Religulous Preaches to the Choir

Bill Maher, you disappoint me. I watched you on The Daily Show and The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, promoting your movie Religulous as an intelligent documentary that pokes fun at religion by pointing out how otherwise rational people can believe the irrational stories of The Bible. I consider myself both a person of faith and a person of intelligent thought and logic. I looked forward to seeing how you would challenge people like me to explain their beliefs in a book that says a man lived in the belly of a whale and came out alive. This is not what you did. You did not interview what I, or I believe most, would call "normal" or "intelligent" people. You talked to extremists.

You went to the south and picked out the type of uneducated hicks that makes us intelligent folk cringe. You went to a trucker's chapel and expected truckers to be able to answer complex theological questions. No offense to the truckers, but a group of southern truckers doesn't exactly represent the "normal" church-goers I grew up with in California. You picked extremists knowing they would be easy targets and would make for funny clips in your film. I wouldn't fault you for that if you hadn't promoted your film as thought-provoking and intelligent. It's not. It's comedy. It's quite pathetic, actually.
I know you are an arrogant man, and your arrogance sells your comedy, but you didn't even give these people a chance to talk. You treated them with complete disrespect. You gave some respect to the scientist who believes in The Bible, but still, if you actually let him explain his beliefs, you didn't show that part in your film. The rich, bling-wearing minister who used to be in 1970’s soul group is not a "normal" person. How many "normal" people have had a chart-topping song? The man who claims to be the second-coming of Christ and the people at Holy Land Experience are good for a laugh, but their ignorance is not going to open anyone's mind.

Why didn't you interview the ministers with doctorates not only in theology but also in subjects like philosophy and history? Why didn't you interview the young 20something who grew up in the church, graduated college, and is able to balance her beliefs in an unseen God with her beliefs in tested science? Most of us aren't talking in tongues every Sunday at church. Some of us believe the stories in The Bible happened as written, and some of us believe they were written to exemplify morals. But did you talk to us and ask us to explain why we believe in Jesus as savior, but don't necessary believe the stories in The Bible are meant to be taken literally? No, Mr. Maher, you did not.

What bothers me most about your film is your hypocrisy. I've watched you for years and you claim you "don't know" what the truth is, and you're not an atheist because you don't want to be as self-righteous as the religious folks who claim to know "for sure" that their beliefs are true. Yet, you sure don't act like an agnostic. If you "don't know" how can you then claim the Christians, the Mormons, the Scientologists, the Jews, and the Muslims are wrong? 

You conclude your film by pointing how these religions are completely detached from intelligent thought and rational thinking, so they should be laughed at. You in fact, ARE saying "you know." You may not have the full answer, but you're full of yourself enough to claim you know what isn't the answer. Isn't that just as bad as the Christian or Muslim who believes they know all other faiths are wrong? It is. It's the same thing. And by the way, most of us Christians don't believe we're the only ones who are right. 

My old minister had a saying, "I believe our way is the way, but it may not be the only way." This minister from middle-town America was open-minded enough to believe in something while not excluding the validity of the beliefs of others. Maybe if you could deflate that big head of yours, you could do the same.

Maintenance Update

As my loyal readers will have noticed, I haven't been blogging recently. This is due in large part to lack of Internet. In order to save money and cut ties with the evil Comcast, my husband and I canceled our Internet and have been running into roadblocks trying to find a replacement. My Internet use has been limited when we travel to our parents' houses so that I can pay bills, check my email and publish articles for my new job at Examiner.com. My husband uses this time to search for a new job as he is one of the millions whose place of employment has closed down under the weight of the failing economy. Blogging has had to take a backseat to the more pressing issues.

I would like to direct any and all readers to check out my Examiner page where I will be posting around four times a week as the Sacramento Rock Music Examiner. Tell your friends, your family, and the stranger you met with Internet access.

I would also like to encourage everyone to support this site by visiting my Google sponsors and my Amazon store linked on the sidebar where you can buy the movies or books I blog about so that I can receive a small portion of the sales. Every little bit helps, and trust me when I say, I need it.

