A Good Place to Start

Hello, my name is CornFed. And I will be your host this evening.

It’s not with any special training I bring to you that proves my ability to dissect and deliver a profound and embellished synopsis of the one book that has sold more copies than any Lionel Richie and Willie Nelson album combined. I possess nothing more than a 3 year Junior High degree with a minor in Social Studies and a major in killing things with either my truck or my gun. When it comes to things of the preacher, as my daddy would say, “I’m about as qualified for consumption as a hotdog without the mustard and relish.”

However, like with any kind soul I see stranded in the ditch at 2 AM, it is my duty as someone who’s been there, to assist in any way I can to put the car back on the highway and to help the driver understand the road is unmarked and not paved for a reason. And anyone who attempts to read the Bible is not excused from my humanitarian efforts. I have fell into the ditch of what the Bible really says more than once.

It all started with a visit to the Second Baptist Church of Small Town Georgia. Admittedly, I was a bit nervous on this particular evening, as it was during a week where a “revival” was being conducted at the Church. Revival is a code word that hides the true meaning of why they wanted in Church that week.

“You are going to Hell. Ticket to heaven inside”

is really what the advertisements should have read.

As the service started, with the blue haird ladies singing like a flock of buzzards and the old man banging on the piano without any good country lyrics behind it, I nearly walked myself out the door. That was until the preacher man stood behind the podium and started pointing fingers at the me. I know what finger pointing means and I’m not one to miss a chance at a good fight.

But there was no fight, just a bunch of preaching from this big book laid out on his podium one minute and being raised in his right hand the next. This book, as he said it, was the one thing that spawned the mere building of this church, the words and music behind the hymns, and the entire message he was delivering to us hell-bound folks.

Everything he said that night during his sermons was, and I quote,

“…is what the Bible really says…”

And so, not being one to give in to just anything without proper investigation, I took my fanny home and started reading the Bible. I had one in the house that someone had given me as a kid. The pictures really helped too. I had heard of some people reading “a chapter a day” and getting finished in “humpteen hundred years”. I suspect some have gotten called up before they got to the part in the Bible where they get called up.

With nothing but a keen desire to know what the Bible says, I decided to skip all the chapter-a-day-shit and jump right into it. And I was going to need supplies for this venture.

Cigarettes. Check
Jack Daniels. Check
Cheetos. Check
Coke. Check
Bud Light. Check

It was a meager list, something I figured would be enough to get me through a non-stop session of finding out what the Bible really says. By the end of the first day, I realized that I was going to need more help.

RedBull. Check
Coffee. Check

And then as I really got into some of the disturbing aspects of the Bible, I decided I had under estimated it’s potentional and affect on my life.

Xanax. Check
Horse Tranquilizer. Check
More Cigarettes. Check
JohnnyWalkerBlack. Check
Bigger drinking glasses. Check

And eventually, it became obscenely obvious that the residual effects of what I am undertaking was going to just require a complete overhaul of my psyche and emotions.

Book on Meditation. Check
Ticket to India. Check
1 month stay in Ashram. Check

I could keep going on and on with the list of things I had to acquire to really get my head and heart around what the Bible was really saying. I even bought books to figure out just where in the hell this thing came from, who wrote it, and why in the shit-fire they would cover some of the material they did. I took up Greek translations. I looked for narrations, devotionals, and everything who could tell me what the Bible was really saying.

And everyone said it said something different.

And I want to throw my own two cents worth in there if I could.

First off, the bible is really a book of paradoxes. For those unlearned in the ways of words longer than 2 syllables, a “paradox” is something that is opposite of it’s supposed meaning but can be taken to mean something else entirely also, depending on how you see it.

For example, let’s say you have an aunt weighing 90 pounds who is wheel-chair bound and you refer to her as “Fat-Man Walking” This would be a paradox in the fact that the words mean the opposite of the reality. Your aunt is not fat and she’s not walking. She’s in a wheel chair and drinking Ensure to keep her weight up. Get my drift so far?

And it’s even a bigger paradox if the person to whom this paradox was attached to, was in fact a woman. You call her Fat-Man Walking. Well, your aunt is a woman so calling her a man is a paradox. Combine the fact she’s not fat, that she’s not a man, and that she has no intention of walking, and you have what I’d like to call a “paradox tres”, a triple whammy of paradoxes.

To make matters more confusing, if you told your friends that Fat-Man Walking was staying at your house and they showed up and saw your skinny aunt in a wheelchair, they would be super confused. You would have to sit each of them down and explain to them the meaning of paradoxes and what you were actually trying to say.

The wheelchair bound aunt thing is probably a bad example as I do not make fun of anyone who cannot walk but the Bible doesn’t necessary discriminate so I figure I would keep the words true to form.

The Bible, in the way it tries to convey its story, is sort of like the paradox concept I mentioned above. In some places it’s just a simple ole paradox. For example, you may read in the Bible “God loves children”. Sounds like a simple fact if you ask me. But, when you read about God burning down kids in the next sentence, well, that’s a paradox. God cannot love children while burning them down.

In other places, it’s a “paradox tres”, like the Fat-Man Walking reference above. For example, you may read in the Bible that “God loves puppies and children and deer” but in the next sentence you may read “and then God drowned them in a flood of salt water.” That would be a paradox tres. God cannot love puppies, children, and deer while they are being drowned in a tub of salt water.

For me personally, I had to continually reach for a 12 pack of beer just to keep my head from spinning off my shoulders and rolling down a hill so don’t feel bad if you don’t grasp the concept just yet.

Secondly, on top of the paradox-thing, the bible is a downright disgusting book in many places. I don’t mean disgusting like “I saw vomit on the floor” disgusting. I’m talking this thing takes your mind places that it has probably never been before, unless you served in some kind of armed forces and spent the weekends docking in Thailand. God forbid if you knew someone that some of this stuff actually happened to.

About the least disgusting thing it mentions is stuff like a woman’s menstrual cycle (called “bitch days” where I’m from) and what to do with her during those murderous 7 days of hell (Daddy usually just bought mama flowers and locked her in the shed now and again). If only the bible would stop there!

Oh no, it’s got murder, rape, talking animals, death, mayhem, salt licks made from humans (not the kind you feed the cows), prostitution, venereal diseases (that means stuff that makes your pee-pee hurt), shit-eating, along with a host of things that has taken many a 90 day stay in AA just to get back on their feet again. Just ask my Uncle Jimmy.

Thirdly, as if shit eating isn’t enough, the cast of characters described in this book makes a night at the Gangland Bar’n’Grill in Compton California feel like a choir of blue-haired ladies singing “Amazing Grace.” There are men in there with triple digit quantity of wives (that’s greater than 1,000 for those who failed math), dudes who play the damned harp, psychics worse than the ones you find at Panama City Beach, kings who like to sick lions on people instead of just putting them in the county lock-up, wife stealers from within the family (I think that’s called in-law in-breeding), executioners, kings that kill because of the day of the week, men who give up their family for death, thieves, prostitutes, johns (that’s the owner or owners of said prostitutes), incestual family members (not so uncommon where I’m from though), drunkards, nudists, socialists, fascists, communists, Democrats, Republicans, demons, angels, and what not.

Basically, take every prison in America, mix it with Washington DC, throw in the Chicago Union of past headed by Jimmy Hoffa, round up all the homeless in California, open the gates at all the zoo’s, top it with all of the Mexican construction workers and painters, insert the frequent members of the Hedonism club in Jamaica, add a few corporate executives, don’t check passports for a year at the airport, add in a a very minutely populated Human Resource Department and you have yourselves the predominant types of people this book is about.

There are a few Good Ole Boy standouts, sort of like your cousin Earl who could always hold himself at a pool table and a fighting contest while still loving his grandmother with all his heart, but they don’t get the most press. I pretty much called my Mom every now and again after a bad dream because of this book.

But why a Bible though? Why does such a piece of literature exist that has spawned all these wars, churches, and late night cable television shows?

At the end of the day, there is supposedly some kind of great spiritual moral code interweaved through the whole entire book. That’s why we have all the various religions floating around, each of them basing their by-laws on interpretations of this part of the bible and that part of the bible. Eventually, these by-laws are passed to the in-laws and you are only a lawyer away from having yourself a tax-deductible bonafide religion.

