Thou Shalt Not Pick Up Snakes, Idiot

There's a reality TV show coming out about snake-handling Pentecostals. People will watch and laugh at how ridiculous it is that they chose to ignore or reinterpret different parts of the Bible differently than them.

When do we, as a society of caring, empathic human beings, step in and say "Hey, you are too fucking impressionable and dumb to be allowed to make all your own decisions. Here are some picture books about finding an adult when you see a snake and why you shouldn't pick up poisonous animals because someone told you to."

The Bible is a book with a talking snake and a zombie wizard as central figures. One of its heroes offers his daughters up to a rape mob just before the lead murders two cities, animals included, in cold blood. It outlaws shellfish and mixed fabrics and sentences first-time offenders to eternal torture. It belongs in the mythology section. Or whatever section they keep Gacy's creepy fucking clown drawings in.

"If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out. Do it, sinner. I'm watching. Forever."

I mean, there's charitable interpretation, and then there's fucking flat out ignoring shit and pretending it isn't there. Every person that's ever told me the Bible is the most important book ever written also told me to ignore 3/4 of it. Why is that? Why can God not communicate effectively? Why would God ghostwrite a book that's 50% wrong, 40% debatable, 10% accurate given several dozen caveats, and allows fan-fiction to be treated as canon? That doesn't make any sense. Parents start coming up with stories like that when their kid's "Why? Why? Why?" game goes on two rounds too many.

God didn't grant anyone magical insight into how it's metaphorically true, or spiritually true, or can only be experienced emotionally and never explained rationally, or requires special interpretative rules that apply only to it or whatever horseshit people delude themselves with to shut the cognitive dissonance up.

This is not a good book to use to find answers. Specifically on questions of morality and acceptable behavior. I could come up with a better moral framework than the Bible, and I'm a dick.

So could you. So could anyone. Look:

Is human slavery wrong?

Congratulations, you have a better moral framework than the Bible. You have a better grasp of right and wrong than god. You either figured that out on your own, had it explained to you by another human, or your infallible god was kind enough to explain how your infallible god was wrong about fucking everything. It doesn't matter. The end result is the same: the Bible is wrong about enough things that it shouldn't be treated as a reliable source for anything. You can now quit pretending that the word translates to "prisoner of war" or "happy employee enjoying the fruits of capitalism" or whatever made-up sounding bullshit helps you defend your ridiculous position and move on with your life, joyously free of invisible totalitarian police states and weird sexual hangups.

Because seriously, when I point out that stoning children for back-talking or symbolically drinking the blood of a dead god to attain life eternal is unequivocally, furniture-made-out-of-dead-cheerleader-skin, eating-hair-out-of-other-people's-shower-drains crazy, whatever rationalization you offer is going to do nothing but cause me to wonder if you maybe shouldn't be left alone with sharp objects.

This book should not be taken seriously by anyone. It's an old book of tribal myths and fairy stories. That is all that it is. I'm sorry, but at some point we need to collectively acknowledge that. I had to, and you know what? I haven't eaten any babies or blown up any preschools. I'm the same as I was, just slightly less wrong about how everything works. And believe me, if I can admit when I'm wrong about something that important then so can you.

We especially should not be filming people that were tricked into believing that the book was to be taken seriously after a lifetime of being told to take the book seriously. We should be setting up an intervention for these poor fucks.

My X-Man Power. For Real.

I must have this weird energy I put off that ensures I can watch a TV show on occasion over a period of years and somehow only see the same three episodes. Or some kind of internal clock that keeps time by using the programming schedules of whatever I have on in the background.

It's uncanny.

I can tell you, for example, that the guest star in the Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode where Dennis winds up in a mental hospital was walking 1990's stereotype Sinbad, and that the guys name is Dennis because it stands for Demonstrate value, Engage physically, Nurture dependence, Neglect emotionally, Inspire hope, Separate entirely. This fucking show comes on every goddamn day during the three hours that Comedy Central isn't showing infomercials or teen comedies and accidentally lets programming on the air that isn't universally hated. My TV is on that channel for all three of those hours with me in the room at least once every two weeks. Which means, mathematically, that I have watched at least 26 episodes of Always Sunny in the past year. And it's ALWAYS THOSE TWO EPISODES!

Part of me thinks "This looks like the low-brow, lowest-common-denominator trash that gets pushed out the door to keep the studio's bills paid. Fuck it, I'm watching Charlie Brooker or Tim Minchin on YouTube." And part of me thinks "This looks like a subversive look into the dark realities of urban small-business ownership, abusive patriarchal family dynamics, and human sexuality disguised as low-brow comedy. It is entirely possible that this show is my generation's A Modest Proposal."

I will probably never know if either of those two thoughts is true.

Because if it comes on TV it will be either of those two episodes and I will never have a large enough sample size. If I see it on Netflix I'm damn sure not gonna watch it because I FUCKING HATE those two episodes.

House is the same way. Sliders. Battlestar Gallactica. Dr. Who before David Tennant descended from the heavens and proved that, yes, there is indeed a dick I would willingly pay to suck. Any Simpsons episode made after 1996. Big Bang Theory.


How. does. this. happen?