Give and Take

Bad habits are hard to change. In saying this, I am confessing that I have a bad habit and am aware that there are consequences to continuing this behavior. These days, vomiting out one's bad behavior seems to be as acceptable as wearing white before Memorial Day. I digress... I smoke. In fact, I'm smoking right now.

The feeling of the first drag off of the first cigarette of the day is like thinking your best friend's boyfriend would look better naked on your bed instead of hers; you feel guilty AND immeasurably pleased simultaneously. The last drag is just pure guilt.

I know these things will kill me eventually, but I still smoke. I used to lie about smoking, but that was too much work, all the mouthwash, tooth-brushing furtively in the nearest bathroom, all the gum and breath-strips, the perfume and hairspray and handwashing never truly masked or eliminated the reek of old smoke. Sometimes, I would tell people that I was around other smokers and that's why I smelled of smoke. Now, there's little prevarication, I just own up to the fact that I'm addicted to nicotine.

I try not to offend people with my bad habit, and in this state, you can't smoke in public, or many private areas, so it's not like I have a lot of choice in the matter, but I wouldn't want to anyway.

SO, why then do I feel so vitriolic about other people's bad habits when I have my own? People who feel free to dig into their noses and ears with various implements such as pinkie fingers and pens and keys freak me out! The occasional sinus-miner who drills into his nose then casually inspects his findings before flicking them onto the floor is, in my eyes, one step lower on the evolutionary ladder than the common cockroach. One occasion, upon witnessing a fast-laner fishing for nostril-oysters, I applied considerable and lengthy pressure to my car's horn. The look on the guy's face was one of surprise. Really, he looked at me all startled and ashamed, as if he honestly believed his untinted car windows offered him some kind of invisibility!

This kind of behavior is nearly as bad as my next least favorite public activity that should remain private: Hot and heavy necking. I don't mean holding hands, a sweet smooch or even a little hugging, either. You know, like when you're as the local park and you're trying to look totally engaged in your run and suddenly, lying on the grass along the pathway, is a couple who are nearly ingesting each other's faces. They've got their legs entangled and their hands are set on full grope, AS IF THE REST OF THE WORLD WAS SUDDENLY STRUCK BLIND!!!! I'll admit, I was a teenager once, I know how strong the urging of hormones was, and I'm not unhorny at this age, but I have a sense that I wouldn't have acted that way if everyone was struck blind. Making out has its place and time and I don't want to know where and when you are 'getting busy'. If I want to see strange people having foreplay, I'll stay at home and watch porn.

Here is where I get silly; I love to watch TV with my boyfriend. Rephrase; I love to hate watching TV with my boyfriend. He has TiVo AND control over the remote. That means invariably, he and I will get into a squawk over whether or not previews are to be fast-forwarded through, and do some commercials have intrinsic comedic value and therefore be viewed at normal speed? Men must go to some secret schooling that teaches them how to control the remotes in such a way that their partners start writhing in mental anguish during TV viewing. I've decided that I am not going to swat the back of his head with a lead pipe over this issue, because I love him and want to remain on the outside of the prison fence, but on occasion, I do snatch the remote before he sits down, and surreptitiously stuff it between the sofa cushions. That's the way I act with most of the things that irk me; passive-aggressively. That allows me to retaliate in a way that doesn't actually harm anything or anyone, but gives me a healthy dose of retribution. Give and take at its best.

Religion, the "How to Everything" For Dummies

Well, if you want to prick people's sensibilities, start with one of the two most inflammatory subjects you can find, religion and politics. I can't help myself, I have to be a firebrand.
Personally, I find organized religion to be a bore. Don't get me wrong, I used to believe in a much higher power than myself, I just don't see what difference it makes if you believe in the peripherals of a religion as opposed to the core values. Who cares if Mary was a virgin? Does it make a difference if Mohammed wanted women to cover their faces or not? Probably not. The core values of religions around the world are about ninety-eight percent the same. Be good to Mom and Dad, don't kill, don't steal, don't lie. Be kind to the less fortunate. Wash yourself, you might stink, and that makes it hard for others to get to know you. Thank whatever higher power for what he/she/it gave you. Really, be thankful, because a lot of things really are out of your hands when it comes to chance. Try to walk in someone else's shoes before you assume you have the right to criticize them. Try every day to make yourself better so the rest of us can work with you to build a better world.
I have a co-worker who is very religious and he tries to explain ( to his exhaustion and dismay) how God cannot possibly ever have been/done wrong, the Bible is the literal word of God and the Devil is on our heels every day, poking us with the pitchfork if sin and temptation. It's not nice to laugh at him, so I don't, but I do enjoy pointing out my concerns for his narrow view of spirituality. Personally, I don't believe in Hell. My concern is that any god who so lovingly allowed the universe to come into being and would then throw his/her/its most wonderful creations to roast everlastingly is quite a tempermental and capricious god, therefore not deserving of my praise. I would hope a god would be above behavior that even human children are chastised against.
What galls me the most about organized religion is the force that it exerts on large groups of people. Catholics/Christians fought with the Muslims to gain control of the Holy Lands back in the days of the Crusades. Muslims have been pissed at them ever since. Why? Because the Christians thought that there was a necessity to protect the land and the vestiges of holy relics and locales from another, foreign religion. For what? Is a church, a cathedral, a shrine the vessel of faith? Nope. They are places, things, ideas, not the repositories of the intangible faith that makes up a religion. Hey, I'm not saying that the Muslims were any better. They broke the rule that says not to take/abuse/destroy someone else's stuff. Not nice, not necessary. Kindergarteners are taught better behavior.
Moving on to the present: What the heck is the deal with creationists? Whether or not a god created the heaven and earth in six days and took a nap on the seventh, OR put a wildly perfect, self-evolving, self-organizing system in place, fully loaded with the software to adapt and change in an endless dance of variation is a matter of semantics. The people of biblical times would have laughed heartily if someone tried to explain deoxyribonucleic acid to them. Little tiny chains of invisible matter that are the code to each and every living thing on the planet. Hah! Sounds funny now that I say it! But we, that is, modern humans in this age of computers, scanning tunneling electron microscopes, atom-smashers and geosynchronous space-telescopes are more aware of the internal workings of nature. Does being aware of the process make it any less wonderful? No way, it makes it more interesting! Does a god want ignorant (not the same as stupid, mind you) followers or does it want them informed and frankly, awed, by its creations? Who knows? Last I checked, it stopped talking aloud near the end of the New Testament, through Jesus. But other religions I'm not aware of may have spoken to him more recently....