But the real reason behind it’s large following, is the fact that it’s been said that God directly influenced the writers to write what they wrote when they wrote it on whatever they could write it on. That’s why it was supposedly written on fig leaves, or whatever the hell they could get their hands that would hold blood/ink/lead and protected it like you would your favorite tackle box on the way to a bass tournament. And, don’t get me wrong I learned a lot from reading this thing, but I think I learned more of what not to do and believe in life than what to do and believe in.

That, and I now require the services of sedatives in order to sleep at night.

On my worst days when I would rather sit in my home, beat my dog with a tire iron, and drink myself into a coma, I still don’t want you to go through all the turmoil I did in reading this Bible. I don’t want you to get your hands on this thing either, with it’s typical leather bound cover and gold glitter writing with cutesy very-old-woman-skin-thin paper, beckoning you to “find the missing link” within. They should put skull and cross bones on the cover if you ask me.

What kind of person gives someone a big box on Christmas morning that says Bass Pro Shops on the outside and then fill it with jig saw puzzle pieces that, when put together, have David Hasselholf lying on the beach in a thong? Really, how cruel would that be?

So, go ahead and stock up on some beer, buy a tin of Skoal, a carton of cigarettes, and let’s go through this here Bible. Uncle CornFed will tell you what this thing is all about. I’ve always been told “What the Bible Really Says” and everyone said something different. I’m just gonna tell you what this country minded boy came up with when he read it and it’s definitely going to be different; perhaps even downright funny. And definitely irreverent.


Book 0 – A Little Introduction to What the Bible Really Says

So, let’s back up a minute and start with the first question I had when I started reading this thing. Why does a book have a bunch of other little books in it to begin with? Today, in the year 2009, we refer to sections of a book that resemble each other as “Chapters”. But since the Bible is, as you will find out as we go along here, so disjointed in it’s coherency, someone figured it was just a bunch of books that were put together so they could keep it all in one binder. Think of it like this. Remember all those book reports you wrote in highschool? Pretend each one you wrote was a book and then put them all together into a single folder and write on the cover, in permanent black hog marker, BIBLE. Something like that.

And to make things a bit more confusing, we have the one book with many little books broken down into sentences that have numbers next to them. My daddy always told me that my ego would get me in trouble one day but I’ll be damned if I ever numbered my book reports so the teacher could more easily call to the attention of the class the greatness of line 44. Lastly, in our treasure hunt for some kind of understanding, we have a book that contains many books with every sentence numbered AND it’s broken into 2 larger sections, called testaments.

There is the New Testament and the Old Testament. Testament, in Dead Eye Dick speak, means “a way of seeing and doing things.” So, we have the old way-of-seeing-and-doing-things in the first ¾ of the bible and then we have the new way-of-seeing-and-doing-things in the last ¼ of the bible. Personally, I think we need a new-new-way-of-seeing-and-doing-things, as I don’t think anyone took some of this stuff into account when creating all these religions.

I digress.

So, now that I’ve come full circle and have decided to thrust my mind and soul upon the Bible, I’m faced with a few dilemmas. For starters, there are several versions of this thing out there, called “Tranlsations”. What paraphrase means, and allow me to borrow from Mr. Webster himself on this, is

“Something said a certain way based on an interpretation of said interpreter”.

My grandpa had the same kind of habit. He is the only man I have ever known who could interpret a fart as a handshake, constantly asking me if I would “pull my finger” every time I met him.

Along those same lines, we have quite a few translations of the Bible. Now, without getting into all the details of why and how these came to be, let’s just say that one group of people didn’t quite understand the current translation put in front of their faces while their kin folk were being murdered by the religions of a certain translation. So, they decided they would take the original language (a mix of Hebrew, Greek, and Russian I think) and decipher the phrases into a language that made more sense for them.

For example, we have the King James Version, which has more “thees” and “thou’s” in it to make enough people get a little bit hesitant to venture further into the verses. On the other end if the spectrum, you have the Living Translation, which puts things into better English, using words that make sense to most modern men and women. They even have a Children’s Version which uses pictures to help kids get through the tough parts, like venereal diseases and massive death swarms of locusts eating dogs and cats, leaving nothing but their little feetsies gripping the barren earth.

But what is really important here is that now there is a Country Boy’s Version, sanctioned by the American Beer Drinkers Association (ABDA), the Gun Shooting Consortium of South Georgia (GSCSG) and me, CornFed (CF). I didn’t really have access to the original texts as they are stored up in some kind of vault somewhere next to Marilyn Monroe’s panties, but I did manage to obtain copies of the “best of breed” translations that many churches use here in the United States and craft this special little Bible just for you.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to grab myself a shot of Crown and get this translating road show moving along.


Book 1 – Genesis and the Story of Why You Can Fish and Hunt

I always loved books that took the obvious and stated it in plain English just to see how stupid the reader really is. So, the first book in the Bible, the story of how it all begain, starts with, guess what,

“In the beginning…”

Masterful literature straight out of Dr. Seuss I tell you. And what’s even more, I always loved books that had a title that meant something dirty in a foreign language. Come to find out, “Genesis” translates to “Bereshith” in Hebrew. How about that? With a little creativity, and consulting my Uncle Donald, who knows a lot about words since he actually graduated highschool, "Bereshith" sounds similar to the story about a bear in the woods shitting and wiping his butt with a hare wandering nearby. Looking at it from this standpoint can definitely make it more easily digestible for your mind, as Genesis is the story about how the bear and the hare got created, along with all digestive functions.

Now, for those of you who have heard the words “evolution”, “creationism”, “die evolutionist”, and “die creationist”, this book is really the beginning of all the hoopla we have today over how in the world we got here and how the world that we live in, got here as well. Basically, the book Genesis says something like the following in the first chapter

“God made all the crap you can see, feel, and touch along with your ability to see, feel, and touch all that crap, crap included.”

Really, maybe I’m a brainiac or something, but it didn’t take me but a few minutes to reduce a thousand words to that little gem. However, I’d be leaving out some pretty cool stuff if I left it at that.

For example, Genesis goes into the number of days it took God, our first main character in this book, to create everything we see. Now, God apparently worked in “days”, just like we do. You know, on Monday I do laundry. On Tuesday, I go fishing. On Wednesday, I bang the wife. Linear shit like that. It’s easier to understand if you sort of see that God liked to work in some sort of linear pattern as well.

And so, to just jump into Genesis without much further ado, God created the land you drive your truck on, the sun that makes you freckle up in the summer, the stars you stare at when you’re drinking, and the water where you park your bass boat, all in about 4 days flat. Not bad eh?

But, there’s a problem here.

Just because you have land, sun, stars, and water doesn’t mean you have fish to catch, birds to shoot, bucks to hunt, and all those other things that we love so much. So, in keeping with the linear thinking model, Goddie-Pooh decided that it was time to create some living things that would fit in just fine with all the sun, stars, land, and water that was created previously. And on the 5’th day, probably during lunch hour, God made all the birds of the sky and all the fishies of the water, including those stupid ass sharks we keep seeing in the movies. I know what you’re thinking and I thought the same thing.

“You mean when I go to a dove shoot or go bass fishing, God made those things in a single day?”

You got it. On the same damned day! Day 5 to be exact. Tis some amazing shit we have here friends. However, the game warden who writes you a ticket for all that fun comes later.

This next part is where I would have loved to had been a locust on a pine tree. Can you imagine God’s thought processes as the consideration of what to do next is brought on the table? Think about it, you have land but no animals that can walk on it. That’s like getting a boob job but not letting anyone touch it.

So, somewhere along the way, right before day 6 started, God got Himself good and liquored up and does what country boys do best. God did what you and I have always wanted to do. And I think this is more the reason God is referred to as a “He” than anything else. He created a big ole’ wild life preserve. I mean, this Guy really did a number on the planet.

Remember all those deer killed last year in your state? Yep. God created the original ones in a single day. Those squirrels? Yep, day 6. The possum you smashed on the highway. You guessed it…a day 6 creature also. I don’t know where turtles, or those catfish that seem to live for days without water, fit into this equation but they were either created on day 5 or on day 6 or perhaps they were a drunken thought at midnight between the two days. I’m not sure.

But then God figured it wasn’t any good to have all these animals running around, all these fishies swimming around, and all the birds flying around without some Big Bad Ass shooting at them or trying to kill them. And so, God decided to make himself a man.

