Today, I want to spit serious out into the universe instead of just being an ignorant jerk who likes to make you laugh uncomfortably. That’s my schtick. I keep doing it until the laugh becomes a more welcomed response. Once there, my work is finished. I’ve absorbed you into the congregation.

No, what I need to peck at today is one of my preferred taboo’s. I truly believe there are three things we should never discuss publicly in order to ensure a peaceful tomorrow: who you pray to, who you voted for, and who you stick things into/insert things from. Believe it or not, we all followed this rule until social media was invented. We all know how that’s going…but I digress. Again. Daily.

Everything comes with a backstory. If you happen to know these personal details, then I didn’t write them for you. I’m just bringing the rest up to speed. It’s important for the sake of the tale. Consider it a flashback montage. Don’t you like to know who’s preaching before you settle in for the sermon?

I don’t write for the people who know me; that’s stupid. I write for the millions who don’t.

Those three things are everyone’s online identities in 2026, but only if you don’t have anything else to offer the universal harmony: music, writing, art, sexual talent, etc. If the only thing you find interesting in life is an autographed, framed photograph of David Duke given to you by your PawPaw on his death-bed, then I can see where you and the rest of the Walmartians need to put cash on that visible tattoo of Jesus in a 69 with Kid Rock to be relevant. Relevance is rumored to be important.

Deny the trodden path. It’s covered in generations of foot-flattened sheep shit.

Today’s sermon is about religion; how ironic.

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Fart.

I despise organized religion almost as much as I hate modern fascism, but religion is more of a personal vendetta. I grew up in a household who fogged the church windows three times a week; more if a “revival” were in town. Yee-haw.

Also, I grew up in a small, Texas town, in a congregation that’d split a few times over who-knows-what; double-digit numbers. I was a child.

We, me and the other children, sat in the front rows – like it was the Kool Kids Klub – so the sinister old bastard behind the pulpit could jump-scare us, vomiting bile to his flock beyond. I also remember some of those old men being a little too touchy/feely when we’d get conned into song leading, plate passing, or anything else that would put us into the domain of grown folk. The back rooms; the closed doors. My stomach still turns when that twice-removed generational cologne brushes my adult nose in a crowd.

I shivered as I typed that.

Why would anyone say anything? Southern-white-church-culture unanimously voted to beat the shit out of their kids in the eighties, and the decade before that, and the decade before that, from one generation to the next. I lived it. Plus, there’s a pecking order in tiny, country churches regulated by “time in office”. Age, in other words. The chicks dare not challenge the cocks; pun intended, grinning as I do so. I thought it was just something old, respected men did. It was normalized thinking taught by…who? Ah, the same one’s doing the preaching. Convenient.

I was conned into baptism in the fourth grade because all my siblings were doing it. I hated church, but we got to go to Mazzio’s Pizza afterward. I beat Dragon’s Lair for the first time that night. My silly, undiagnosed, ignored soul. I’m sure Jesus had nothing to do with laying one on Princess Daphne as her sexy, animated ass popped out of that bubble. The cool folks will know of what I speak.

No fault to our parents, for the most part. They were taught this shit by their parents, and theirs before, and so on. I’m not saying it was right or defending it, but that’s all they knew. They did the best they could do with the tools provided, same as I am, same as you’ll do. I hope future generations will forgive us of the bad stuff we’ve done/will do.

I departed the nest for the Army in my early twenties. I met a million people from a million places who believed a million things. This one particular Sunday, I was feeling incredibly down because, well, Army, and I decided to go to church. I thought if anyone at all could save me from what I then believed to be a horrible decision, it would be God.

When I got there, a man who looked similar to the rotting, old bastards who used to squeeze and stroke me in the name of the Lord stood above the now uniformed flock; literally. Army uniforms. In not so many words, he told us that God wanted us to follow the orders of the mere men and women who outranked us the same as I’d follow His; even if that meant my death or the death of another. That got a little too close to unlawful/immoral order refusal, and I never went to church of my own free will again.

What kind of savior would want that? It was in that moment when I believed the Caucasian Christian God was an invention of capitalism (Black god is real AF, though; you better believe that). In the middle of the second Trump presidency, it hasn’t done all that much to prove me wrong thirty years after the fact.

It was in that moment when I decided to begin learning about ALL the world religions rather than the dogmatic teachings of the old farmers who liked the way I twisted when I walked down the aisle to pass the collection plate. Precious boy booty and a plates full of money; if Epstein Island was “home base” then small-town, southern Protestant churches are “satellite locations”. Convenience stores, if you will. There’s probably some Batman-style transport devices that takes them back and forth, kind of like tubes at the bank. Futurama with Werther’s Originals bouncing around inside like buckshot.

I am nothing. A child of nature. A worshipper of energies, unless those things are energies belong to dumbasses. I’ve felt more churchy in the woods or floating down a river or exploring the Subway’s of New York than I’ve ever felt in a building of cheap-suit pedo’s. Writing and music are two of my largest contributors to my own peace for the last two decades. Once I removed the alcohol, they became my church.

I’ve become honest in sobriety. As an alcoholic, I was allowed to wallow in self-pity and flights-of-fancy for a decade and a half. It was the only way I could truly learn who I was. A HARD reboot. In hindsight, I managed to see some cool stuff, and meet a lot of cool people; with and without clothing. I think we should all keep count, just in case it ends up to be a game and the points matter.

No one rescued me; they stepped on my head when they needed a better view. I dove as deep as it would let me, touched the bottom, and swim back to the surface with breath to spare. I was gasping like an idiot, but I had breath to spare. You’re reading a bit of it now; wink.

No one saved me and set me on the right path. I found it through trial and error, which eventually attracted those who led me in the right direction. Dogs, porches, fleas, and whatnot. Beacons, storms, and old-bastard logic. Overalls and chewing tobacco stains of wisdom.

I hate organized religion. I absolutely love spiritualism, but I hate the mask of organized religion; especially in the United States. It’s been in a three-way with politics since the very moment we brought our Pilgrim-atic asses over here on the boats to create a government without religious influence. The old ‘historical, backward-ass rich people’ play in which there’s no proper defense.

I call bullshit. When the wallet’s involved, you can’t have one without the other. How else would you keep the population in line? I still think aliens have something to do with it. Laugh all you want, but no alien has ever approached me to deny the accusation or tell me otherwise.

Taking it from the top, I see children enduring the same rhetoric at the hands of their families, and it angers me immensely. Luckily, today’s children are more intelligent than we were at that age, probably way more, and have the guts to stand up against things not up their alley. My inner child envies them in hindsight. I was a ‘fawn’. A timid lamb amid the dongs and pee-streams of my ruling sheeple.

The belief system which fondled me as a child has gained strength, becoming a world force counter-intuitive to its own teachings. It’s attempting to seep into every household, every soul, and every wallet, regardless of how strong we believe the seals to be. Like invisible vapors intoxicating society’s unified resolve.

In my mind, it’s never been anything more than a guilt tool, weaponized to force the fearful and lonely into parasitic communion. Everyone wants to belong, and they know it.

Leave the kids alone. Whether it be immigration raids, conservative government exploitation, or blackmailing into compliance. How much more angry must we get before the hypothetical ceiling fractures? Asking for whoever is standing nearest me.