Priorities

I'm curious. Which is more important to you: Your family, or God?

Apparently, to my biological mother, God is more important than her first-born child. She absolutely refuses to deal with me on a purely secular level. Everything she says to me is laced with scripture and rhetoric (assuming the two are different, which is sometimes impossible to discern). It's not like I'm asking her to shun God or her faith: All I'm asking is that she deal with me on a human, non-God-influenced level. Too much to ask? I think not.

I'd like to hear opinions. Don't be some snarky Anonymous fuckface who takes joy in criticizing me from behind a CRT monitor. Be thoughtful, be honest.

I await your judgment...

Temporal Anomaly

Well... I certainly didn't expect this to happen this fast. I was sure that, simply because I lived in Clearfield County of all places, and that because my records were within the walls of the courthouse, I wouldn't see them for quite a while. The way this County works, and as backed up as its system is, I really didn't think that I'd be able to achieve much at all in a short time. I was honestly in this for the long haul, and was prepared to fight tooth and nail.

Turns out I really didn't need to. But I want to let everyone know that I'm extremely lucky to get the results I have out of this. There are still thousands of people out there, young and old alike, who aren't anywhere near this lucky when trying to find out who they are.

So yes, I know I was supposed to post this after I got home from Kelce's last night, but my brain had different ideas, wanting instead to go to bed. And then today, I ended up going out for a while to get some work done, and then coming home to an unexpected nap. Fun, right? And now, here I am, actually blogging about it, and I've kept the better majority of you in suspense for the last three paragraphs.

Yep. By a twist of fate, I've discovered the paternal side of my biological family.

Turns out that, when I received the first letter from the Courthouse, they neglected to define the exact "methods" they'd used to try and contact my parents. What happened was that the Court had found contact information in my file for my father only, and the chances of it still being accurate were very slim - 32+ years past. After a month and no reply from the address, the Court sent me the first letter.

So earlier this week, I go out to get some cigarettes, and when I come back, I find that the mail dude has been by, and left me a letter from... Judge's Chambers, Clearfield?!? Hmmm. Wonder what kind of trouble I've been implicated in this time. Nothing like that, really, but what had happened was that my biological father had in fact received the court's letter, and after some thought, decided that attempting to contact me might be something worth trying. He had the Court forward him the original letter I'd written to the Judge, which had my contact information in it.

My guess is he didn't take much time to decide that he wanted to call, because yesterday, I got that call.

No sooner had I been dropped off at Mikey's place than my pocket started to ring. I didn't recognize the number, but my curiosity got the better of me yet again and I answered. Good thing, really. He asked for me, and after I confirmed that I was he whom he had sought, he told me that he was calling because he'd received a letter from the Courthouse in Clearfield.

2+2=OMG HOLY SHIT WTF WOW

After an hour and a half or so of conversation, I've discovered that I have a few half-siblings, a few aunts and uncles, plus a grandmother, across the pond, and that my mother will unfortunately remain an enigma for right now. But the good news is, I'll be able to get at least half of the information that I want for Lucas, and then some.

I never intended for things to go this well, and I certainly didn't anticipate this good a result. Yes, I acknowledged it as possible, but in the realm of high fantasy at that point. I mean, come on. When have things ever gone that well for me, ever, right? I've learned over the years to keep my expectations realistic. Not low, mind you, but within the realm of possibility given my track record.

So that's where I'm at right now. Trading emails and phone calls, learning what I can and figuring out where to go as it rolls along. Nothing super special at the moment. I mean, geez, it's been a whole 24 hours or so. But as things progress, I'm sure you'll see little blurbs here and there. But yes, now, I'm not so much in the dark anymore. I have more than one known biological relative.

Doesn't that suck? It brings me one step closer to being just like all of you :P

Find Out What It Means To Me

Wow. My family is a piece of work.

My beef with my Aunt Judy aside, it would seem that more of my family are taking a leap-of-faith swan dive off the 200m stupid platform into the empty kiddie pool of what the fuck. As I've stated before, I believe that it's a sick, sorry thing when a person actually shows more love for an imaginary man in the sky they can't prove exists without the word "faith" than they do for an actual, corporeal, tangible family member. These kinds of people actually sever ties with family members over religious differences.

This is why the empty pool is called what the fuck.

Even with all the knowledge I've tried to amass over the course of my lifetime, I still can't seem to fathom this phenomenon. And since we're talking Christianity, I might as well use a metaphor that Christians can identify with. Somewhat...

