Luigi Cascioli vs. Jesus

There's a man in Italy who's suing the Catholic Church for trying to pass off Jesus as a real human being and hustling billions of people worldwide throughout history. I think this is hilarious. Of course, it's only a matter of time before someone tries to kill this man.

What do I think about Jesus? Well...I have no proof one way or the other is he is/was real or not. I've seen pictures of a gravesite in Kashmir, Pakistan that's attributed to him (after walking out of that cave under his own power, traveling to Africa and eventually into Pakistan, where he married and had kids) and I've been told by hundreds of people throughout my life who swear up and down that the man died on a cross, came back to life and went to Heaven. I don't think I need to spell out which one at the very least sounds more plausible.

Whether he's real or not (which he very well could be...or very well could NOT be), the facts are as such: his life story isn't the least bit original and has been reused for centuries before Christianity has even been thought about, namely in Egypt, which is where a good amount of Christianity was "liberally borrowed." That whole "immaculate conception" thing has been used a few times as well as the resurrection gimmick. Can't say I blame the early Christians or the Catholics, because well...that's the kinda stuff that gets peoples' attention. And you gotta promote this religion right to get it off to a good start. It's just like selling a CD. And when the rapper conveniently gets shot around the same time his CD comes out, it just makes for better sales. Once those first 10,000 souls are converted, your religion is well on it's way to platinum status. Jesus turned out to be a very good hype man and the Apostles, a damn good street team.

Some would bring up the issue of faith, in that proof isn't needed in the case of God or Jesus. That's all well and good. On one hand, the nice guy side of me says that all that matters is what you believe. And I truly do think that. I can't prove everything I believe, but it's what makes sense to me, so I'm going to go with it, no matter how ludicrous a recurring explosion in the vastness of space that creates a universe that will eventually collapse on itself and explode again sounds. On the flip side, the cynic in me says that faith is for people who can't back up their argument in the slightest. Like those people who choose to ignore the dinosaurs not getting a mention in the Bible, but swear that the book is wholly factual. Or that guy Omar I used to work with, who refused to admit that evolution was real, even though the words he used to dismiss it were proving the argument for me.

So does any of this help answer whether or not Jesus is real or not? No, not really. For a minute, I was believing that he wasn't real, but the more I thought about it, there's a lot out there to back up that he was. For instance, I'm reading a book right now that suggests that not only is Jesus real, but his descendants were some of the earliest Europeans in America. The remaining Knights Templar, who left France in 1307, traveled north to England with the Holy Bloodline in tow (I know it sounds a lot like The Da Vinci Code, but it isn't), and from there, to Canada and moved inland. Along the way, the extinct Knights Templar gave way to groups like the Freemasons, who's earliest members were apparently, once Templars.

On the other hand, while Jesus could be real, like I said before, the Church had an agenda to promote. I don't trust the Bible for a second simply because it was created by man who claim that it's the Word of God and I shouldn't question it simply because my mortal mind couldn't hope to fathom the awesome levels at which the mind of a God can operate. Knowing that man is not to be trusted on that level, at least, and knowing about the Council of Nicaea electing for certain documents to go in the Bible and for some to be voted as heresy, such as anything the Gnostics believed. Basically, they went through all the old mixtapes and put together a compilation for a mainstream release, claiming it was all Jesus's hottest joints, including that collabo with John the Baptist and Simon Magus. At any rate, I think I'll go to a more unbiased Source for my historical information, mmmkay?

F'rinstance...the word is that King Herod never even went around looking for those little boys to be killed because he feared Jesus's coming. And I might not be that smart, but I'm pretty sure that the Earth is older than 6,000 years. And I tend to believe that the Church would institute a smear campaign to get people to put down their Pagan-pipes and get high on Jesus.

The bottom line, I guess is, it doesn't really matter what I say or what that court decides, because it's not really going to change much...unless the Vatican actually pulls out something that definitively proves one way or the other if Jesus is real. Something that isn't the Shroud of Turin. At this stage of the game, it's really no point, because even if it was proven that Jesus wasn't real, it's only going to cause a problem that's probably going to involve something burning down. If it's proven that he was real (regardless of whether or not the "miracles" were), it's just going to cause more loons and nuts knocking on doors and stopping me in public places asking me if my soul is saved. My response to that would be, "I do believe Lord Satan laid claim to that little trinket years ago, in exchange for a sampling of his unholy power," just before I roll my eyes into my head and start singing Beatles songs backwards.

The Art of Hating

How many times have you had a conversation like this one:

You: You know, I really can't stand Puffy.

Them: He's getting his money. Stop hating on him.

You: You know, I think I'm gonna kick you in the nuts.

Since when did any form of criticism become hating? It's almost as if thinking anything negative brands you as a communist. I can almost see Rumfeld on TV right now saying that "America should stop hating, because when you hate, it means the terrorists are winning." Now isn't that a scary thought that YOU have something in common with the Bush Regime?

Listen, it's okay to dislike some stuff. It really is. I know it's a difficult concept to wrap your brain around, but we aren't going to like the same stuff. Especially in the world of art, where everything is subjective. Except for Puffy. I think the general consensus agrees that he sucks.