Now, they don’t go into much detail about the rationale behind why God created man first and woman second. Assuming we continue to refer to God as a “He”, I can probably think of about 489 reasons why I would create a woman first but that’s just me. Genesis simply says

“It was not good for man to be alone.”

Oddly enough, the writers failed to mention anything about how good it is to be alone sometimes and the costs of disengaging a marriage when one is tired of all the bitching and moaning, but I digress, yet again.

As an aside, I’ve often wondered what they looked like to be honest. I’ve seen the news and read the books about some ape looking thingy walking around. Personally, I’d like to think of them as Mr. Ken Doll and Mrs. Barbie Doll. I mean, really, if the authors of Genesis aren’t going to give me any thing else to go on, I figured Ken was hung like a horse and Barbie had tits big enough to rest a tall-boy beer can between them. And I bet you could bounce a quarter off her ass and onto the moon.

Now, here is yet another part I have often considered God’s thought processes concerning. I’ll give you a hint what it is. You got here because of it. It cost your daddy hunting priveleges for a year to obtain it, and your mama would probably like to just drop the whole matter altogether after you were born. It is probably the greatest directive God ever made to any living creature and, coming from the porn industry as a both a fan and a rising star, this is more of a shout-out for my favorite porn stars. God told all these fishies and birdies and humans the following, in a big loud voice:

“Now get it on! Do it! Multiply! Shake it to the left! Shake it to the right! Do it all night! Yeah baby! Rock out!

”

So, whenever you see dolphins having group sex on the Biography channel or humans in a porn film, remember who told them to do so. That would be God. As Genesis would say it, and I quote,

“And God saw that it was good.”

Word up God. Now, pass me a joint will ya? You know, that plant you created on day 3?

That’s really the basics of the creation story as told by whomever wrote Genesis. I think the hardest part to understand is why in the world would something as complex as this earth only get a single chapter and a half in it’s creation but you get a zillion pages about the people in it later on. Me personally, I’d like to know just exactly how God got the idea of the Hippopotamus or those damn Mud Fish I keep pulling out of the lake. I mean, come on, why in the shit storm would you think of something like those two?

Oh, I almost forgot this part before we get into the life of the things God created. Now, you remember how Sunday is always one of those days where Grandpa or Grandma would go to church and then sleep the afternoon away? Well, that’s because Genesis says that when you’ve busted your butt for 6 days, it’s best to take one off.

Apparently, God did just that. In the equivalent of a workweek, God made all this stuff and then decided it was time to pop a Xanax and take it easy for a day. Going forward, don’t let anyone call you lazy for sleeping off a hangover all day Sunday ok? Just point them to Genesis and tell them you spent all day and night of Day 6 consuming and procreating, just like the bible told you to.

The really interesting part about Genesis, as I mentioned before, is that we don’t get many details. We don’t get to know the chemical compounds and the amount of electrical shock treatments required to concoct planet Earth. We don’t get any sort of rationale or logic as to why things look the way they do. No, we just get the basics But, when it comes to the life of the first humans, there are some very unbasic things about Genesis.

As my Dad would always tell me,

“The most un-basic and confusing thing ever created is the woman. I can figure out deer, quail, turkeys, and even my kinfolk. But not my damned wife!”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but love for the ladies. With proper exercise and diet, I think God did one hell of a job with shaping up these lovely creatures. With the advent of Ibuprofen and Prozac, there are likely many days of consistent behavior.

However, apparently the first one fucked up something royally in the home God made for them. We will see this as a theme throughout the Bible. God always gives someone special a nice place to live or some kind of great ability. God likes to bless. On the flip side, once you fuck up, God also likes to kick the piss-shit out of you. This is what happened to Eve apparently while they were living in the special place God created for them…the Garden of Eden. Many writers today also refer to life there as “Paradise” and I will use the terms interchangeably (which means, for those who struggle with multiple words used to convey the same idea, the Garden of Eden and Paradise mean the same damned thing).

As it is told by the writers of Genesis, who must have somehow gotten there before God did to see this whole thing unfold, you have a this big ass Garden that God built for the first man and woman crafted. The man’s name was Adam and the woman’s name was Eve. I can see the Garden of Eden now, as if I was Adam.

I’ve got myself a log cabin with deer antler chandeliers and a big pond full of bass just across the backyard. I’ve got a naked woman wandering around with tits the size of cantelopes and an ass so tight that not even modern day brick shit-houses can compare. I’ve got a few trucks in the garage, all of them shining. The front yard is full of fruit trees that produce year round. I’ve got pears, figs, peaches, and some bright big red apples. Inside, after a long day of fishing and running around naked, I’ve got a recliner made from the skin of sheep in the living room. The rest of the log cabin is just one big bed for pro-creating. Who could ask for anything more? How could you possibly fuck this up?

Enter the mixed up logic of a woman.

The only rule God laid down for Adam and Eve in this Garden was that they should not eat anything from the apple tree. Granted, those apples were some good-looking things but apparently they would completely fuck up Paradise if anyone ate them. Don’t ask me why God always attaches rules to perfection.

Adam avoided the apples like the plague. Men are like that. Ever since my Daddy told me wasps would make my pee-pee shrivel up if I ever got stung by one, I’ve been running from them sons of bitches ever since.

Eve, though, liked to ride the line between rules and emotions. Every day while Eve was tiptoeing through the Garden, she would sort of look at those apples and wonder about them.

“What would it be like to eat one?”

She could almost taste the juices and the warm fuzzy feeling they would give her.

For some time though, the idea of fucking up Paradise scared her enough to keep her fingers off the apples. But then a snake appears out of the grass and convinces her that even though the price was extremely high, it was perfectly okay if she ate one of those apples. After all, said the snake,

“God is just a bit worried about things. He’s got a big enough ego that He’s got to put some rules out there so He still feels like He’s in control. Go on, have a bite.”

To put this into something that resonates with most married men, Eve was like most women at a jewelry store who jump away once they see the price tag of a shiny necklace full of diamonds. But then, as she fondles it and ponders what their husband said about not having any money, she hears a voice from behind the counter that says…

“He won’t mind. He’s got a big credit line and He’s just scared you’re going to find out that you have all the money in the world and can buy everything you want.”

If Adam had been there, he would just shot the damned snake. At a jewelry store, he would have beaten the clerk to a pulp.

And so, with nary an ounce of fear in her eyes, Eve ate the apple and the world has been in the shitter ever since.

There is a term I heard in Church ever since I was a kid. The preacher man would always tell me about the “Fall” of mankind and how that simple act of Eve eating that apple set into motion all the bull-shit we have in the world today. Your Daddy is mean because of the “Fall”. Your Grandma looks like a prune because of the “Fall”. You cannot get it up again after sex because of the “Fall”. You work because of the “Fall”. You die because of the “Fall”…all that kind of stuff that makes life something very goddamned irritating.

This is where that view of life comes from. Apparently, because of the apple eating incident, God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, sold all the luxury items, burned down the log cabin, drained the pond, and gave them both an inferiority complex about how they looked. You can thank God for why women wear clothes year round and still complain about their butt when it’s covered in layers of denim.

As they were being escorted from the Garden, God spoketh unto them and sayeth,

“Woman, you may love sex now but it’s gonna hurt in a very bad way when you have children. And man, you are now a farmer full-time. If you’re lucky, you might have the energy for sex after long days of work. Oh, when the both of you die, you’ll be nothing but a bunch of compost for the plants! Now go build your own goddamn log cabin, you irresponsible fuck-sticks!”

The rest of Genesis talks about the kids that Adam and Eve had, what they did, who they did it with, and other stuff you typically hear during conversations at family reunions. The real stinker about the family lineage here is that Adam and Eve only had 2 sons for quite a while, Cain and Abel. What this means is that either one of them was going to have to pull some kind of gender-bender in order to keep the new human-thing moving along, or they were gonna have to talk to Mom and Dad about getting them a sister so they could have some inbred youngins. Man, this is sounding just like a family reunion more and more.

I cannot say for sure what transpired next but apparently Cain found himself a wife and they had some kids I’d like to think that God miracled up a woman for Cain since you can only imagine how pissed He’d be if there was inbreeding going on. The writers of Genesis don’t really tell you the full story. Let’s just assume that Cain’s wife wasn’t really his sister so you don’t have to feel funny when you’re alone with yours.

