel and stop writing about the bottomless well of human stupidity? Shit no, dear readers. I'm widening the lens of my analysis.

No, more bigger

To Serve Man is heretofore going to be a place to shoot the shit about mankind's silliness on a much larger scale: a COSMIC scale. I think it's time we started talking about how silly religion is. I'm not going to apologise for this. Nobody that is religious has ever apologised to me or as far as I know to anybody else for the weird stuff they believe or the silly things they do because of it. I have never knocked on anyone's door and given them a pamphlet telling them that they are most definitely NOT going to Hell and that Jesus does nott give a crap about them because he has been dead for 2000 years.

Everybody on this planet has to deal with religion and  the consequences of silly beliefs every single day so To Serve Man is now officially about the biggest issue there is.

The Man in the Sky

Kids Eat Free nights bring out a special kind of customer: the kind that have children in litters. This most recent Kids Eat Free night I saw something that I can't seem to stop thinking about, a scene that was wrong on several subtly textured layers. While taking food to somebody's table I saw a woman with two daughters working on their homework. Nothing unusual there, kids bring schoolwork in all the time. I am nosey so I like to read the titles of books people are reading at the tables. It has never failed to unimpress me.

The title of the textbook these little girls were working out of was God's Gift of Language. I'm going to repeat that: God's Gift of Language. It is exactly what you think: a homeschool English and grammar textbook. For some reason. Oh right, because some factions of Christians in America have become so insular and fanatical that not only is Science offensive to them but also English. What next? God's Gift of Mathematics? Because we all know that inches are based on the Pagan system of Dodecagonism and that the cubit is the only God approved unit of measurement.

It's getting weird people.

Just to be sure that God's Gift of Language is really what it appears to be I Googled it and found a shopping website for Christian homeschool textbooks. It is exactly that: a 'Christ centered' English textbook. Apparently, the people who bought it are pleased; there are three reviews from satisfied customers. All three reviews contain spelling and grammatical errors. True story.


I'm not a theologian or anything but I do like a good silly myth here and there which may amount to the same thing, but- am I crazy or isn't there an Old Testament story about a time when ALL PEOPLE SPOKE THE SAME LANGUAGE and The Man in the Sky punished them for being too ambitious by scattering them all over the place and making them all speak different languages?? As a punishment??

Yes. I just Googled it at christianity.about.com and they confirmed this. I cut and pasted this directly from the website:

God came to see their city and the tower they were building. He perceived their intentions, and in His infinite wisdom, He knew this "stairway to heaven" would only lead the people away from God. He noted the powerful force within their unity of purpose. As a result, God confused their language, causing them to speak different languages so they would not understand each other. By doing this, God thwarted their plans. He also scattered the people of the city all over the face of the earth.

"THOU SHALT NOT BUILD A STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN!  I GIVE YOU...SMOKE ON THE WATER!!"

Apparently god is not a Led Zeppelin fan.

So which part of this is God's Gift? I mean, I can only assume that the zealots who published God's Gift of Language are well aware of this story. By my interpretation of this, our language is actually a punitive measure according to SCRIPTURE of that same religion, the one that is so offended by scientific inquiry and the Theory of Evolution, which is the essential idea behind all Biology. 

What is the point of teaching your children to read at all when you are also teaching them to believe in a jealous and vengeful old man that curses and afflicts babies and strikes down entire civilisations for 'pridefulness'? If Science is blasphemy, and apparently Engineering and any other human endeavour that shows a 'unity of purpose' is going to get you smote (or is it 'smited'?) then what career can a good Christian pursue?

Sheep farming. And you don't need to know how to read to do that.

So...don't bother teaching your daughter to read, Christian lady. It will only make her uppity and most likely question her husband's authority and you know what that leads to: stoning. 
Don't set your little girl up for a stoning. 

Charlie's In The Trees!

I have a lovely co worker who is originally from Korea. Last night I ran some food to a table of his, a white haired couple in their 60's and this is what transpired:

I place a burger on the table. White haired man peers at the plate and frowns. And then he says

"That GOOK messed up my food!"

That actually happened. I took a quick step back so I wouldn't get any ignorance on me. I blink three times and say

"Excuse me??"

I must not have heard that right. He repeats it.