It's like there's a little invisible gnome, we'll call him Chompsky, living in the space between my brain and my various inputs (eyes, nose, et al). Chompsky's job, it would seem, is to decide what information is allowed to pass him by and carry on its merry way towards my memory and what is absolute rubbish. In a way, he's my brain's co-pilot. At any rate, for the rubbish, Chompsky has a little mallet that he uses to bat away the incoming bullshit, preventing my brain from becoming a sewer of useless, baseless crap.

A person who chooses God over Family must be rubbish, because Chompsky won't allow the concept to enter my internal database. Nope, no sir. Not a chance in hell. This is because Chompsky knows that, despite anything and everything that can come between people, the bond of family is a trump card when all other cards are on the table.

Imaginary men, mallets or no, should not trump that which you can see, feel, recognize, understand, communicate directly with, and most importantly of all, actually love.

And yet members of my family can't seem to understand this. Their fanatical devotion to the Magic Sky Pixie has led them to cut ties with me. They and their friends most likely think that I'm an embarrassment to the family, since I don't play ball in the House of the Invisible Cloud Monkey. To them, I am a blemish, a cancer, one that can be treated with the tried-and-true Christian throwback cure called "out of sight, out of mind."

I'm the embarrassment? I'm not the one clinging to the delusion that some omnipotent-yet-impotent super being even exists, let alone is more important that what's right the fuck in front of you. I'm not the one who condemns for stupid ideological reasons based on said magic space wizard. I'm not the one who professes unconditional love, yet administers unabashed hate because a 1600 year old story book told me that something isn't right.

I grew out of that phase. I filed that kind of nonsense in the fiction section. I know where my priorities are: They're with my family, my friends, and most of all, focused on my son. Where are yours? Well, you might as well forget family, because you've made your choice abundantly clear. Kissing the non-existent ass of the Amazing Man Upstairs is way more important than any family you might have.

Yep, that's right. When you consider excluding one, you open the door to excluding them all. Yoda said it best: "Once you turn down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

Rachel, I hope there really is a Hell, because I want you to enjoy your trip there. And as the demon bus to Flamey Town rides past me, I'll smile and wave, and know that you and Aunt Judy are on your way to the very place that you people believe that bad folks should go first class next to Pat Robertson and every fucking Pope that has ever held office.

Forsaking your family is bad. I don't need any god to tell me that much is true...

If Only In My Dreams

For the first time in a very, very long (and long-overdue) time, I'll be spending Christmas alone. And you know what?

That is fucking awesome.

Now, granted, I wouldn't mind some female company for the holidays (and beyond), and I'd certainly like to know if I really am a father so I can celebrate with my (potential) son. But all in all, a Christmas alone, in my case, isn't that terrible a prospect. Allow me to explain.

First of all, there's the whole "reason for the season" argument. As an Atheist, of course, I'm rather opposed to the Christian definition of the modern Christmas: To celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth (even though he is clearly of Bethlehem according to the ol' yarn). How many things are wrong with that? Well, if the calendar is truly "the year of our lord," then Jesus' birth would have had to occour at Midnight between 1BC and 1AD. In January. Not December. The December celebration is actually a Pagan holiday which celebrates the Solstice; it was annexed by Christianity in order to get the Pagan folk to join the club.

Of course, this is a major point of contention between myself and my family. It's of great embarrassment to me that:

A) My family actually buys into this Mother Goose horseshit, and

B) Some of them are entirely too forward (read: evangelical) about it.

It's a wonder how I stayed sane during the Holidays for so long. Maybe it was the gifts in my selfish youth, or maybe the vain hope that I might plan the seed of doubt in one of their minds. The desire to get your parents to take the red pill can give you quite a bit of willpower, but not enough to last not-quite-half a lifetime.

To counter the above sources of much facepalming, and to ease the sting of being here by myself this Christmas, I have these two rather comforting thoughts:

A) The fact that I'm away from my family means no possible arguments. Having two iron wills collide in a discussion of faith and folly is both taxing and loud, and

B) The fact that I see the seeds of rationality and free-thought in the next generation of Marie and Walter's descendants.

Silent Night indeed. Holy Night, not so much.