Given that Genesis is about the first humans, you would expect some really good Mormon type of genealogy here. The writers try, they really do, but it’s downright confusing trying to figure out who screwed who and who built what and when someone died. They’ve got some folks living upwards of 900 years in the lineage description. Can you imagine how many kids that guy fathered? Let’s just say that along the way, a whole bunch of people starting occupying planet Earth and they were living quite a long time.

God, thinking that maybe He should put a cap on the life span of humans since these fuckers were averaging 500+ years and I can only imagine how much corn and rice they ate over their lifespan, decided that a good number for life on planet Earth was 120 years. Once you hit 120, you poofed up like a fizzled out bottle rocket.

Apparently, God has changed His mind since then as no one lives in my family past 90. Still though, 120 years is a pretty good life and I bet everyone was pretty happy with the new lifespan God told them about. Apparently, they were a little bit too happy and carefree about it however.

The eventual outcome of all the kinfolk of Adama nd Even didn’t end quite the way anyone had intended. God figured they would die off at 120 and the cycle of life would continue. The kinfolk had other ideas and because of their attitude, their ending was even more cataclysmic (that words means great destructive shit happened) than getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Apparently, and the details are again sketchy, everyone started acting like mean asses. They didn’t get along. No one shared the potatoes at the dinner table. The kids were fighting. The damned in-laws were taking over entire cities. It just got ugly.

God, in a theme of destruction that will continue to recur forever in the Bible, said, and I quote…

“Alright. Fuck this shit. You know what, I’m just gonna fill this whole fucking Earth tub of terds with some salt water. That should get rid of all the people and their fighting. Now, I’m gonna need to re-stock Earth later on once all the water is drained so maybe I’ll just have that nice guy, what was his name...tall…beard…cute wife…Yes! Noah! I’ll get him and his family to build a big ass cruise ship, we’ll stick two of all the animals and other little things I created on it, and then once I’ve drowned everything with salt water, we’ll have everything we need to start over again! At least it’ll save me from repeating that whole creation crap process. Man, I never want to have to decide on the colors of a tiger ever again”

To make a long story short, Noah and his family obeyed God (as if they had a fucking choice?) and built the ship, dragged on a few friends, coralled up two of all the animals, and waited for God to unleash the Great Flood. Everyone and everything not on the ship died under the tidal wave of salt water. A few months go by and the ship starts to stink because there are no portable toilets and elephants are notoriously nasty. God figures no one could have lived through that shit and gets rid of the water. On a bright and sunny Monday morning, everyone and everything get off the cruise ship, and we start this whole shit-bang over again. Knowing wild hogs like I do, I’m willing to bet more than two got off that boat at the rate they breed.

Because God chose Noah to be the captain of the cruise ship, he becomes a central figure throughout Genesis and gets kudos in other parts of the Bible as well. God must have felt sort of bad about what He had done or else Noah was just one charming guy, but the conversation they had that Monday morning after everything was unloaded from the cruise ship went something like this…

“Noah, hey man. Look, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. I couldn’t help but notice that you built an altar for me the minute you set foot on the ground. I really appreciate that. It smells pretty good. I have always like Jasmine inscense. And, well, I’ve been thinking about that Great Flood thing. I really don’t want to resort to that kind of action again. I’ve been doing some digging and I think you and I should start an agreement. Let’s call it a Covenant. You keep building me altars and loving me and I promise I won’t wipe out planet Earth again. Matter of fact, I’ll sweeten the deal. I’m going to make sure you have the best life ever and any kinfolk of yours are going to be number one in my books forever. What do you think? Agree?”

Of course Noah agreed. Would you fuck with a God who just buried a bunch of puppies beneath a tidal wave of salt-water?

Now, I could go and tell you all about the life of the new generation of humans but I would lose you at some point. Let’s just say that the only real fuck-up for the first 10 generations of people was the fact that a group of in-breds figured they would build a city that was tall enough to reach heaven and start a tour of world domination, sort of like what those idiots over in Dubai are trying to accomplish with all those buildings. In Genesis, it was called the Tower of Babel.

Well, at this time, everyone spoke the same language. You know, humans were all one people with one language and we all sat around the camp fire singing “Kumbaya My Lord” all night til the sun came up; sweet shit like that.

God, liking the way we humans were sticking together, didn’t want this city to be built and didn’t much care for a world-domination tour. He thought to Himself…

“Fuck, I cannot wipe this planet out again. I promised Noah I wouldn’t. But, man, this shit isn’t going to work. I cannot have all these fuckers trying to take over the world. Maybe if I just confuse them a little, ya know, maybe Matrix some over in this part of the world, a few over there, and then change the language so that everyone speaks something different. I bet that would take the wind out of them.”

Now you understand why we have Rednecks, Yankee,s Trailer Park Trash (separate from Rednecks due to their child bearing and smoking abilities), Mexicans, Indians, and other people all working in the same office but no one can understand what the fuck the other person is saying.

Call up for customer support on your new Dell computer? Yep. You can thank them fuckers trying to build the Tower of Babel in Genesis for that difficult conversation.

Over the years, I suspect God must have enjoyed watching everyone doing the best they could with their lives until that point in time came where He felt left out. I mean, He’s been doing some pretty big shit for a long time and since Noah is long gone, He doesn’t really have anyone to bless in a big way, ya know?

It is now that I would like to introduce to you the one person who has single handedly changed the face of religion and the world, as we know it. The old man’s name was Abraham, his old wife’s name was Sarah, and you can thank the agreement that God and Abraham made in Genesis for all the fighting over the last umpteen-thousand years about all that desert land overseas. The agreement went something like this:

“Abraham, hey it’s me, God. Things are kind of boring these days and I am looking for someone special to bless. You seem like a nice guy and I figured, well fuck, why not make you an offer you cannot refuse. How about you pack up your family and move to some land that I’ll show you later. It’s named Canaan but we’ll call it the Promised Land since I always deliver on what I promise. I’ll even make you the leader of a great nation and all your descendants will be living high-on-the-hog. Matter of fact, if someone doesn’t like you, I’ll just burn them to the ground. If someone does like you, then I’ll make sure they get blessings too. What do you say Abraham?”

Abraham agreed and told all his family about this great plan God had given him. His nephew, a man named Lot, pulled out his banjo made from the gut of a goat and some hickory wood, and sang this song to commerate the event. Come on everyone, sing along with me using the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies…first verse only please…

“Come and listen to a story about a man named Abraham”
“A poor old fart whose wife was almost dead”
“Then one day God started acting all cool”
“And promised him some land for all of us fools!”

“Canaan that is, the Promised Land, can’t wait to see!”

After everyone spent the night partying with some Old Crow bourbon (they were poor folks then), they all started marching towards Canaan, the land promised by God. The name of these people, God’s chosen people led by Abraham are named the Israelites. Get used to the name. You will hear about them forever in the Bible and you can still catch them on CNN once a week with rocket launchers and machine guns trying to either defend or take over more land.

As with all things relating to God’s promises, there is a catch. The men have to get their pee-pee’s circumsized. Now you know where that




Book 2 – Exodus and the Journey of the Red Headed Step Children

If I look in my Websters dictionary, I see that the word exodus means “a video grame in 1991 that..”

Wait. That cannot be right.

The more realistic definition has to be the second entry….“a journey by a large group to escape from a hostile environment.”

Now if that doesn’t have all the fixings for an NC-17 movie, I don’t know what does. Whenever you combine the words “large group” with “escape” and followed by “hostile”, you are definitely getting into something you want to read about.

And Exodus doesn’t disappoint!

I’m sure a lot of you out there have heard about Moses. And I am certain anyone with a guilt trip of any kind has definitely heard about the 10 Commandments. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if you watch the Discovery channel, you’ve heard of Egypt. And as this set-up-to-the-plot thickens, if you’ve heard of Egypt, then I know you’ve heard about them there Pharoahs who ruled the land like Stalin ruled Russia. And if you’ve even been in jail, or had a dear beloved family member in jail, then you’ve heard the phrases “breaking the law” and “judge” and “sentenced” and “in prison”. And if any of you are married, or had been married, then you understand the word “covenant”. (Don’t confuse this with convent, which is what I heard married life is like, but I digress.)

And all of this is wrapped right up into the book of Exodus! It’s a story about an insecure Pharoah who has a bunch of red-headed step children (code named the Israelites) and he’s getting nervous about their numbers. You see, in keeping with Genesis, those Israelites are just a multiplying quicker than a bunch of caged up rabbits without birth control. So the Pharoah decides to just throw a bunch of the newborn boys into the river.

