The Zen of Ranting

One of my close friends wanted to rant and I figured, what the hell the more the merrier- so Anonymous German-bear’s excellent rant on religion will serve as my second part in a “?” part series on religion.

(For the sake of arguement, I have chosen to argue mostly with the word GOD but any diety will suffice. Also I am not an atheist only an avid supporter of people thinking for their own DAMN SELVES FOR ONCE!!!)

So after reading Religion pt1. I had an epiphany.The masses are stupid but religious fanatics are even worse. I am a firm believer that religion was meant to placate humanity into a sense of comfort and conformity. People follow religion for many reasons which have thier validity in their own right but religion will ask us to believe against our better judgement. Read Religion Part 1 because We were meant to figure it out for ourselves and One could say that, Figureing it out is the point of life.

 Fanatics say the the “truth” (insert any religious Diety, IE God, Allah, Krishnue, Shiva,Zuess, Odon whate have you) is meant to be believed against better reason. When humanity can be so much more, Religion asks us to abandon our sense of adventure in asking us not to search for the reason why anything in our universe works the way it does. They offer up things like Because “God” made it so it must be so. “God made the world in 7 days” Come on archeological evidence suggests otherwise, and along with the Theory of Relativity, you figure it out. How do you explain fossils of creatures that predate humanity??? And don’t say JOB40:15-24 because, if the religious fanatic read on,  clearly describes a dragon who qoute:

“His sneezings flash forth light,

And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

19 Out of his mouth go burning lights;

Sparks of fire shoot out.

20 Smoke goes out of his nostrils,

As from a boiling pot and burning rushes.

21 His breath kindles coals,

And a flame goes out of his mouth.” JOB 41:18-21

If thats not a dragon than WTF mate?!

Religion hinders humanities ability to reach for the stars. “For if we were meant to understand then God would have given us the understanding.” What the fanatics refuse to grasp is that he did give us that ability. He gave us the ability of Free will and because of that mankind can grow and learn and move beyond their purely terrestrial existence. Just think of the last 2 centuries and all the technological advancements (mind you  the religious fanatic cant live without) and you’ll know and see all the things that happen when mankind is less burdened by worry of the damnation of his soul and more free to search for the meaning and reason of existence(I’ll give you alot of evil has happened as well but thats what happens when good ideas and theories get twisted by evil people).

Its infuriating to think were humanity would be if Religion hadnt held us back. The dark ages didnt happen due to the fall of the Roman Empire but rather because of the rise of christianity. Humanity chose to believe in a religion that asked them to believe in God and be saved. Nothing more nothing less. Becasue of this humanity refused to better his situation and those who did think for themselves were burnt as heretics. Come on!!! Look for your own eyes and see that a world of wonders abounds around us and that you can have place for “God” and science. Believing in God just means that you believe their is some anthopomorphic identity, idea, thought, insert choice explanation of deity, which has a had in our being. It doesnt have to mean that he created the bible as it is (which is fallacy cause it was written by man who is flawed by the very definition of Mankind described in the bible)

Mankind needs to wake up and shake free from the oppression and placation with which religion has allowed mankind to seek solace in. They need to stop relying on others to find the f***ing  answers.

I’m tired of people giving me shit about my major.  I’m just going to come out and say it to all who read this right now: IF YOU THINK THEATRE IS NOT A LEGITIMATE MAJOR, THEN YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF.  There.  That was easy.  Now, let me explain my reasoning behind this.

  First, I’ll give you a shakedown of my day. I woke up at roughly 930 today to go to a class at 10 AM where I build sets and shit like that for the plays…then, I have an hour for lunch before Theatre History (the class I wrote a 45 page paper for last semester).  After theatre history, I have a nice little break until 4, when I have Directing I, which, depending on the day goes until either 5:45 or 6:15.  Pretty easy day wouldn’t you say?  Well, if you said yes, you’re wrong because that is not my day.  That’s the start of my day.  After that, I have rehearsal for EIGHT hours.  That’s a full-time job right there if I have that 5 days a week.  Now will you say it’s easy?  If so, you’re still wrong…you forgot about homework.  For me homework involves reading for Theatre History and the Psychology class I’m taking, in addition to memorizing lines for all the things I’m rehearsing.  Still think it’s easy?  Oh, I forgot one thing:  All that rehearsing?  None of it counts for a grade of any kind.  And no, I don’t get paid either.  I have a full-time job that I get nothing from but the satisfaction of doing it.

Some people tend to think we don’t have to be in all of these rehearsals and productions, when really, we do.  Acting is not something you learn in a classroom, you learn it in practice..and practice is rehearsal.  Acting class is a place where we have direct interaction with a professor who teaches us fundamentals that we can either accept or reject, but you don’t get a chance to truly ACT until you’re in a play.  So, forgive me for saying that I actually do a shit ton more work than a lot of people believe I do and, in fact, I probably do more than they do.

