william peter blatty, sit down

I’m almost done reading William Peter Blatty’s book, Legion, for the second or maybe third time, and surprisingly, I still love it. So I was just looking old Blatty up to see what other books and films he had a hand in, and ended up reading a bit about him. Turns out I think he was a kook. Here’s why.

• He was religious (Catholic, to be specific). That pretty much says it all right there but I’ll continue just to illustrate further.
• Married four times. This is a red flag for anyone but it’s even more egregious when you’re religious and supposedly take the vows even more seriously than non-religious folks. It just goes to show your word doesn’t mean shit, you don’t practice what you preach, and that you’re a terrible judge of character.
• Had seven kids. Nothing screams narcissism to me like unchecked reproduction. Did Blatty think his genes were that amazing, that special, that he needed to put seven little Blatty’s out in the world?
• Harped on the same idea repeatedly for years — that idea being that life occurring spontaneously on Earth was such an unlikely event, and that the complexity of life and evolution is such that it’s simply not realistic to believe it could happen without the hand of a great creator. This idea formed the basis of at least two of his books, and I feel like just casually mentioning it once in one book would have been sufficient. To be preoccupied with the idea and drone on about it for years and in multiple novels indicates an obsessive personality — the kind that might also, say, produce seven fucking children when the world is already full of useless humans.
• I’m not totally opposed to Blatty’s idea that some higher power may have had or always has a hand in the world as we know it, but to make the leap from there and say, “it was clearly my god, the Catholic god, that is behind all of it” — that’s a huge jump, and quite insane. I guess this falls pretty close to my first point but it’s enough of an extension on it that I’ll keep it.
• He made a formal complaint to the Vatican because his old school, Georgetown University, was not consistent with Catholic teachings, eg the school invited speakers who supported abortion rights. Who gives a fuck what their old university is doing, and who writes formal complaints to the fucking Vatican about it? Even more loonie religious fanaticism. Most of my problems with the guy tie back into religion, which isn’t surprising.

It’s weird when someone you can detest on paper can create some art that you find incredibly moving. It seems like a strong argument for art and artist being two very separate things. I dunno.

^{I wanted to find a pic of Blatty I liked less but I like this one too much to not use it — except for that fucking Mickey Mouse watch, wtf is with that?}

i don’t believe in magic and mystical shit now but that doesn’t make life any less amazing (then something spooky happens)

Yesterday I was working on a blog post about how I don’t think I believe in magical/mystical shit anymore — I’ve always been fascinated by weird coincidences and stuff but lately I’ve been feeling more and more like there are sound, reasonable explanations for everything, and we just don’t know and understand all that shit yet so we tend to view those things as magic or whatever.

For example, we know that changes in weather, barometric pressure, and humidity affect joint conditions like arthritis (because everyone with arthritis says so), but we still don’t understand why. We know there must be a good reason for it, we just don’t know it yet. Makes sense, right? It’s obviously not because faeries sprinkle stardust on the twisted, gnarled joints of the crippled who make the pilgrimage to warm, dry climates.

Now say you have a premonition of something crazy happening, and then it happens. It might be just a coincidence, but maybe you really did have a legit premonition, we don’t know yet. And if you did have a premonition, how/why did it occur? Was it because a faerie tapped you on the head with their magic wand, or is it possible there is a legitimate explanation that we just don’t know yet?

I’m at the point that I lean toward the latter. It feels nice and reassuring to believe there is some cosmic force overseeing everything, but I think that’s almost as crazy as believing in any other wack religion/cult. I guess the more vague a belief is, the more ok with it I am — believing specific stuff like “god said not to wear brown shoes on Tuesdays” is clearly more wack than believing a higher power gives you little winks and nudges now and then — but what makes us believe in any particular thing we have no evidence of? Why believe in one crazy thing but not another? Because we feel one in particular resonates with us more? Bullshit. That’s not enough for me anymore.

Then, while this blog post was half written, someone commented this on another one of my posts:

It was 5am and I googled: I hate sunrise. found your post (why I hate sun rises) and then took a look at your recent posts and found this one with a First Reformed clip uploaded by me. I’ll call it an artificial coincidence.

