The Sin of Sloth II

When you say "I'm going to sleep," what are you asking? What does the "going" part mean? Is it the future tense, as in "I will sleep"/"I am about to sleep."

Or is it the act of "going" to the state of mind called sleep?

The Sin of Lust I

If you’re reading this, you’re probably human. And as such, dear readers, you’ve probably felt what is known as The Sin of Lust, which as far as I can tell is one person’s sexual attraction to another. An alarming idea has been creeping upon me during my exploration of Sin, readers.

I commit most of them on a daily basis. And I’m fairly certain that most of my associates do as well. Which leads me to another frightening conclusion: according to my estimation, humans are fairly thinly dispersed in heaven.

In any case, the specific issue du jour is lust. Everyone’s attracted to something, and as the great Stephen Fry so progressively states in his autobiography Moab is My Washpot, “none of the following is shameful or deserves apology, in spite of our suicidal attempts to convince ourselves otherwise:

-To possess a rectum, a urethra, and a bladder, and all that pertain thereto.

-To cry.

-To find anything or anyone of any gender, age, or species sexually attractive.”

Fry and I are in no way advocating bestiality or pedophilia, but merely acknowledging that people’s loins are stirred by a variety of stimuli. Some people like men, some people like women, some people like fatties, and some people like skinny bitches. That said, I have now lead you to the point I’m actually trying, meanderingly, to make.

There’s a lot of what the Anthropology Community calls “hatorade” in our society hurled at skinny bitches. “I hate skinny bitches,” say some normal-sized girls. “Just because they starve themselves, why should they get boyfriends?”

Two things about skinny bitches: they don’t starve themselves, and they don’t have boyfriends. I know skinny bitches, readers, and they stuff their mouths along with the rest of us.

We love croissants equally!

Some people’s metabolisms allow them to look like magazine ads. Those same lucky people also get asked if they suffer from eating disorders or dysmorphia. They get told that they need to eat more. They get told they look like crack-addicts. And they also overhear comments like, “Why would a guy want that anyway, she looks like a twelve year old boy.”

Everyone knows that bony was not always the in thing to be; wideness, corpulence, and expressed fertility were valued up until very recently. Skinny girls are not inherently vain, evil, selfish, or insecure. They are just skinny.

In exactly the same way, men who like skinny girls are not pigs who expect women to stick their fingers down their throats to match the Victoria’s Secret ads. They are just men with penises that tell them to look for women with slighter frames.

And conversely, men who like bigger girls are not the progressive-minded saviors of feminism that they want everyone to think they are, they are just men with penises that tell them to find fuller-figured girls.

I’m gay. Does that make me a super-liberal revolutionary who refuses to view women as objects of sexual desire? Am I the Hero of all women who want to be viewed as independent creatures of personal accomplishment? Nope. Just gay. Just a man whose penis tells him to look for men with penises.

Don’t judge people based on what their stomachs and genitals crave. It doesn’t make any God damn sense.

The Sin of Gluttony I

I baked cookies the other day. Is that a sin? They were delicious, incidentally. Dear readers, if you want, here is the recipe.

I think when your eating habits extend beyond what you need to keep riding the escalator of life, it’s what’s known as The Sin of Gluttony. If adding a little spice, a little deliciousness, un peu de jouissance to an otherwise gray and thoroughly British existence is considered sinful, then I hope there’s hummus in hell, because that’s where I’m headed, pockets loaded with re-heated croissants and chocolate syrup.

I just find it hard to accept the idea that God would view adulterers and foodies in the same light.

But I assume that he must indeed think ill of a snacker, because the whole time I was trying earnestly to make my own tasty chocolate chip morsels, I was being assaulted by the most terrible creature known to contemporary science:

Pedro, The Janky Old Cat

While he may look sad and harmless, the Janky Old Cat is a beast that only plagues people whom the Lord really wants to suffer horribly for their sins. It is a foul thing that lives to terrorize the greedy, lustful, and murderous.

Its Modus Operandi? It has several.

The Janky Old Cat is a sly beast and never attacks directly, but merely positions himself in direct line with wherever you want to walk, so as to make you either trip or jump over him. Either way, you are likely to be cursed for the next five minutes with washing the egg you just dropped from the kitchen tiles.