No, here - alone in my little box that can't hold heat worth a damn - I will sit and celebrate the Christmas of the Godless. Upon my fellow men and women of all kinds, godless or not, I wish peace and goodwill, and the hope that we can all sit down, shut the fuck up about stupid shit, and get along for a change. We're all on this rock together, and fighting over it for silly second grade reasons isn't doing us any good, so we might as well drop the bullshit and try to move forward.

Forward is the only direction you can go, but it's a difficult journey indeed when you're stuck so far back in the distant, primitive past.

This Holiday Season, I hope that Mankind - all of Mankind - can put away the grown-up Santa Claus fantasies that it clings to and matures into the species that nature meant us to be.

Hey, Kids, Rock and Roll

Fellow Atheists: Are you like me? Do you feel kind of alien in your own hometown? Have you recently had the sensation, the kind that doesn't lead to some chilling metaphor for a tasty mint and chocolate wafer? Are you starting to feel like, suddenly, you don't belong in the place you've spent most of your life?

Wow, holy crap, I feel that way.

Thank [insert deity here] that I'm adopted, because I'd be a whole hell of a lot more depressed with the fact that I'm related to these people biologically if I weren't. Throughout my entire life, I've tried in vain to find a common ground with these people. Through actions on both party's counts, I've come to be regarded as the black sheep of my generation, far surpassing the black sheep that came before me.

And a major part of that designation comes from my being the family's 'lost soul.' Well, if they think I'm they only one, they're fooling themselves. While I may be the only Atheist in my generation, I'm not the only one in the family.

Increasingly, my younger 2nd cousins are becoming skeptical as they mature. Whereas one was thinking of going into the seminary, a few years later (and a few weeks ago) he came out as an Atheist to me. You have no idea how proud - and relieved - I was. His brother lists himself as Agnostic on a social networking site - cool! Another cousin is more open about her skepticism and criticism of her part of the family, which I find totally awesome: Another voice.

Whether their parts of the family know it or not, I'm no longer the only black sheep.

There's hope for the biological Jacobson's yet, by golly.

But still, what is there for the few of us yet? We still live amongst a sea of stubborn theists, the most vocal among them being the members of our own family. We're still pretty isolated, and we're most certainly met with a great deal of shaming and disgust from those whom even the Bible says are obligated, begrudgingly or not, to love us.

It's tough to be at war with the ones you love. It really, really is.

While mostly Protestant, our family still harbors a great deal of the prejudices and false sense of entitlement that most modern Christians are stereotyped with. Homosexuality is a sin, evolution is 'just a theory,' 'we're right and they're wrong,' Genesis (and by extension, the rest of the Bible) is literal truth, and an all-seeing Magic Sky Pixie is behind everything we see and experience. There's no turning them from this, no getting them to ask even one question.

And there's no convincing them that attempts to 'save our souls' are fruitless; still the fight to turn us back on their idea of the right path, no matter how insane and fanciful we know it to be.

It's a war that will never be won by either side. A house divided shall never stand - but they don't say anything about what the remaining factions will do. Obviously, in our case, both sides will stand: Us - a mere four strong - and Them - literally dozens.

David Essex once asked the two questions we few face now: Where do we go from here? Which is the way that's clear? We can only dream that we were looking for that blue jean baby queen, because the reality is much less enticing.

When 90% of the people around you claim the same association and beliefs as those you're trying to distance yourself from, finding a road to travel - much less a destination - is a pretty daunting task.

And with the resurgence in popularity of the idea of a supposedly 'Christian Nation' and its desire to oust us as godless heathen non-citizens of such... I'm starting to think there isn't a way that's clear at all anymore.

We do have our own brand of faith, believe it or not. Our faith is in the fact that we can make a place for ourselves on this world, and we can find a way to somehow help make it a better place for everyone. Our faith is in humanity and its ability to work together as a society despite perceived differences. We have faith in a day when the rest of us can finally put away the storybooks, give up on pixies and wraiths, and retire the characters within to the pantheon of mythology with their counterparts of old.

That faith keeps us together, and keeps us strong, no matter what the odds, no matter who the enemy or how hostile they are. That faith makes us a new kind of family - adopted or not.

Grandpa Ruins Christmas

How selfish can an old codger get? Selfish enough to make a complete ass of himself and ruin his grandkids' Christmas, that's how. And you'd best believe there's video, but with NSFW language, so get those headphones on. Link, Fark Thread, and away we go...

Angry Grandpa Ruins Christmas - Watch more free videos

Way to go, Grandpa...