"That GOOK messed up my food."

I thought all those people died off. No such luck, there are still stragglers hanging on, like the last dodos wandering around the island. Who knew?

So I explain to him that:

 

1. That's not cool.

 2. His server is Korean, and I believe GOOK is a pejorative term for Vietnamese people, and perhaps by extension, Laotians but definitely not Koreans, so not only is it objectionable, but also highly inaccurate. 

 

It's not like his server shuffled over to the table wearing a rice hat and coolie shoes and  plucking a shamisen. This guy is such a 'bro' if you couldn't see his face you would assume he was from around the corner,which he is.

Old Man actually mumbles something about V.C.'s. Yes, we've stumbled into a bad movie.Charlie's in the trees!

"LET'S GET A BURGER!"

iPhoning It In

One of these days I'm going to snap and go on an iPhone slaying rampage. Of course it will serve no purpose but to make me feel a deep and resonant satisfaction as I listen to a symphony of glass screens shattering, accompanied by a chorus of gasps and shrieks of horror as families are forced to actually look at one another and perhaps have a conversation during dinner. After the cops drag me away that is.

This business has gotten completely out of hand now. It's to the point that people aren't even bothering to lower their iPhones from their faces to talk to you when you're waiting on them. I'm trying to remain polite while talking to a person that literally will not take their eyes away from the magic glowing box long enough to acknowledge the presence of another human being that is there to assist them. Entire families are like this now. It's really unnerving to watch: Dad's got a glossy black obelisk, Mom's got a sassy plaid purple one, Princess has a bubblegum pink one and Sweet Pea is sucking on one. No shit. Parents are using iPhones as psychic pacifiers for those pesky kids that might want to play hangman with them or TALK ABOUT THEIR HOPES AND DREAMS and as actual pacifiers for babies too young to play Angry Birds. These creatures would rather play 'words with friends' with complete strangers than interact with their children or the people they married. And nobody seems to see the inherent perversity of this. The kid's faces are especially creepy, with this slack jawed glassy eyed stare like their souls have been sucked out of their nostrils and channelled directly into the iPhone to power MacBooks. That's what they run on instead of batteries. It's a secret Steve Jobs took with him to the grave.

there's an app for that.

I am tired of having to stand around while these parents try to convince their catatonic zombie children to put down the iPhone long enough to tell us what they want to eat. Here's an idea: if the kid refuses to let you know what they want to eat then maybe they aren't actually hungry. Because hungry people are pretty keen on getting food. If they refuse to pay attention long enough to order food at the appropriate time they DO NOT EAT. Parents: don't bother ordering for them so you can maintain the appearance of a caring nurturer. You plugged their face into an electronic device. You don't care about them. If you did you would enjoy their company and relish the time that you have with them rather than shell out hundreds of dollars to avoid looking at them and ensure that they don't try to talk to you. The cat is out of the bag.

More optimistic types than me are comparing the iPhone to these things:

"I can haz cheeseburger? How droll..."

...but that's only because they aren't ready to accept the ugly truth,which is that our future looks more like Wall-E than Star Trek. Case in point- this:

funny how it tightens around my neck when I try to remove it

                 

                                                     ....which is just the beta model of this:

Pardon My French

I had a table tonight that consisted of two suburban couples sitting opposite each other in the booth. As you know, we have to introduce ourselves and our 'partner' on pain of death and thanks to our shit economy we actually had three poor waitresses in our section. So I go to the table and introduce myself and my other two cohorts. One of these guys snickers and says ," Ooh a menage!"
I look at him. He's giggling with the joy of his cleverness.
"Um." I say, "menage just means like, a household or a set, so technically, you guys are already 'a menage'. I think what you might be going for is a menage a trois."
He kind of explodes with laughter and exclaims, " Oh man, I just got burned by A WAITRESS! For  shame!"

There's an awkward pause as I stonily stare at him. He stares back uncomprehendingly until I say, "Wow. That's actually very insulting. The implicit statement is that because I'm a waitress I'm less educated than you. I could have a phD. Maybe I just like doing this for a living because I enjoy all the stimulating conversations I get to have with people."
And I shrug and go get myself a drink while they take their five minute penalty.
To their credit they were much nicer when I returned.