Well, the second most important character in this book just so happens to be one of those little midgets thrown into the river. But the meanie Pharoah has a daughter and she saves him because the little baby’s mama had the foresight to put the little shitter in a canoe made of bushes. Only in the Bible can you put an 8-pound kid on a stick, throw him into the river, and he doesn’t sink like a cat terd in a punch bowl at a New Years Eve party.

The baby’s name became Moses.

Somehow we manage to skip 15 or 20 years of Moses’ life and go straight to his marriage to this chick whose dad was a foreshadowing of one of the greatest names in one of the greatest television shows ever. His name was Jethro and he only missed stardom by 6,000 years or so.

As with my experience so far with the Bible, things get really strange real quick-like.

I suspect Moses had a fairly decent life going on before God started showing up and doing some really weird things. I’m betting he’s out there day in and day out, working along side Jethro, smacking them sheep on the fanny with a stick, cracking some good anti-Egyptian jokes, and eating some good ole kosher pickles alongside his wife…just being all he can be ya know?

Until one day, he wanders up on the mountain and this bush starts a burning. I remember how bent out of shape I became when I was a kid and I woke up to a campfire that had gotten out of control. But I think I’d done shot myself in the head if a damn bush turns on fire like the flames on one of them gas-injected grill systems. But, Moses, he just keeps his cool and says one of the most useful quotes in Exodus, something I used when I found dad’s porn collection in the closet:

“I will now turn aside and see this great sight…”

And this is where you start getting the feeling that this ain’t no regular burning bush. It starts talking to Moses, telling him that he better get naked and not move an inch because this here ground is some holy ground. At first, I thought the word “holy” meant Moses was gonna fall through some hole or something but I got to thinking about how silly that sounded so I consulted Webster’s again to figure out what in the hell this bush meant.

As with most words, they mean different things. Just ask your drunk grandpa how many different words exist for a “kitty-kat” and you’ll get the idea. As for the word holy, the best one I could find was “worthy of worship; sacred”. So, the bush was telling Moses he was standing on ground worthy of worship. For those who are not used to bowing down to anything, except to pick up a beer that fell out of the fridge, think of the word “holy” as something you really really revere as something that deserves your direct attention at certain moments of your life.

Something like a toilet after a long night of drinking would be a good analogy.

Well, to keep this simple, the bush said he was God and that Moses was gonna run back to Egypt and get all those 600,000+ thousand kin-folk out that silly ass country and drag their fannies back to some place called Canaan, a resort land that God Himself built up just for them, although it doesn’t really sound like that great of a place if you ask me. All the God Almighty can say about it is that it is “flowing with milk and honey.” Shit, I can get that at the Piggly Wiggly any day of the week.

And, just for the record, I have yet to figure out why God just didn’t build the great state of Georgia sooner but I guess the writers of the book don’t really have time to put any more words into God’s mouth.

So, apparently back in those days milk and honey was a high commodity and the Burning Bush selected Moses himself to fetch them kids. Now if that ain’t a plot, I don’t know what is.

Just picture this…..we have a man who up until a few weeks ago, was busy smacking sheep on the fanny. He was up on the mountain, probably taking a piss, when a bush tells him he’s gotta go and man up to the Pharoah and get the kids out of that shithole. Shit, he had just turned 40, already busy putting up coins into his 401k for the golden years and now this!

Armed with nothing but a walking stick and the memory of a talking bush with fire for a tongue, Moses makes his way to Egypt to have a one-on-one with the Pharoah. God talks to Moses on the way a little bit more, sort of helping him remember his lines and where on the stage he is supposed to be.

Now, the Pharoah, well, like most tyrants, he wasn’t going to let up too soon. I can see him now, sitting on his throne, with all those funky looking cats roaming around him, a slew of half naked women wearing more gold than the Federal Reserve…all the while busy clapping their little silver hand clappers while some really cool slinky-dancing music blasts over the speakers in the Pharoah’s pyramid house. I can see Moses, who enlisted the help of his brother, say to the Pharoah (paraphrased):

“Look, God said we gotta take the shit heads to another land. So, that’s pretty much it.”

The Pharoah said something along the lines of…

“You gotta be shittin’ me cracker.”

Well, the next little bit of the book is where we learn about just how schizo the leading character in this book is. God, apparently realizing that he didn’t do things quite so well when he created the Egyptians, decided he was gonna give them hell. And boy did the big man do it.

There comes a time in every man’s life where you find yourself up against some shit you ain’t never seen. For some, it’s cancer. For others, your wife gets pregnant even though you’ve been off in the Navy for a year. And, if you happened to be living in Egypt around this time, you got yourself a nice view of what scholars like to call The Ten Plagues.

And now, in order of appearance, I present to you the top 10 things God did to Egypt to convince them to let those Israelites free. I like to call it the “Top 10 Reasons Why You Don’t Mess Around With God When You Are Harboring Israelites in Egypt”..

“Number 10…your water supply might turn to blood!”
“Number 9..... you might wake up and find yourself in bed with a frog!”
“Number 8…...you might find more than your hair is full of lice!”
“Number 7…you will understand the meaning of Lord of the Flies intimately!”
“Number 6….you’ll find out God doesn’t really care much for livestock!”
“Number 5….you thought pimples were bad…wait til you see these boils!”
“Number 4….hail hath no fury like a God’s scorn!
“Number 3…..locusts aren’t just for putting down little girls’ skirts anymore!”
“Number 2…..don’t you wish you had electricity to eat lunch in the dark!”

And the Number 1 Reason Why You Don’t Mess Around with God When You Are Harboring Israelites in Egypt is….

“You might find out God loves killing kids as much as you!”

Thank you! Thank you!

Seriously, after making my way through the plagues, I had to put this book down, walk out in my backyard, look up at the sky, and wonder to myself:

“Maybe I’d better untie my girlfriend from the bed before this kind of shit happens to me.”

Recovery from bible reading was fairly swift for a brazen redneck like me, although it wasn’t easy. After about a week of jumping a foot high every time I heard a locust or popping a Xanax whenever I saw a pimple that was a bit bigger than normal, I decided it was time to pick my reading back up and see what happened to Moses and all those Israelites after the Pharoah decided he’d done seen enough and let them go to that land of milk and honey.

But before I get any further into this here story, I gotta tell you one little caveat to the 10 Plagues I didn’t mention before. I’m sure we’ve all heard the term “Passover”. I don’t mean it like the way we use it back home.

“Ma! Pass-over that there gravy before my biscuits get cold!”

I mean it in more of a “Thank God that cop done passed-over me on the highway last night. I was stone-cold drunk!” I think that’s more what the writers of Exodus were thinking about…something celebratory in the face of death.

Now, if you’ll remember that 10’Th plague, the one where all the first-born got their fannies skewered like a bunch of sirloin tips on the Fourth of July. What I failed to mention is that God told Moses to tell the Israelites that if they would leave some blood from a goat on their doorstep, they wouldn’t have anything killed, that God would “pass-over” their babies.

The only reason I bring this up is that some things in the Bible tend to stick around for thousands of years. To this day, this celebration is still a part of a large part of our American culture. I’m not sure why though. In my neck of the woods, the only thing that turns up dead in the morning are the possums. But I digress.

So, since the rest of this book reads more like a community newspaper gossip column than a great story line in lots of place, I’m gonna give you the skinny version of what happens until the climax. It’s numbered so you can keep up.

1. The Egyptians, still undeterred by the 10 plagues, decided they wanted those red-head step children back, so they packed up their camels and Range Rovers and started across the desert after them.

2. When the Israelites, with the Egyptions in hot pursuit, got to the Red Sea, which was actually Blue like most seas but named Red for reasons no one knows, they were sort of stuck and were counting on the God to do something.

3. God did something. He parted the Red Sea.

4. The Israelites walked through it.

5. The Egyptians were not so lucky. They didn’t bring enough life vests and they drowned when God Almighty Himself decided He’d had enough of their shit. He shut the Red Sea on top of them like Grannny would top a strawberry shortcake with whipping. It was a Big Can of Whipping Ass straight from the hand of the Lord!