The Janky Old Cat loves this trick and presumably laughs quietly to himself as he watches you through his beady, merciless, cataract-ridden eyes.

The terrible animal also has the power of stealth on his side. While careful never to show his unbelievable speed to humans (by pretending to be a doddery, shuffling old fart), he is able to speed from one part of the kitchen to the next behind your back, always turning up exactly where you don’t want him: hungrily approaching the butter, nearing the flour with his feces-covered paws, or simply trying to climb into cupboards and get trapped, forcing you to locate his screaming yowls of fury in a few minutes.

The Janky Old Cat’s favorite maneuver is to sneak up behind you as you are trying to enjoy your baking and revel in your newfound adulthood, and go:

Most cats "meow," but not if they're janky.

This attack is not effective when executed just once, but when repeated 65 times in 10 minutes, it is like taking a golf-club to the sanity. And the worst thing about being attacked by a Janky Old Cat is there is no countering his assaults. If you try to appease him with an offering of food, he will merely sniff the food, pretend to eat it until your back is turned, and resume his offense.

If you try to lift him up to throw him out of the window, or into the fireplace, he will scramble your thoughts and make you think that he is nothing more than a sweet, charming, helpless, elderly, thing. Like a feline version of Betty White.

And you will take pity on him and put him back down.

THIS IS A MISTAKE. USE ALL OF THE PERSONAL CONVICTION ALLOTTED TO YOU BY GOD AND DISPOSE OF THE THING BEFORE...

The Sin of Sloth I

Sloth is the perfect combination of feeling immoral and wrong, but also being wholly, irresistibly pleasurable. Lying around like a sweaty sack of bacon-fat is outrageously fun, but when being slothful it is very difficult to avoid the feeling that somewhere, somehow, terrible things are happening because you can’t get off your ass and do something.

I often get the surreal feeling that Ethiopia is suffering more because I’m watching TV instead of going for a run. This makes about as much sense as the idea that by eating all of his veggies your son will somehow help the children in the world who are starving. But we all, in our own silly little ways, live under this misconception.

Here are a few things that we all do that make us feel like we’re being good samaritans, when really all we’re doing is neglecting to destroy our own bodies and minds with garbage.

1. Reading

Any second that I spend reading, instead of watching Youtube or writing senseless articles based loosely around sin, feels like charity. I can sense that by picking up a book I am forging a link between myself and the author and (vicariously) the world.

Helping people rocks!

By culturing myself, I am preparing myself... no, educating myself... so that when I go and fight for whatever cause I believe in, as a college student, I will be armed with an arsenal of facts, references, vocabulary, and pretension.

I will go out, screaming litanies of Victorian principles of thought, Greek philosophies, and amusing new-age romantic jargon, helping people to understand their place in life.

No wicked person, no matter how intelligent they may have been born, can outwit me, because DAMN IT, I READ A BOOK!

2. Preparing food by yourself

By not buying food ready-made, there are a hundred ways in which you are helping the world. According to the little man in the back of my head who lies to me, it takes half as many pigs to make the ham in a home-made sandwich that it does in a Subway sandwich. The crisco that I use on my frying pan to make pancakes is, I assume, organic, and many times greener than whatever factory-made tank spillage they use at, say, IHOP.

No animals are harmed in making food that I put together from the ingredients in my fridge, and best of all, because of the extra effort that I put into making, say, fried eggs, I burn off all the fat and calories before I even eat the food! No obesity for me, no guilt for American-kind.

I am furthering the cultural cuisine of my generation, rather than just copping-out at a fast-food place and allowing the tradition of “cooking” to die.

Today, I baked Pillsbury croissants. By opening the package of dough all by myself, I gave some menial worker somewhere a few seconds of rest. I earned my sweet buttery treat, as Pillsbury packaging is not exactly compliant unless you become a tornado of scissors and ripping, as I did.

3. Exercise

Exercise is great because it is such a flexible word. Of course, “exercise” can refer to going to the gym and sweating, but it also results from choosing to use the upstairs bathroom when you were in the kitchen jamming fistfuls of croissants into your idiotic maw.

By making these small yet significant decisions, I improve my personal image, and therefore the image of American citizens in general. In this way, I improve the U.S.’s foreign relations!

And so can you. It’s as easy as replacing one bath a month with a shower of equal length.