Next on my shit list are the people who think that we theatre majors are pretentious douchebags.  Let me preface this by saying that I don’t condone everything that theatre majors do.  One of the major complaints about my department is that we keep to ourselves- we have our own parties at our own houses, we have our own huge table in the dining hall, we have our own events, etc.  Well, here’s the thing:  Party wise, we’re not just going to let random strangers into our homes, that would be retarded.  And as for everything else, we hang out together because we have very little time to do so with anyone outside the department.  When you’re in a show with someone, you get to be good friends or heated rivals with them real fast, but regardless, since rehearsal takes place in the evenings, we have no fucking time to go crash at someone’s house without shunning our friends in theatre.  Another complaint is about theatre people calling non-theatre majors “Non-ies.”  Well, honestly, I think that that is kinda rude but everyone else calls us “theatre majors” like we’re a blight on the rest of the campus.  So in this regard I’ll tell both sides to GET THE FUCK OVER IT.  We all go to the same school and are interested in different things.  We “suck” in other classes because we’ve been taught to always challenge the answer, to find a new one and to find what works for us, not to take something at face value as a cold hard fact.  That’s art, and without art, this would be one fucking boring place.

So, I place this challenge to anyone who wishes to call theatre an easy major.  Take 16 credit hours of class during the day, turn around and take 24 “credit hours” of rehearsal, including work on the weekends and almost every night, for no grade and no pay and then come to me and tell me I have an easy major.  Do that for four years, then either decide you need more schooling or go out and find a “high-paying” job of roughly 15,000 dollars a year.

For posterities sake I’ll say this to end: theatre is a vital part of society and those who work in it will only succeed if they devote themselves fully to it.  We, as individuals, have a multitude of other interests, but it’s all in pursuit of our mutual obsession. For instance, I’m an actor, but i’m also a Fiji, a homebrewer, a gamer, a sportsfan, a writer, a blogger, an intellectual and a boyfriend- I take all that I am and put it into my work, to make the theatre I want to make.  Collectively, we’re looking for that thing that has never been done before, we’re doing what we love, and in most cases, it gives us almost everything we really need.  We weep for it, we bleed for it, we sacrifice for it and if you don’t admire that than you can kiss my pasty white ass.

So, living in Southern Indiana, it’s hard to understand what exactly the weather gods have in mind for us day in and day out.  I’m sitting outside at 1015 Sunday night and it’s a lovely 70 degrees or so, but for some reason, despite there not being a cloud in the sky (that I can see at least)  the weathermen are predicting a thunderstorm.  With that in mind, I say that, given the changing nature of weather, we declare spring to be a dead season.  Nobody gets Spring anymore.  Two weeks ago it was 40 degrees here and a week before that, it was up in the high 70s….WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

I vote that Spring be divided into two separate seasons: Winter Pt. 2 and Summer Pt. 1, depending on the day.  The word “Spring” insinuates that there are flowers blooming and people laying out in the grass with perhaps a light jacket at night but during the day they don’t need sunscreen, but that’s not what Spring actually is.  No, no, no, Spring is an evil season that likes to tug at your heartstrings like a pretty girl that may have a thing for you or she maybe smiling at you out of pity, but you can’t really tell.  Spring days consist of waking up to a torrential downpour, followed swiftly by 80 degree heat long into the afternoon when suddenly another shower system will hover over you and decrease the temperature 20 or 30 degrees without even RAINING.

Of course, this inconsistency wreaks havoc on anyone’s attempts to do anything in the spring.  Nice day for a picnic? NO.  It’s cool enough that we should go to the movie!  When you come out of the theatre, it’s 75 and people are relaxing while you just wasted two hours of your life seeing Your Highness.  I am convinced that the only thing that anyone could possibly do comfortably in this shitstorm of a season is play frisbee because for some reason, nothing bad ever happens to frisbee players.  They happily occupy too much square area on a public lawn and whenever they’re around, weather stops and marvels at their ability to chunk a piece of plastic around in a circle.

It’s also the season when i break out my shorts.  Here’s the problem: I’m a pasty white guy with size fourteen feet and no sense of what clothing to wear at what time of the year on occasion.  For example, in Spring, i’ll throw on some khaki cargo shorts and flip flops and promptly realize that it’s way too cold to wear them, but I’m committed dammit; on top of that with shorts, my feet stick out like shovels and overall, I just feel like an idiot.  It’s not so hot that shorts are a necessity but jeans make me look like i’m trying to hard to be cool when Spring’s lukewarm-pudding-esque weather rolls around.

Fuck Spring…grow some balls and become Summer.