Below is a fresh new blog post! Happy reading!

The Thrill of Thrifting

Thrifting:
refers to the act of shopping at a thrift store, flea market, garage sale, or a shop of a charitable organization, usually with the intent of finding interesting items at a cheap price. -Wikipedia.org

Thrifting is like searching for buried treasure. The thrill is in the hunt and the surprises you find along the way. I usually thrift with a specific goal in mind, but it's also fun to thrift for the sake of thrifting. I first got into thrifting with my best friend Nicki when we were around 14 years old. Sometimes our good friend Patrick would join us in the hunt for cheap, cheap treasure. Patrick is no longer with us, but thrifting with him is one of my favorite memories.

Because of the special hunt that comes with thrifting, the things I've collected from thrift stores tend to hold special meaning for me. There's the vinyl copy of London Calling I found at the back of a used hippie store in Old Roseville (the only part of Roseville I find remotely tolerable). It was the first Clash album I ever bought, and there's something special about hearing The Clash in its original raw and pure form. Then there's my collection of bendy fabric flowers. My husband found these flowers in various colors on our first thrifting adventure very early into our relationship and bought them for me as the first flowers of any type he ever bought a girl (and that's not for lack of girls). Throughout the years, my collection has grown as my husband continues to find the flowers at thrift stores. I even have flowers four feet tall!

My husband and I braved the cold, wind and rain on Sunday for a trip down the thrift-strip of Fair Oaks and Manzanita. The thrift stores in Carmichael are great because a lot of really rich people live in the area and donate their clothing, but the stores keep the prices low to serve the varied community. You can usually find the same high-end designer jeans at Thrift Town that you'll find at that overpriced trendy used clothing shop.

I entered through Thrift Town's doors and wiped my feet on the soaked mat with one very specific goal: to find a black jean jacket to replace my beloved one that mysteriously disappeared. My 25th birthday is just around the corner, and that's what I really wanted. After coming up empty-handed at Country Club Mall on Friday, Thrift Town was the next logical step.

I weaved my way through the crowded aisles and headed straight to the wall of women's jackets. I reached my destination and there it was: a black jean jacket appearing to be my size, just waiting for me at the end of the rack. Not only did the tag confirm it was my size, but it was a pink tag, and pink tags were half off for the day. I tried it on and stared at myself in the worn mirror. It wasn't as stylish and not quite as perfect as my first jean jacket had been, but it was in like-new condition, cost just $2 and was very close to what I had envisioned.


I held onto the jacket and searched the racks some more, just in case my original jacket had somehow gone through a vortex and ended up at Thrift Town. I didn't find my old jacket or its doppelganger, but I did find another little black jacket that I had to try on it.

This jacket was lightweight, a crisper black and very stylish, although made out of a polyester blazer-like material. It was only $4. I took both home as early birthday presents and couldn't be happier about my good fortune.

I did have one smaller goal in mind when shopping: finding a sexy formal dress for my "forever young" birthday party where everyone dresses up as what as children they wished to be when they grew up. I had many lofty goals as a child, and the job I chose to dress up for involves such a dress.

I found the perfect dress after sifting through a long, color-coded rack at the Goodwill on Manzanita. When I came across this very formal, backless, slinky, satiny black number with rhinestones filling in the naked space between the breasts, my husband and I thought it would be too big, but I had to try it on just the same.

At first my upper half drowned in the dress, but then I realized that unless the dress had been designed for Anna Nicole, it was missing a clasp to pull in the breast of the dress. Once I held the straps in their proper place, the dress hugged my curves like it was meant to, and the dress fell to the perfect spot resting on my feet. Admittedly, I don't have the flat tummy a celebrity wearing the dress on the red carpet would have, but the dress made me feel like a star even with the extra pudge, and when I coyly stepped out of the dressing room for my husband to see, his eyes lit up and he broke out into his giant "my wife is hot" grin. The ladies at the cash register oohed and awwed over the dress and told me how stunning I will be in it. I can’t wait to unveil my $5 dress at my party.