6. The Israelits wrote God a song and formed the first Jubilee Choir in the history of the world. However, the song didn’t make the Top 100 until some 3,000 years later

7. Moses got 50% of all recording sales and a new staff.

8. God tested the Israelites. He sort of said something like “Do what I say or you will get all sorts of bad shit fall upon you.”

9. They obeyed God

10. They got hungry and thought about disobeying God.

11. God went quail hunting and brought them all a bunch of fried quail to eat. He also brought them manna, which is sort of like biscuits minus the gravy.

12. They got thirsty.

13. God sprung up an “all you can drink” beerfest from a big rock to quench their thirst.

14. They got in a fight with a bunch of warriors from a local country.

15. They swiftly kicked their ass with God’s help.

16. God was so pissed at that bunch of warriors, He promised He’d keep on kicking their asses for generations to come until they were wiped off the planet.

17. No one has ever heard of the Amalekites since.

18. Until Hell Raiser. Those were the serious looking dudes helping Pin Head.

19. Moses was getting real tired of being God’s spokesman to all these Israelites.

20. His Father-in-law, Jethro, told him to move to Beverly Hills.

21. Then Jethro told him to start electing people to help him tell them what God likes and doesn’t like.

22. Moses starts the first Human Resource Department in the history of mankind and hires a crack staff of managers to help him teach the employees sin/life balance.

23. They arrive at Mt. Sinai, which means the Mountain of God.

24. God tells them that if they will behave and mind his laws, then He’d take care of them better than they could imagine.

25. The Israelites formed another band and wrote “Big Pimpin’” in honor of their lavish lifestyle promised by God.

26. God creates the first printed version of what we Americans call the “law”. From what I can tell, the Georgia DMV adopted a large portion of it for their driving and license laws.

27. God gives Moses the 10 Commandments, written on stone tablets.

28. The world has not been sane since.

29. Everyone gets together and starts to build the First Baptist Church of Mount Sinai.

30. God tells them to build a rolling suitcase for the 10 Commandments. It’s called the Ark of the Covenant.

31. To save money, God takes on the role of Interior Decorator and Master Landscaper and gives everyone directions on how to make the tables, the lampstands, the wall color, the backyard, fencing, lighting, etc..

32. A fire pit, better than anything at Home Depot, is also crafted to burn dead stuff in. It’s called the Altar of Burnt Offering.

33. God himself designs the first Pony Keg. It features an onyx stone pouring spout attached to the acacia wood beer holder and is covered in tanned ram skins delicately striped with goat hair for added ornamental value. It can be yours only for the low price of a lifetime of living by the rules.

34. God designs the first set of runway clothes for priests. The new line is called “The Tunic Turban. The Holy Urban Attire for Only the Sassiest of Priests”

35. Some dude named Aaron becomes the Head Preacher in charge of the services and managing the day-to-day lives of the Israelites.

36. Moses leaves his Sunday School duties and goes to live on the Mountain with God.

37. Aaron starts worshipping a golden calf.

38. The people start doing the same, thinking the Preacher is always right.

39. God gets pissed.

40. God crushes the 10 Commandments in a fit of anger.

41. Aaron is sent to rehab.

42. God considers parallel anger management classes for Himself.

43. Moses has to re-write the 10 Commandments since God did it the first time and is too pissed to do it again.

44. Moses gets some kind of skin rejuvination from the Spa of God and has to hide his face with a hood since he glows so much.

45. Moses tells everyone the rules again and to continue working on that First Baptist Church of Mount Sinai, that God will live in there on a continual basis until someone royally screws up.

46. They are told to pay particular interest to Sunday. No beer. No work. No sex. Only frying chicken at the tabernacle is allowed. Bring your money for the tip jar.

47. All the stuff designed by God finally gets built.

48. God hires an effeciency expert to help future generations do things quicker when they need their fannies saved by God and shipped to new lands.

49. God finally takes up residence in the First Baptist Church of Mount Sinai and whenever He wants to go somewhere, whether it’s the beach or to see a good play, He sends a smoke signal out the chimney of the Church for everyone to pack up the Tabernacle and follow.

50. The Israelites spent the rest of their lives following that damn smoke signal.

I think I’ll go outside and have a cigarette now. No telling where the Smoke of the Lord will lead me.

One thing is for sure, the Smoke from the Tabernacle doesn’t lead them not to the land of milk and honey. It’s still just a far away unoccupied Utopia by the end of Exodus.


Book 3 – Leviticus and You Thought Your Mama Was Mean

The first time I saw the title of this book, I thought it was a proper name for a venereal disease. As in…

I caught herpes.
I caught Leviticus.

And then after I read it, I realized it was more of an adjective form describing a state of being, a condition of living. As in…

A state of venereal disease.
A state of Leviticus.

I’m going to make this book easy on you though. As with anyone who is familiar with cleaning out a pig trough or scraping doggy pooh from the carpet, I will make sure to cover your eyes and mouth as much as possible and flower your nose with Evergreen scent straight out of the can. It might smell like someone shit a Christmas tree when I’m done but at least you have something to hang your hat on at the end of the day.

Leviticus can best be described as a book of rules and regulations. Think of it as a very long rehab where the Israelites are given a strict regimen of what they can and cannot do in order to weed out the impurities in their soul and personality. Watch Celebrity Rehab for about 2 years if you’d like to get a small…a very very small idea of the kind of termites this here book seeks to destroy.

I think the best way to wade through this shit-storm of rules and regulations is to tell you a few things that are applicable to your life today. Things I bet you didn’t even know originated in this book. Deep, dark, dirty things….

1 – If your penis has a head on it that isn’t covered up with something that looks like a slab of smoothed out beef jerky, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

2 – If your daddy has ever rang the neck of a bird, sprinkled it with lighter fluid, and burned the shit out of it just for the hell of it, then that bird might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

3 – If your grandpa gave a goat to the next door neighbor as an amends for banging the other man’s wife, then he might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

4 – If your mama always cooked your pork chops with all the fat cut off, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

5 – If you’ve ever killed a neighbors cat no matter how much of a son-of-a-bitch it was and your mama made you apologize and give them one of your puppies, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

6 – If you’ve ever taken a 10-dollar bill from your aunt and then was required to pay it back plus 20% and an ass whooping, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

7 – If anyone has ever brought the head of a bull over to your house as a gift because they took your wheelbarrow, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

8 – If your uncle set fire to a bunch of sticks in the back yard and then get burned up by them, then he might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus

9 – If you’ve ever seen someone drink a beer, walk into church, and fall over dead, then they might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

10 – If you’ve ever had a girlfriend who was told by her mama that eating rabbits would give her rabies, then she might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

11 – If you’ve ever heard a loud voice saying “Don’t eat that!” after you whacked a seagull over the head with a beer can, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

12 – If your daddy has ever put your mama outside in a refrigerator box during her period, then she might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

13 – If your mama, upon returning from the refrigerator box, kills all the pet canaries as a sacrifice to the Lord, those birds might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

14 – If you’ve ever been kicked out of Sunday School Class because you had a zit on your face the size of a cat terd, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

15 – If you’ve ever been snooping around the wood shed and your mama ripped off your clothes and burned them with a cigarette lighter, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

16 – If the Department of Children Services has ever wrapped tape around your house, declaring it “unfit for living”, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

17 – If your roommate has ever burned every piece of furniture in the apartment because you developed a bunch of itching and burning “down there”, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

18 – If you tried to start a Vampire Club at school and got kicked out of the county, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

19 – If you’ve ever known someone in your family who had sex with their cousin and they disappeared from the face of the planet, never to be seen again, then they might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

20 – If you’ve ever had sex with any of your dad’s girlfriends and got a tire iron against your knee cap and she got a bullet to the head, then the both of you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

21 – If you’ve had sex with your Aunt Donna and have spent the last 2 years dodging bullets, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

22 – If your sister has sex with a cheerleader at school and no one will talk to them anymore, then they might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus. And that’s a crying damn shame might I add.

23 – If your parents made you get married because you couldn’t keep it in your pants, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

24 – If you’ve ever owned a Shitzu and someone shot it with a gun claiming it’s not a natural looking dog, then your dog might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

25 – If you’ve ever been laughed out of the Junior High Dance because you wore polyester pants and a cotton shirt, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

26 – If you have ever gotten slapped on the wrist with a ruler for playing the Ouija board during detention, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

27 - If your uncle ended up on Americas Most Wanted because he pimped out his daughter, then both of them might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

28- If you’ve ever known someone who back-talked his mama or daddy and then got shot in the chest with a shotgun, then they might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

29- If you’ve seen someone shoot a dog that was humping himself in the chest within 10 yards of your sister, the dog might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

30 – If you’ve ever seen the preachers’ daughter dancing naked at the strip club and then found tragically burned in a cornfield the next morning, then she might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

31 – If you’ve ever had anal sex with the prom queen and then she put a corn cobb up your fanny while you were passed out, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus. That eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth thing is trouble.