See, what people need to understand is, Puffy is not hated because he's rich, at least not by me. I don't like Puffy because he puts out wack music. I think it's nice that he fools people into buying his cow-turd-smeared-on-a-playing-card quality music. If I could, I would do the same. The real question is, who's paying for all those Puffy CDs, because I don't think I know a single person who owns one.

Same with Master P. I respect his ability as a businessman (well, I did when No Limit was on top). His music sounding like the special ed class during a freakout didn't take anything away from that. But when P wanted to rub elbows with Louisiana's elite and they wouldn't have anything to do with him, his fans claimed that they were hating on him because he was a rich black man. And if white people were listening (and caring), they would have thought to themselves, "No, we didn't want anything to do with him, because he looked like a fucking clown."

The lesson here is, you can't go around rich, white folks with a mouthful of gold teeth and a red, leather suit that you bought at the flea market. They're not going to be impressed. Hell, I'm po' black, and I wouldn't want to have anything to do with him. You could probably use that for the reason why he didn't make it in the NBA, too, if it wasn't for the fact that he wasn't very good. "But, he's better than all the other rappers," you cry. And that's why those rappers are rappers, I reply.

No, hating is more like, you don't like someone who's clearly talented, in the face of all reason. Like, say...Kobe Bryant. You want someone who gets hated on? This man gets hated on. People screaming that Kobe is garbage when he's clearly the best player in the NBA. You don't have to like him personally. Just respect his game. You can't deny that the man can play ball. It's not like anyone asked you to be his gimp or anything. The man gets hated on so much, you'd think he was Michael Jordan.

The thing is, when we all get so damn sensitive? Who really cares if I don't like your favorite rapper or singer or director? Is that singular piece of information going to cause you to throw yourself from a building or make the stock market crash? And do you really think that 50 Cent even cares that I don't like his "music?" No, he's too busy swimming in his money vault with naked supermodels and buying sections of the cosmos to remake in his own G-Image.

I didn't want to do this, but I've been tagged

The first player of this game starts with the "6 weird/things/habits about yourself" and people who get tagged need to write a blog of their 6 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end you need to choose the 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

1.) I engage in vigorous masturbation at the most inopportune of times. The legend began when I was in high school and I was sitting in the back of Ms. Clark's World History class when I suddenly decided to get my stroke on. The odd thing isn't that I masturbate publicly, but instead that I fantasize about dancing Transformers and G.I. Joes fighting against the characters from cereal boxes when I do it.

2.) I collect things I pull off of my body. Be it something that came out of my nose, a scab from the top of my head, or something I found on my lower back, I keep a Thom McAnn shoe box in my nightstand that contains all of these wonders of nature and body expulsion. Yellow and brown toenail clippings are an old favorite. They have a cheesy smell about them.

3.) My dream job is to collect the semen of animals for artificial insemination. Not for any sort of benign purpose, mind you. No, just because I like to see the looks on the faces of farmers or pet owners when all of a sudden, their animals are popping out kids with no rhyme or reason. It's not like it's hard to keep track of a 2,000 animal, so I'm sure you'd know when it was riding the backside of another one.

4.) I love women who have prison tattoos, gold teeth, bullet and stab wounds, and of course, multicolored weave. Nothing screams class and culture like a woman who had blue and lime green weave intertwined in a braid down the center of her back. And when she turns around and reveals her name (Bunquisha), spelled out in her gold fronts, it's the kind of vision that makes me want to propose to her on the spot and give her one more kid to go with the four that she has already. Normally, I'd want more kids, but I don't want to mess up the motif she's already got going: each kid has a different baby daddy.

5.) I was once arrested for trespassing in a cow patch. They only chose to write it up as trespassing because they weren't really sure how to describe the real crime that I was committing: sexually violating bovine fecal matter from the night before. None of the police wanted me in their car, either, so they called in the helicopter, tied me to the bottom and flew me in. I'm sure you saw it on the news. And don't knock it until you've tried it, because you don't know pleasure until you've rolled around in a pile of cold cow feces. Naked.

6.) I personally believe that I need to get rapped in the head with a meat tenderizer about 10 to 15 times for even writing this thing. I probably do have some weird habits or stories to tell, but the only weird habit that comes to mind is the need to write stuff like this. I am unable to take most questions seriously when they are forwarded to me in some form or fashion. I would simply like to thank you for allowing me to flex my imagination a little for the last 15 minutes. You should be worried because I really did write this on the fly, with no forethought whatsoever. The questions you should be asking right now are, "Since he wrote this so quickly, how much of it is actually true," and "Do I really want to continue to have any sort of relationship with this human being?" Oh, and "I wonder how much trouble it would be to get a restraining order." Have a nice day.

Now...having done that, the next people i plan on cursing with this are Milkdud, of course, Alex, Jenny, Karina, Tim, annnnnnnd...Jimesa. Enjoy, as I have. Just know that you're supposed to take this seriously, but since I really don't have much in the way of good sense, I cannot.