Faith is Confusing

I have always had a hard time trusting anything or anyone at face value. When I see people blinding following a path that is built on trust alone, I find myself questioning the sanity of those people. They are said to have faith in what they believe and do not question it. Faith is defined as complete trust in someone or something. In other words, to believe in something no matter what. Now most of the time, this is applied to religion, which I have very little of. But I have studied many different religions, and one of the most detracting flaws I always see is having faith. For instance, in religions such as Christianity and Baptism, they read from a book. A book, mind you, that was written by man, or a couple of them. The words in the book are said to be the words of a God that were originally heard by someone and then written down and passed down through generations. I think this fine, accept when the people believe every word of this book and follow them without a single question. However, a lot of questions come to my mind. For instance, those words have been translated a few times. Anyone who has taken a foreign language knows that translations are not always exactly word for word. It makes me wonder how many mistranslations have made it through. Another question is how do we know that the words are from a heavenly body. Only because an elder told us so. It just doesn’t add up. I also find that with faith comes a lot of hypocrisy. Like when these very religious people claim magic is fake or even sinful and yet they believe in miracles. Now in my world, miracles are magic, regardless of who is doing it. You mean I am expected to believe that dragons and wizards are make believe, but then also believe that you can heal cancer, make the crippled walk, and even stop bleeding by reading words from the very same book that they have complete faith in. If I saw someone do any of those things simply by reading words from a book, I would claim they had performed magic, but the religious portion of the population simply says that I should just have faith in the Lord’s way. That is why faith is confusing to me. Because I cannot have complete trust like that. It takes quite a bit to earn my trust. Moreover, I refuse to believe that one such “magic” is real while the other is completely fake. I cannot simply take something for granted and completely dismiss all else because a book full of a God’s words told me to. But I guess I can have faith that maybe one day someone will change my mind. But that is just one man’s opinion. Thanks for listening to me ramble. I appreciate it. See you next time.

It's That Time of the Month

Today, I want to talk about a subject that has a bleeding need to be talked about. A subject that many find disgusting and untoward to even mention. A thing, natural and healthy, but nevertheless seen as a lesser part of the human condition and something that has ostracized many of the female gender for centuries. If you guessed menstruation, then you are on par with me. If you guessed something else, then you may be a part of the problem. I have lived in a house with a sister and mom for two decades, and I have plenty of female friends and so often I have seen situations where no one wants to talk about periods. I have seen situations where the subject was avoided so much that the females around me were just seen as “a grumpy bitch” instead of people talking about what was really going on and trying to provide comfort for the person. And if you’re a female, you have probably heard any number of horror stories about how someone’s first period came and they didn’t know what was going on or it came and they weren’t ready. I as a male cannot believe some of the stories, but if I were a female, it would slightly terrify me. But that is not what this ramble is about. No. This ramble is about normalizing periods. Let’s talk about them, and I mean everyone. Men, women, young adults, and definitely people who are in charge of other people. I’m looking at you teachers. You know the ones that won’t let a young teen use the restroom any time they need to. Of course they are taking their purse to the restroom, why is it a big deal. I am also looking at the single dads out there. Just because you don’t have the parts, doesn’t mean your daughter shouldn’t learn about what inevitably is going to be a part of her monthly routine. I can understand maybe you don’t want to learn THAT much about the female anatomy, although it can prove useful. It is still no excuse. Get a female you trust to have a talk with your daughter. They need to know this stuff. Because it can be embarrassing and even potentially unsafe if they don’t know how their systems work and they start using tampons and pads without guidance. And for the love of God, can we please stop being in that “go live in a hut for two weeks” mentality of the Salem Witch trials. Periods are a normal thing. They happen to most every female and it is a perfectly healthy process the female body goes through. There is no need to shame someone for something they cannot control, and sometimes the “period control” products out there are useless, dangerous, and even painful by some anecdotes. Personally, I think if we normalize such a “vulgar” process then society as a whole can become a much better place to exist in. Period. But that is just one man’s opinion. Thanks for listening to me ramble. I appreciate it. See you next time.

Music Sucks

Now before I start, let me just say, not all music sucks. There are some hits of today that really work well, and there are many retro songs that have held on for decades. What I mean when I say music sucks is that for the most part, it really is not as enjoyable as it used to be. One of the biggest problems music has is a lot of songs now are what I coin “cookie-cutter” songs. You take a music track that is made in a few different versions and you put some lyrics that go with the style of song you are making and then you have a “new piece of music.” Even though if you rearranged the song a little, it could actually be another song. I think this stems from the flooding of the market, so to speak, of everyone wanting to be a musician. The field is oversaturated with new music and it all starts to sound the same. That cookie-cutter thing I was talking about is worse in some genres than others. Country music for example is bad for that effect. I could literally name a dozen different country songs that if rearranged the right way would be one of the other songs. They all sound the same to me. It is a little sad for me to say that people who claim to not be country music artists can make better country music than the people who want that career. Rhett McLaughlin of Good Mythical Morning, for example, worked most of the 2022 year on an album that dealt with the deconstruction of his religion, so it was not supposed to be a country album. However, amongst some other tracks that are not necessarily country, he had some real bangers of country music. I found it interesting to find such great country music in a list on an album that was essentially a mix tape. However, that leads me into the second biggest problem that music today has: the genres of music are slowly blending together in such a way that no one knows what genre it actually is. It is something that is being termed the “Music Singularity.” Essentially what starts to happen is because the knowledge that people can obtain becomes so regular and most of the music sounds the same anyway, there will be no individual genres. There will only be “music” and every person will have to decide what music genre the song actually is. There will still be different radio stations where the producers decide to play a certain song because it is there desired genre, but that same song will also be able to be played on a completely different station. It is already happening in some music. Taylor Swift for instance has done it for years and there is constantly crossroads of artists who collaborate and make a piece of music, even though their genres are supposed to be on opposite sides of the music spectrum. It will eventually reach a point where the only distinguishing factor will be the words that are used in the song that will tell us that it is a hip-hop song, or a rock song, or a country song, etc. However, that will not last forever, because eventually trucks will be driven in the city as much as they are driven on dirt roads. It will reach a point where an artist will take a generic set of instrumentals and paste in lyrics they have drawn from a word bank to make a song. If the “Music Singularity” comes to full fruition, music will become so boring that the only way it will be entertaining is through the likes of parody music from artists like BrentalFloss and Weird Al. Which is not inherently bad, but I definitely want to give recognition to the alternative thinkers in music now who are not afraid to push a boundary or two. Because while the rest of the music world cuts and pastes to make more songs to add to the 2 actually decent songs on their album so they can fill it up, those peripheral music artists will make songs that people actually want to listen to. But that is just one man’s opinion. Thanks for listening to me ramble. I appreciate it. See you next time.