Piece of Shit #20

I suck at keeping my mouth shut...online at least.

In the past week I've entered into two online arguments with complete strangers. My friend Lauren gave firsthand interviews of being on the Jet Blue Flight that was privy to an angry flight attendant that cursed over the PA and deployed the inflatable slide. I couldn't bite my tongue when people started taking personal cracks at Lauren on her own blog page. Calling her a "snot" and a "bitch" while claiming she was looking for 15 mins of fame, all the while giving her notoriety by drawing more attention to her. So I spoke up in my normal sass-laced tone.

Then a couple days ago a friend posted a sentiment about the so called "Ground Zero Mosque" and how many New Yorkers feel that it is an issue that belongs to us and not the rest of the nation. This friend is originally from Iowa and so some fellow conservative Iowans felt the need to voice their opinion on the matter. One, shall we call for lack of a better term, Dumb Fuck, started spouting off that all Muslims are murderers of innocent people. Now this person claimed to be "America". He called himself a God-loving, family man. Naturally once again, I could not bite my tongue. I let this man have it and I'll be honest I took a dirty pleasure in knowing that for probably the first time in his life he had been outwitted and outspoken by a woman. The man turned the argument into an attack on all liberals and Democrats. He claimed there was no way my grandparents and older generations were still Democrats and happy with the current administration. However, everyone in my family has been a registered Democrat since they could legally vote. We all voted for Obama and will be voting for his re-election. He claimed that as a "liberal" I was insulting him by referencing the bible since "no liberal actually believes in it". This bothered me for many reasons. No, I'm not a Christian but I was raised in a Christian home and have extensively studied world and religious history. I've read the bible, all of it. I'm quite familiar with the foundation of the church and the faith that it rests upon. So I pulled out my bible knowledge to this Dumb Fuck. I also pointed out that Jesus himself was liberal, standing up to the oppression of the Romans, and working to remedy the abuse that its citizens had suffered by being deprived of essentials. Now, Mr. Iowa, was prob a little taken aback when I explained that Christians who follow the teachings of Jesus are in fact quite liberal and I noted that if he had actually read the bible, the whole bible, he would know this supreme lesson. Turns out Mr. Iowa hasn't read the entire bible, or probably even a large portion of it. He quoted things from the Old Testament such as "an eye for an eye" and other ancient "wisdoms". Yet, he was completely unaware that Christianity was founded on the movement to rebel from those tyrannous ideals. He had no idea that the old testament is actually the Torah and the New Testament is where Christianity begins. Now I didn't set out to start a religious debate on Christianity but when someone claims, in quite a loud and aggressive way, that they are in fact Christian, yet nothing about them is so, it's impossible for me to walk away quietly. No, I don't consider myself Christian since I have studied the bible and the church's history and take many issues with it, but I'm a fan of Jesus just as I'm a fan of Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Martin Luther King. Even though idiots, who claim to be Christians but couldn't be less Christianly, I'm NOT alright with, Jesus I'm alright with. And I'm pretty sure that Dumb Fuck in Iowa will be picking up a bible before he opens his mouth again.

Piece of Shit #19

I want to go home...

On May 30th, I left New York for what was suppossed to be 3 months of revitilization and writing in Florida. I knew that three months away from home would be tough to swallow after awhile and I was right. In truth it only took a few weeks to pine for my bed and city. I moved to New York in March 2005 and shortly after that I knew it would be a very long time, if ever, before I called another city home. Despite that my last two years in the city have been some of the hardest of my life, my affection for the Big Apple hasn't wained. In the last two years I lost more friends to suburbs and hometowns than ever before. In 2009 alone 8 good friends called it quits with NY. Being that the city serves as such a transitional spot for so many really took it's toll on me. I started to feel that I could never make good long term friends because the city would ulitmately take them away from me. But when more and more people starting to leave I found those friends that loved New York as much as I do. I found those friends who dream about raising a family in Brooklyn the way I do and can't imagine going back to a place that doesn't embrace life and culture the way New York does. In a weird way it's made me fall in love with the city even more. If you move to New York in your 20's and you make it to your 30's you finally start to see that the city loves you just as much as you love it. And that is a true New York love story...