32 – If you’ve ever turned your unpaid bills over to God and God gave them to the sheriff, then you might be a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

33 – If you’ve ever signed a mortgage certificate that listed God as the lender, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

34 – If you’ve ever had one of your dad’s drinking buddies file for bankruptcy and then move into your bedroom and eat all your cereal, then you might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

35 – If everyone who has ever worked for the family business was related to each other, then they might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

36 – If you’ve ever known someone who bought and sold people on the open market, then they might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

37 – If your dad started smoking and then had the worst business year of his entire life, then he might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

38 – If your grandmother quit going to church and then broke 7 bones in her legs and had 7 dead bodies lying in her yard the next morning, each with 7 bullet holes to the head and covered in the remains of her 7 dogs, and on the 7’th day of the week she lost 7 toes in a tragic lawnmower accident at exactly 7 PM while drinking Segram’s 7, then she might had been the victim of the rules of Leviticus. The 7 shit is killer I tell you.

39 – If your elderly great grandmother, who eats cat food and lives in a tent behind your house, gives 10% of her pension to the Church each week, then she might have been a victim of the rules of Leviticus.

Really, at the end of the day, this book is about squeezing every bit of fun out of life. But, I was also humbled by the time I was done with it. I became more thankful for where I am at in life, where I was born, when I was born, and the fact I can practice due diligence with my procreation parts.

Honestly, and I say this with admiration for our friend the Israelites, I wouldn’t have lasted a day during those times. They would have killed me from the hello…..

“How the shit-fire are ya’ll turkey terds doing? Nice tits! Want a beer? It’s Sunday celebration after all!”


Book 4 – Numbers – A Lesson On What Happens When You Won’t Do Something For Yourself – Followed By Why We Have Women’s Liberation

I don’t like math and encountering this here book title in the Bible had me more nervous than Grandma at the Rotary Club luncheon. Women just don’t belong at the Rotary Club; a book about numbers don’t belong in the Bible.

But, lucky for you, and I, whomever came up with the title or this book didn’t have the foggiest idea what it was really about. Although there are quite a bit of numbers scattered through this whole thing, but it’s more in line with a “Census” than anything else. God, much like the United States, is a huge fan of a Census, a count of men and women who fit a certain profile. God asked Moses for the following as part of the Census count:

“How many Israelite men can fight? I don’t mean so-so fight, I mean how many of these m’fers can pull a sword, throw a rock, and swing a club with some skill?”

Moses replies back with

“Oh, about 603, 550…give or take a few women who look like men.”

And, taking a number from the future Native Americans and Africans, the Census was done according to their Tribe. Unfortunately, no one really took the liberty to live a little and come up with some very cool tribe names to make the Census even half-way interesting. They lack creativity compared to today’s tribes.

For example, in Africa, I’ve heard of the Watusi tribe, a death-on-a-stick tribe of men and women who would eat your intestines if you so much as blew snot on the ground. Even the name, pronounced “WaaaToooooSiiiii” gets me a bit nervous.

And Native Americans had it down pretty good too…the “Apache”. You tell me, but wouldn’t you just hate to meet up with a bunch of men who were in a gang called the Apache? I wouldn’t even attempt to sniper their asses with my deer rifle with a name like that.

But not so with the Israelites. They had names like “Tribe of Gad” which is Hebrew for “a bunch of men wearing flip flops and turbins”. Another few tribes that stuck out was the “Tribe of Dan”, “Tribe of Benjamin”, and the “Tribe of Reuben”. Yeah, just makes you want to run for the hills in complete terror doesn’t it? Although, admittedly, the Tribe of Reuben does sort of make me a bit scared of the potential outcome if captured by them. Would they make me wear a dress and dance in circles while they beat their drums?

Shiver me timbers.

It’s also worth mentioning here that there was one tribe who didn’t get counted in the Census of fighting men. That would be the Levites. I cannot explain to you why they were singled out for a different purpose. That doesn’t mean the author of Numbers doesn’t provide an explanation, it just means I don’t understand it enough to explain it to a normal human being in terms that will make you say “Ah, yes, perfect sense!”

So, if I was having a conversation with God, it would go something like this:

“God, hey, curious. Why in the world did you single out the Levites like that?”

“When I killed the first born of the Egyptian Pharoah’s nation, I set aside all the males of the Levites for myself.”

“Ok, um, well, did you at least ask them what they wanted to do?”

“They are mine. I am the Lord.”

Bummer.

So God appointed a bunch of men named the Levites to take care of the Tabernacle of the Covenant, which as you remember from a previous book, was the “holy residence” of God Himself, something that had to be toted from place to place as they followed the smoke signal coming from the Chimney.

Unfortunately for the Levites, they didn’t just have to pressure wash this thing every now and again. Nope. They were the first road crew in the history of mankind apparently, for they had a very large 600,000+ rock’n’roll type band who was always on the move, following a smoke signal from a geenie lamp. To put this into perspective, this is what the life of a Levite looked like after he was chosen by God to take care of Camp Tabernacle.

1. Set up camp around Tabernacle.
2. Clean the gutters
3. Dust off the lamps
4. Clean the Golden Toilets
5. Do something holy
6. Tear down the Tabernacle
7. Follow the army
8. Re-assemble the Tabernacle
9. Set up camp around the Tabernacle
10. Clean the gutters
11. Dust off the lamps
12. Clean the Golden Toilets
13. Do something holy
14. Tear down the Tabernacle
15. Repeat

And we say this God is a fair God…I digress.
The next few chapters of Numbers goes into another Census, this time of the Levites and it involved males one month old or older but not old enough to be considered young men. Then there was some silver changing hands, some kind of redemption price tag based on the weird logic that said there were 273 more kids living than what had been redeemed from the Egyptian-first-born-killed-fiasco a few books back. It was sort of how the credit card companies work today, trying to pull a fee over on you because you bought more fishing rods than your credit card would allow by one penny because they changed the goddamn due date.

All I know is that it seems to me Moses and his son Aaron made out like a bandit with a metric-ass-ton of silver coins because the Levites were not using their LambSkin condoms correctly.
And then we have another Censuse within the Levites, for those men who could be of service to the Tabernacle, as I mentioned above. And then we had another shit-ton of rules and regulations, followed immediately by a description of the consequences if the rules were not followed. Usually the consequnces regarding some misuse of the Tabernacle went something like this:

Rules #1 – If you “look at the golden toilet”, you will die.

Rule #2 – If you “use or touch the golden toilet”, you will die.
Etc, etc, etc…

And then some common stuff like

Rule #Umpteen - “remove anyone with a skin disease

Rule #Sumpteen - “remove anyone who touched a dead person”

Rule #Pumpteen - “don’t do wrong to another person”

Rule #UmptySumpteen - “don’t have sex with another man who isn’t your spouse”

Rule #DooDahICannotStopGivingRules - “especially if you are a man”

Although it would seem that anything related to very vile juicy things, like sex and skin disease, has the most stipulations against it, there appears to be a new thread of bias towards a certain member of the human race. I’ll give you a hint.”it was created after man”…”it’s the only thing known to life that can bleed for 7 days and still live”…”it burns bras when cornered” and “it has 2 things mounted on the dashboard we all love, as infants and adults”…give up?

Women. For the first time, it is apparent women start getting the ass end of the God deal. For starters, if a woman has sex with another man while married, she can be forever cursed to never have children. Granted, some girls I know would love to have that curse but back then, I think it’s the equivalent of having a woman’s hair shaved in today’s age.

But it doesn’t stop there. She becomes a cursed woman til the day she dies, finding redemption in the after-life, if she got ansy pansy with one of the Levites in charge of putting up the Tabernacle curtains. And if that’s not enough, if a man so much as thinks she has strayed from his loins, then the priest gets to make her drink some kind of stanky water. If she’s innocent, then she just has the farts for a few hours. If guilty, then her womb shrivels up “in real time” and she’s cursed forever.

