Anyway, it hit me this morning as I was walking out of the restroom that people really need me to tell them how to live their lives. I mean, come on. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, am a published author (yay), and have been to other countries. You don’t get much cooler than me.

Then I realized that would make for a shitty blog post, so I decided that I’d come up with some stuff that actually mirrors the rare occasions that I have a fully coherent thought. (FACT: It’s taken me six days to write this many words.)

For me, this bomb was dropped during a holiday, and I realized, right then, that madness runs strong on both sides of my family. I’m doomed, you see.

Now, Mormonism’s got its, ah, odd parts, but so does every religion. Christ, people wonder why Jews are neurotic. Look at Leviticus, and you’ll see why.

The lesson that can be dredged from the above statement, though, is simple and does not require you to look at any religious tract: Intolerance isn’t good. And, here, intolerance is blatantly obvious in the whole “Never trust” clause.

The Buddhists would say that we’re all manifestations of a single consciousness, experiencing itself through various bodies in order to get a whole view of itself. Thus, the reasoning goes, hurting another person is hurting yourself.

That, however, is a pretty rough concept to understand, so I prefer to think of it like this:

If a douchebaggy Southen dude were to say, “Fuckin Jews. Can’t trust em,” I’d be upset.

In fact, that once happened to me in Ireland. A guy at a pub made a crack about frugality and religion, and I confronted him. The guy apologized, bought me a beer, made something up about Ireland being huge fans of the Jews in order to say “dear God I’m an asshole,” and we parted friends.

Ish.

I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t like Jews.

But! The fact is, it wasn’t cool when someone I didn’t know said that crap, thus, applying that whole empathy thing, it’s gotta suck when another person of whatever race, religion, etc hears something like that from someone else.

So, you know, don’t be a dick.

Anyway, it hit me this morning as I was walking out of the restroom that people really need me to tell them how to live their lives. I mean, come on. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, am a published author (yay), and have been to other countries. You don’t get much cooler than me.

[Pyro taunt]

Then I realized that would make for a shitty blog post, so I decided that I’d come up with some stuff that actually mirrors the rare occasions that I have a fully coherent thought. (FACT: It’s taken me six days to write this many words.)

So I did what came naturally and decided to base things off of my family. Names omitted because, well, yeah.

For me, this bomb was dropped during a holiday, and I realized, right then, that madness runs strong on both sides of my family. I’m doomed, you see.

Now, Mormonism’s got its, ah, odd parts, but so does every religion. Christ, people wonder why Jews are neurotic. Look at Leviticus, and you’ll see why.

The lesson that can be dredged from the above statement, though, is simple and does not require you to look at any religious tract: Intolerance isn’t good. And, here, intolerance is blatantly obvious in the whole “Never trust” clause.

The Buddhists would say that we’re all manifestations of a single consciousness, experiencing itself through various bodies in order to get a whole view of itself. Thus, the reasoning goes, hurting another person is hurting yourself.

That, however, is a pretty rough concept to understand, so I prefer to think of it like this:

If a douchebaggy Southen dude were to say, “Fuckin Jews. Can’t trust em,” I’d be upset.

In fact, that once happened to me in Ireland. A guy at a pub made a crack about frugality and religion, and I confronted him. The guy apologized, bought me a beer, made something up about Ireland being huge fans of the Jews in order to say “dear God I’m an asshole,” and we parted friends.

Ish.

I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t like Jews.

But! The fact is, it wasn’t cool when someone I didn’t know said that crap, thus, applying that whole empathy thing, it’s gotta suck when another person of whatever race, religion, etc hears something like that from someone else.

So, you know, don’t be a dick.

“Was sticking out, like, six feet, man. There were sparks flying everywhere when it was going up against the divider wall and, man, it was hilarious!”

“Holy shit,” I said, “are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine!’

He later went on to talk about how he and a cop had a strength competition in trying to remove the pipe from the bumper.

Point is: Death is not to be feared. Death is to be mocked and laughed at incessantly. Death isn’t an always-looming monster, death is just something that happens. As long as it’s not happening to you, why not laugh about it?

The only person who got that joke was my brother, though, who snickered on the bima while everyone else nodded approvingly at my show of piety.

Joke’s on them, though, because I stumbled so hard through that reading that I was about to plotz. And, I mean hell, really? Classmates had the Ten Commandments as Torah portions and I had descriptions of leprosy. Dick move, Fate, dick move.

Now, the point here is to not take anything too seriously. Even religion. Especially religion The reason I say that is because taking anything too seriously drives you nuts. Completely nuts. Fly-a-plane-into-a-building or bomb-a-Federal-building nuts. (Or establish a militia in the hills of ____ to protest the secular, Satan-backed government nuts.)

Reminds me of the time I said, “If Sebastian was a crab and not a lobster, may God strike me down this very moment!”

People in drama class dove for cover.

I’m going to repeat that:

They dove for cover.

Humorless. I tell ya what.