(Yep, this is a multi-part rant.  I don’t want to get off on ridiculous tangents.  This is a definitely directed rant about things.  Specifically, I have very weird ideas about religion that, despite how simplistic they are, some people just don’t get it)

“Is there a God?” is one of the most hotly debated questions of all time and also the one most loaded with bullshit.  It’s a simple “yes” or “no” question that inevitably leads to other ridiculous questions:  What is God?   Who is God?  Is he all-powerful?  Is he actually benevolent?  Is he dead?  Is he a he?  People inevitably try to answer these questions as a way to sort out their won lives, and then they go out and profess their answers to others- which is the wrong fucking way to go about it!

If you have the universe figured out, good for you- you’ve done what no human being has ever done.  But it doesn’t make you interesting- it makes you boring.  You’ve got all answers and no mystery and please, don’t try to run my life by feeding me your answers; I don’t want them.  I want to figure it out for myself because I have no answers.  In fact, to me, less answers equals more faith.  The less I know, the more I have to put my trust in something, even an invisible being who may or may not exist.

I believe in me.  I’m the only thing that I can be 100% sure exists (everything else is a solid 99.9% so fuck you Descartes).  Further, I believe something made me; but beyond that, all I can do is figure out the mess around me.  That’s my job: to survive and bring meaning to my short existence.

So please, for the love of God (see what I did there?) don’t tell me that God is an old man with a beard like Joaquin Phoenix and a wizard staff who talks either to me directly or through an old German man.  Let me figure it out.  It’s my puzzle and if you want to help, you better be cooperative.

I hate pop music.  It really isn’t even music anymore, it’s some shit that Lady Gaga birthed out of her placental sack, like in that video where she has horns and pulls an M-60 out of her vagina.   Seriously, setting aside the fact that she is twisted enough to come up with no only her “music” but the videos that accompany it, that’s not music; if that’s music than oral sex is an olympic sport.

What happened to people like John Lennon, Louie Armstrong, fucking Ludwig von Beethoven?  I guess because they’re dead their work isn’t important to popular culture any more.  They don’t matter but a prepubescent lesbian boy with a billion dollars and a dick that doesn’t work can shit platinum albums.  ”Shit” being the operative word there.  Justin Bieber is a talentless hack and much like 100 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong for Bon Jovi, 100 Million Critics Can’t Be Wrong for the Beebster.  I don’t mean to dis on a little kid, I’m sure Justin is a nice guy but, if his music is the best thing we have to offer now, I’m sorry for the state of music- I was happy he lost breakout artist, proves someone still has some sense.

And what the FUCK is so great about Glee? Glee takes good music and turns it into some kind of teenie-bopper fuckfest where everyone is either gay or crippled or gay and crippled or Gwyneth Paltrow- who is a worthless human being!! For instance, Fuck You is one of the rare pop songs that I like, it’s a great fucking song that, I think, nails on the head how guys feel about women.  BUT, Glee turned it into “Fuh-get You” which, when sung at the speed they sing it at becomes a guttural noise that can only be made by something without a soul- a la anything hired by Fox.

Anyways, pop music- it all sounds the same.  It’s all either a “dope” beat or a synthed beat.  The difference is that a “dope” beat is something that one-hit rap artists use or re-use to record their impressive rapping skills to.  But unlike actual artists, which I will confess Kanye West is, these artists who “teach me how to dougie like a soulja boy getting low in my reeboks with the straps” and their songs are ALL THE FUCKING SAME!  They all suck equally, as well.  On the other hand, a synthed beat is what other pop artists use because they don’t have ideas so they get drunk and bang on a keyboard for twenty hours until something sounds good.  I cannot name how many songs there are that start with some club-esque synthed beat and then talk about generic shit. Again, ITS ALL THE FUCKING SAME.

Make music.  Not shit.  Work at it, like the legendary bands of the sixties and seventies, or y’know Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, FUCKING MOZART? HUH? 

Make Music.  Not Shit.

“A rant is a speech or text that does not present a well-researched and calm argument; rather, it is typically an attack on an idea, a person or an institution. Very often rants lack proven claims. Such attacks are usually personal attacks.”

The above quote, naturally taken from Wikipedia, is bullshit…a rant is a way of trying to make sense of and understand the world around you.  It’s a survival mechanism.  Think about it; when you’re ranting or feel like ranting, there is no real rhyme or reason to it but something pissed you off and now it all just comes out in a waterfall of expletives and nonsensical statements.  But that diarrhetical outpour of words is necessary, it’s what you feel and you, as a human being have to express it or you’ll go on a shooting rampage through a mall.

I’ve tried numerous times to create a blog that is well informed, clearly thought out and expressed fluently but honestly, fuck that shit, that isn’t me.  I’m a passionate, nerdy, irrational human being and ranting is the way my brain works the best.  I don’t know what I’ll rant about but that’s not the point…the point is to get it out of me and maybe discover something about myself in the process.

In that spirit, right from the get-go, I implore anyone who reads this to rant as well, doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, rants tend to be bad but that’s the point…so do it.  Rant your fuckin brains out…I will.