I didn’t see anything in there about men’s testicles getting shrivelled up if they were guilty but that’s probably in a later book I haven’t gotten to yet.

And I bet you, much like myself as I read this entire book, am wondering…

“Why, under heaven, would God put these people through all this horseshit?”

Well, it seems that our little friends the Israelites were on the verge of taking that which God has promised them, the blessed Promised Land. This has been the central theme for a long time. God does miraculous, and down-right mean, things in order to get this bunch of people into some kind of special subdivision where life is full of milk, honey, steaks, beer, and naked titties catching a tan.

The Israelites were right on the border. They could smell the hotdogs on the grill. The fish in the pond were jumping. The deer were rutting. Man, does it get any better than this? God had led them through all kinds of shit to get them to this place. Moses and a few others were ready to fire up the troops and take that which God had promised.

The problem is the Israelites were a bit scathed by this point. It’s sort of like having someone break you out of jail where you got 3 square meals a day and a butt doodling once a week only to find out that you’ve got to walk across the United States, eat food that falls out of the sky at random times, and live by a bunch of rules or else have God strike you down into a pile of 3-day old dog shit while your butt is doodled daily in the everlasting fires of Hell.

Jail and a weekly butt-doodling doesn’t seem like such a bad place under those circumstances.

Their previous misfortuned combined with the fact that God has been killing everyone for them along the way, is that God had in-advertantly created a bunch of scared people who don’t know shit about taking over a land full of scary looking people. This what happens to most people when an authority figure keeps lording over the details of your life for too long promising one thing, such as land free and clear, while giving you land that is already occupied by women who don’t shave and men who don’t wipe.

I can hear you now.

“What? You mean the Promised Land already has tenants? I thought God owned the mortgage note?”

Apparently, the Israelites were banking on the same thing. God gives them the Promised Land, free and clear. They inhabit it. Perhaps even run naked with the wind on Saturdays. All is grand!

Not so fast Tribe of Benjamin.

Given the Israelites were not too keen to trust God with the kind of blind faith seen today in the lives of missionaries getting killed in the Congo, they sent some spies to see what this Promised Land was like. Oh, they found the milk. They found the honey. They even found some grapes. However, they also found, and I quote,

“Shit! There are already some people there. Mean looking ones too. They look like some strong sons of bitches. We saw the Anaks there, the Amalekites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites. We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers.”

I really cannot say I blame them. Who would want to fuck with people who go by names such as Hittites, Jebusites, and other such scary shit? Although, I wouldn’t exactly feel like a grasshopper. I think maybe I’d just pee in my pants, call it a day, and head on back to the jail long before anyone saw me. Perhaps I would even get off a running 1,000 yard shot at a Hittite?

But, here they are, on the verge of milk and honey and they fuck it up royally, at least in God’s eyes. Think of it like this. Remember how you prepared for drivers license test and when it came time to take it, you ended up barking a 2’nd gear at the stop sign because you were too scared to stop? And then you had to go another 6 months without the ability to drive even though your Dad had bought you a brand new 4x4 Ford pick up truck and stuck it in the garage for this wonderous day of passing your driving test?

Well, that’s what these little sons of bitches did. They got scared, cried like little babies all night, and then decided it was better to head on back to Egypt, as apparently the Pharoah didn’t see like such a bad man against the enemy. Plus, they were royally pissed at God for promising X and delivering X/1,000,000.
Sort of like your job. Here’s a bonus! Fuck, taxes ate one half of it and the wife spent the other half. Where is my share?

And so the Lord got severely pissed about their lack of love and support for the battle confronting them and as a sign of His Holy Pissed-Off-Ness, sent them a bunch of fried quail that they could eat. But not just any kind of fried quail. No, eating this quail was like pulling the pin on a hand grenade.

In a twisted display of everloving wrath never before seen anywhere before except when Nothing Fancy Catfish House accidently gave me a rotten catfish for dinner while on a date with a woman who was sure to give me some loving later that night, the Lord sent a plague that wiped out a whole shit-ton of those scared ass Israelites just as they started eating those quail.

As if death and plagued quail isn’t enough, then the Lord then made them wander around that wilderness for 40 years, in a circle no less, in order to shape them up into the kind of men, women, and children that would take over that Promised Land.

Hence, why we have all those rules. They are a ratchet in the hands of God as he twists them into submission and make them love Him.

I don’t know about you, but this story sort of made me sick. While I can see the under pinnings of a sermon here, one titled “Trust God or You’re Fucked!” I didn’t get the desire to put on any kind of slow moving Willie Nelson song. Honestly, I figured God would have done cleared the Promised Land out for them well in advance, complete with a Piggly Wiggly, Walmart, and a Hooters. I guess, God wanted these crackers to work for everything, even though it was “promised” to them.

If only the Israelites had a CD player back in those days with R. Kelly singing “I Believe I Can Fly”. Maybe they could have girded up their loin clothes and taken over the Promised Land and slained the Shit-tites and whatever else showed up to take their milk and honey. I don’t know about you but that song certainly makes me think I can jump off a roof and skim over the pond looking for an alligator to wrestle.
Imagine what it would have done for them?


Book 5 – Deuteronomy and the Most Boring Set of Sermons Ever Delivered

Sermons were the last thing I went to church for. I usually wanted to just sit behind Sultry Sally and be the first one standing up for the hymns so I could look down her blouse and tell her boobies that I’ll be seeing them soon one day. But, at least during the first half of the service, churches do their best to get you all happy songs and hand shaking and various people telling you

“What a great day the Lord has made!”

It’s good for the soul I suppose, even if your truck got vandalized the Saturday night before and you’re missing your wedding band.
Soon, though, you realize what this is really about. The first half of church is what we call “fluffing” in the porn business.

It means people who keep things “up and moving” in between sets. Churches are good on fluff, until you meet the words of the preacher. A preacher is supposedly employed to deliver wonderful benedictions, swaying words of changing your life and being a better person. The preacher is supposed to talk of the great future, the wonderful after-life, and a peaceful existence full of love and everything you could hope for and desire.

However, they usually end up rehashing some story from the Bible and turning it into a lesson about how we need to ask forgiveness or a warning of what happens if we just be our natural selves. Who wants to catch the ass end how things are while looking for how good the future is? I usually make it to “Now let us turn to Chapter 4, Verse 7 of the book of…”

before I nod out and forget about a my wretched self, a better future, and boobies.

Deuteronomy is written with the same concept in mind. It’s basically a very long sermon, which meant I plowed through an entire pot of coffee and was tempted to call up a meth dealer in order to get through it. Aren’t you glad you have me to explain this shit to you?

The real meaning of Deuteronomy is “words” and this book shares the long outstretched and tumultuous words delivered by none other than Moses himself. God, from what scholars say, dictated to Moses what was to be said which leads me to believe that both God and Moses talk too much, at least when they want to recount the areas in your life where they are extremely pissed off about your behavior.

This book has ample story lines in it that form the underpinnings of a several sermons that probably lasted for days. Imagine being in Church and the clock strikes 3 PM and the preacher is still talking? That’s the kind of sermons I’m talking about.

The funny part about this book is that Moses, just like every good preacher, pulls from past events in order to make a point. Today, a preacher has the entire bible to pull from. But, at this point in time, Moses only has Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers to craft his masterpiece. Someone totally forgot about Genesis apparently as he mentions nothing about what a bad bad girl Eve had been for eating that apple. I’m so thankful Moses died off before anyone had a chance to write any more books for this man to talk about.

So, what the hell is Moses is going to tell us about? Well, as you know, there is this lingering carrot in front of the donkey Israelites, called the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. There is also a shit-ton of rules and regulations picked up as they were rescued from the Pharoah in Egypt. There is that God forsaken tabernacle that everyone has to take care of and follow the smoke around. And then there is the 40 years of camping out in the wilderness just outside the Promised Land they were too chicken-shit to take over, eating plagued quail, and soaking up yet more rules and regulations about how to please God and not die a horrible death. Then you have people pro-creating a new generation and you have the pre-existing older generation that are hard-headed enough to have forgotten just how bad they’ve had it over years.

Like most sermons, Moses is simply going to remind the old hard-asses, and the newer generation of punks, about what has happened, the lessons to be learned about their behavior, and that the Promised Land is still there if they will just step up and take it.

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Publication Date: 03-24-2010

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