If you’re not like me, and you don’t take baths daily, then you’re already one step ahead!

4. Suffering in any way

This one may only apply to people who were fortunate enough to grow up comfortably nestled in the suburbs, as I did. For those of us who every day are made to consider how privileged we are not to be shacking up in a 7-11 bathroom, suffering is an important part of life. When I get a paper cut, I feel that I am somehow paying the universe back for the blessings into which I was born. When the dishwasher is out of commission and I have to get off my butt and do the dishes by hand, I’m evening the score between me and the world. Every time I have to teach a particularly disagreeable student, maybe an Ethiopian gets a bowl of rice.

"I'm so glad Peter got spat on by an 8 year old today."

I really wish these things were true. I wish it didn’t take effort to actually make the world a nicer place.

The Sin of Vanity I

Today is Father's Day in the U.S. and my Dad is on the the other side of the globe (in England).

I miss him very much and want him to know that whenever someone tells me that I'm the spitting image of him, inwardly I glow with what's known as The Sin of Vanity.

Also I'm sorry that I completely vomited all over an airplane last time we spent time together.

C'est la vie.

Happy Father's Day.

The Sin of Pride II

This installment contains some rude language and one very rude hand gesture.

One of the aspects of sin that makes it difficult to dissect is its inherent subjectivity. There are so many people in this world with their own ideas of what is wrong and what is right that, at least as far as my extremely limited mind can tell, there really can be no clear-cut conclusions as to what is Sinful and what is Virtuous.

Hence “every bad thing any human has ever done to another human.” Or whatever.

I do, however, tentatively suggest that most people’s perspectives on Sinful and Virtuous overlap quite a bit. We all know, for instance, that

-killing is wrong

-patience is a virtue

-basketball shorts are the least attractive articles of clothing anyone can buy. Ever. Period.

But it seems that often people get so befuddled by their own Pride or Self-Righteous Stupidity that it can be hard for two parties to tell who is being Sinful and who is being Virtuous. Here’s how it happens.

In my town there is a restaurant (it’s a Ruby’s, Californians) that is immediately adjacent to an ice rink. For those out of the know, it’s a charming place celebrating the fifties, including plush red booths, Oldies music, and smiling waitresses wearing uniforms that carefully set woman-kind back a handful of decades.

Sometime in the middle of high school, I was there enjoying a burger with my best friend Emily and a few of other girls, and we were watching a very sweet couple ice-skating.

As you can see by the photo-realistic drawing, there was a distinct Attractiveness imbalance between them. This is fine, of course, but for a group of insecure young-adults, unequal pairs like this are perfect opportunities to dilute our angst with the Sin of Slander.

“What is she doing with him?”

“I bet there’s something wrong with her. Maybe she has a vestigial tail.”

“She’s probably mail-ordered from Russia.”

And so on. And when we’d finished our increasingly clever banter about the unevenly distributed couple, we moved on with the conversation. Or we tried to, but...

This happened.

"Excuse me, will you guys shut up!”

She could not have been older than three.

Baffled by this strange mixture of manners and unprecedented rudeness, but undaunted, we continued our meal, unaware of a storm brewing to our immediate left. We were about to learn that sometimes not even charming jukebox tunes can staunch the fury of an Insane Poorly-Brought-Up Wealthy Mother.

As we chatted, no doubt about lofty, erudite things that were probably too intellectually complex to repeat, I noticed that a waiter had come to the booth next door and was helping the Mother and her Daughter to move their entire meal.

I smiled at the girl as she walked by, carrying her milkshake, and I received a scowl in return. I followed the pair of them with my eyes until they got to their new table, and as they sat down I was treated to this.

I informed the rest of the table as to what I had seen. Needless to say, they were flabbergasted, and Emily (whose moxie I will admire until the day my life is tragically cut short when I’m crushed under the weight of my own Cyber-Fame) walked over to this woman’s new table.

They talked for a few moments. Motivated more by curiosity about what was being said than by a desire to back up a friend, I joined Em across the restaurant. As I drew nearer, I heard the conversation.

“—that poor couple! What if they had heard you talking about them? Hm? They were just out having a good time!” The woman said. Valid. “You are all just sad, pathetic people with black, black souls, and I hope you’re proud of yourselves. You're a bitch, and you're all disgusting.” Perhaps too much?

