I often wonder about the logistical inconsistencies when a religion espouses “You will be with all your loved ones in Heaven”. I know that religion is based on faith in a great unknown, so logic probably has no place in it, but think about it. In my case, for example, I have loved my mother and father as well as my wife. My wife did not particularly like my mother. I assume my wife loves me. She loved her mother. I did not. Are we each consigned to eternity with mother-in-laws we didn’t like in order to be together in Heaven? If someone can explain this to me I’d sure appreciate it. Please don’t hit me with the standard “mystery of faith” dogma.
I have a habit of slipping into alternate personalities. I’m not talking Sybil type psychosis. I know full well that these characters are not real. They serve a very useful purpose for me though. I believe that all people have many facets to their makeup, including things they might not like to admit to themselves, such as the fact that they are lazy, or callous, or a bigot. I’m not saying that these characteristics define them, but they feel guilty for having them at all. Therefore, when they see a group of young black males together, and they grip their purse a little tighter, or if they see a Muslim at the airport and watch them carefully even though they might be with their 80 year old grandmother and their two small children, they deal with all sorts of conflicting emotions. I, on the other hand, have developed personalities that I allow to say the things and feel the things that I, as myself, would never say. For example, I have recently developed a personality I call Cooter, who is a profane and politically incorrect guy from Texas. If an Asian cuts me off in traffic Cooter will likely say, “Them damn Asians can’t drive worth a shit!” It allows me to vent my rage and bigotry and blame HIM.
I have been thinking lately that it is absolutely futile for science fiction writers and movie producers to show us their interpretation of what aliens look or act like. If there are forces from outer space, surely they are superior in intelligence and accomplishment to what we have on earth. It doesn’t make sense to me that we can conjure up an image of these aliens when we are constricted by what we can only imagine from our earthly constraints.
Lately I’ve been noticing that I miss my father’s bad puns. He would make up something he thought was very clever in response to something either my mother, brother, or I would say and then look at us and go, “That was a nifty, wasn’t it?” Usually, it wasn’t. Every once in a while, with the regularity of a stopped clock, he would actually come up with a “nifty”. For a long time I have enjoyed putting two famous people together in holy matrimony to match their names together. For example, if actress Tuesday Weld married actor Hal March III, she’d be Tuesday March the third. As far as I know both of these people are dead now, the last sighting of either one being her appearance in “Cry Baby” back in the 1980’s. Still, you get the idea. Well I’ve been doing it a bit lately. It doesn’t make any difference if the person is real or not, just as long as the names go together. When I do this, my respect for my father’s bad puns grows tremendously, as my names are about as corny as they can get.