I have to admit that that is a very spooky coincidence — a doubly spooky coincidence, given the topic of the post I was working on when the initial coincidence occurred. What to do with it? I don’t know. Nothing, I think — yep, it’s spooky, but I bet there is just some legitimate multidimensional shit going on that humans might be able to explain in 1,000 years. It’s amazing, yes, but I don’t think it’s unexplainable, magical, mystical, or whatever. I don’t think there are any faeries or sky buddies involved in this.

And that’s kind of my point. I don’t think we need to believe in the fantastical in order to recognize how amazing everything is. Even when everything is explained, it’s no less incredible. Shit, you could argue that the formula required to build the cosmos is so utterly, absurdly complex and full of lucky coincidences that it’s more incredible than any imaginary sky buddy could be.

You don’t need to believe in hocus pocus to be wow’d by shit, is my point.

the Studio 54 connection

I just had two funny little coincidences occur to me that were related to a documentary on Studio 54 I watched last night.

There were a few songs in the film that I really liked and looked up afterward because, despite my vast knowledge of disco, I wasn’t aware of these two. One was an instrumental piece with a real string ensemble, not the usual synthesized stuff, and it was manic and kind of crazy. I spent about an hour trying to figure out what the song was called or who performed it but I still don’t know. It seems like it is either called Hush Puppy’s Theme and was written by James William Cox and Dr. Steven Trip, or it is called Wishful Thinking and was written by Nicolas Scapa and John Read Fasse. I searched and searched for those two songs but I couldn’t find any recordings online of either (Kyla, I’m looking at you…). (edit: scroll down to the comments section below, some amazing human figured this out and answered the question for me there) I hung my head and went to bed dejected, and read a chapter of a crappy Joe Hill novel before going to sleep. A page in, ‘wishful thinking’ was mentioned. I thought it was a little weird, but the term is not so uncommon that it was downright freaky.

But there was another part of the Studio 54 film where they talked about the night before the two main dudes behind the club went to jail, and the club played the song My Way by Frank Sinatra as a farewell to them. I thought, hmmmmm, it was probably a disco version of My Way, and if there’s one thing I love, it’s disco versions of other famous songs.

I looked it up and found the disco My Way. It wasn’t great but it was still kind of neat, and I felt clever for figuring out that there would be a disco version of the song.

Then this morning, a friend sent me a cute animal video, and the song playing throughout the video is none other than My Way (the original version though, of course).

It’s weird that two of the three songs I was researching last night came up in these little ways so soon after doing so. Isn’t that just a little weird? I think so. But man, if a reference to the third song comes up today then I know for sure that THERE IS A GOD. Jk, roflmao. No one knows if there is a higher power or not.

On the topic of Studio 54, holy hell. What an experience that place would have been. The photos and videos of it are unreal. It truly does look like it was the best party on Earth. Jenn said last night that ever since she was a kid, she has thought the 70’s would have been the most fun decade. I’ve never really thought about it but she might be right. I sure do wish I could have experienced a night at Studio 54. It looks like an awesome blend of Burning Man and retronight at Evolution — just lots of people dancing and having the time of their lives, with all kinds of other cool, crazy shit going on. Dang.

further railing against organized religion

a co-worker was just telling me about pastafarianism.

i love it. it speaks to me about exactly what has been gnawing at me lately: all religions are utterly absurd, and if we didn’t grow up being inundated by them — if we only learned about any given religion after we had grown into sensible, reasonable adults — we wouldn’t entertain them for a second. we’d say, “that’s fucking stupid. what makes you think there’s a man in the clouds/divine cow/you have to wear that thing on your head?”

the way this came up was that my co-worker told me he knew a guy who wore a colander on his head when he went to have his picture taken for his license. he was told he had to take it off for the picture. he said he had to wear it, that it was part of his pastafarian religion. he was told no way.

now, if a sikh is allowed to wear their turban while having their license photo taken, why can’t this guy wear a colander on his head if he believes in the almighty pasta monster?

there’s no good reason for such a double standard. no one should be treated any differently from anyone else, ESPECIALLY because of ‘religious beliefs.’ i don’t care what anyone chooses to believe because that’s none of my business, but i think it’s an unacceptable excuse when asking for special treatment. just because someone buys into a fantasy that has absolutely zero basis in reality is no reason to treat them any differently from anyone else.

if it was a good reason, then the guy with the colander should have been allowed to wear it for his license photo — but we can all agree that’s stupid and absurd. so why can’t we agree that every other religious belief is just as stupid and absurd?

organized religion sucks.