"Don't talk shit about people. It's pathetic."

“I’m very sorry,” offered Emily, “if you were offended by what we were saying. I swear we didn’t mean to upset you, we were just observing something that caught our eye. I feel I should tell you that your daughter turned around and told us to shut up.” Admirable maturity, I felt.

The two of them traded blows for a while, with me standing nearby uneasily. At this point, I’m watching this show-down take place, admiring the dragon-lady for sticking to her guns, feeling sorry for the daughter for whatever the next 15 years have in store for her, and loving my best friend for keeping cool under immense pressure.

I’m also feeling left out, and wanting to contribute my own legitimate, grown-up, cool-headed point of view, so I jump into the fray with this little gem:

"YOU'RE pathetic!"

Well, after that delicious display of unbridled inanity, all the blood rushed into my head as I listened to what I had just said and realized how heart-stoppingly ineffective it was. It was all I could do to keep standing and hope that I still looked dignified and righteous. I came back to proper consciousness only to hear her final words for me:

“— and you’re a loser.”

Again, valid. But it raises an important question. Who was right, here? Were we fighting for our right to speak ill of other people behind their back? Or for our right to privacy?

Was this woman hoping to stand up for the innocent victims of trash-talking? Or was she just angry because her girdle was holding her a little too tight that night? Is it Sinful to wrong someone if the victim isn't aware and never affected? Or is it Sinful to bully people when they’re doing something you don’t like? Is it our actions that matter, or our intentions? There are times, I suppose, when you have to consider both and do what you think is best.

And then, there are the times when personal convictions need to make way for... well... social skills.

The Sin of Greed I

They’re loud, they’re intrusive, and they’ll be around for almost as long as death and taxes. They are flashy, star our favorite washed-up celebrities, and we hate them. They are commercials, and they are examples of the many things that we in the modern-day think of as Facts of Life, but which are really incredibly rude and should be wholly unacceptable.

Of course I know that without commercials, there would be no funding for decent programming, but take a second to consider what commercials are: 3-5 minutes of this.

You’re not good enough and neither is anything you own! Buy our stuff! Buy it! Not theirs, buy ours! BUY IT! YOU SUCK IF YOU DON’T BUY IT.

This is not only tolerated by the viewing community, but is actually accepted as a necessary part of the entertainment system, to the absolutely insane extent that more and more people are tuning into the Superbowl in order to watch... the commercials.

Awesome. Well, I’m not buying it (pun intended). Too often have I been watching TV, and heard during the commercial break something like,

“Most leading tissue brands actually serve to increase dryness and redness in the nose,”

OR

“Your puppy food might not be loaded with enough vegetables, causing your puppy to age faster and develop what’s called CANINE OBESITY”

OR

“If you don’t have a TV as large as this one, your penis will actually fall off and you’ll never eat steak or get laid again, and a sinkhole will appear in the earth under your house and swallow all of your worldly possessions.”

And this always makes me go like this.

"That was a slap in the face of Truth, wasn't it?"

But you can lie to me all you want, commercials, and I won’t mind because it’s got nothing to do with me until you show the absurd magnitude to which you doubt my intelligence by expecting me to listen to you. That is when I make this face

and start to think about how you are committing what I believe is known, in the Catholic Faith as a Double-Whammy. The Sin of Greed and the Sin of Bearing False Witness are at work here. Through the lies that commercials tell, they fabricate not only the idea that their product is the best out there, which by sheer logic cannot be true in all cases, but also the absurd idea that we need the product they're selling in the first place.

"Are you tired of having to use a ruler to make sure that your pictures hang straight?"

No. I'm absolutely not tired of that, don't make assumptions. I have never wiped up a spill with a paper towel and thought to myself, "I wish this damn thing were more absorbent," either. Nor have I ever thought about whether or not my cat is ingesting the vegetables he "needs" to survive (I'm sure his ancestors had their 5 servings a day in the form of the partially-digested berries inside the shrew carcasses they heartily devoured).

In someone's absolutely maniacal need to make money without contributing to the world even marginally, the famous Snuggie was brought about. The commercial, as we all know, bravely asserts what we've all been thinking:

I love how warm my blanket keeps me, but I hate how it traps my hands and holds me hostage and immobile!