Saturday, June 27, 2020

My life as an Atheist

I haven't been honest with you all.


I'm an atheist. Yep. Twelve years and going. But I wager I was an atheist as early as fourteen with some speculation starting around eleven. But I'll give a history lesson leading up to those moments.

When I was a kid, my mother shoved the god nonsense down my throat like all parents who fear a god do. She wasn't a hardcore fundamentalist or evangelical but we'd go to church if she felt the need to. Frankly, I didn't care for it. It was boring, it was tedious and it wasn't anything special. She's not a christian but believed in a god. I was curious as to why someone would believe in god, the christian god to be exact and not be a christian. Years down the line as a young adult I would learn deism, the belief in god but without any affiliation to a religious group.

My grandmother also pushed for church, like all black grandmothers do. I'll get to the black segment in a moment, gotta build up the anticipation. If it wasn't my mother, it was my grandmother. My dad did not give a damn about church. I noticed that a lot of men didn't care for church but may have some spirituality overall. As of now in this date of 6/27/20, I have no spirituality or religious beliefs whatsoever and I'm proud of it.

Now, as any child would, you'd ask about why god exists and how he could be everywhere at once. I asked is that guy or woman being followed by god and my mother said yes blindly without any logical explanation as to why he was following those two people and all of us at the same time. One of my worst memories was actually during and after church. The night before, me and my brother had everyone come over for the night, two good friends and our cousin. Fun all around. It was Easter Sunday that following morning and someone brought a bag of Starburst jelly beans.

Now I hated jellybeans, but for some reason, I ate these. Why? I don't know. But I did.

The next morning, my stomach was acting up. But instead of sleeping it off, I had to go to church and pray my stomachache away.

As soon as service got out, I went to the curb and threw up all those jellybeans. So much for god's healing power. I had an angry look that whole day. Mad at mom for taking me to church, mad at god for not saving me and mad at myself for eating jellybeans and the stuff atop the next morning. When we took pictures, I had a distinct glare in each picture. I went home and rested and got dragged along with grandma to our cousin's apartment and I threw up again.

After that and a nap later I got better. Plus, I had spring vacation to look forward to. All was well.

I won't say that this particular experience made me an atheist, but it turned me off jellybeans forever.

Fast forward to 2003, I was eleven years old and at that moment in time, I was starting to discover things about my body. And you can put two and two together. I swore to god that I was gonna not do my business until I was sixteen. I didn't last a week. That fear of breaking my oath to the sky daddy lingered...until I forgot about it and then remembered it offhand years later and laughed at my own ignorance.

"When you grow up, you'll learn to laugh at your fears." - Piccolo, Dragon Ball Z Episode 7
This applied to a lot of things in my childhood and adolescence. One of those things was the existence of god and the belief of one. Around my peers in middle and high school I would hear various things like "Wearing a black shirt with a cross necklace is a sin". So what? If you wanna wear black and a cross necklace, so be it. My classmate didn't buy it either because he did it again despite the music teacher saying these things.

One day, the science class caught on fire and the entire middle school had to be evacuated and moved to you guessed it - a church. I was talking and cursing up a storm and people were saying cursing in church was a sin. So the fuck what? I didn't say that, but later I thought to myself, so the fuck what? This is a sin, that's a sin, you can't do this on certain days, etc.

Eating shellfish is seen as unclean, fasting from meat on fridays but fish is okay apparently. See the logic? This is spread among Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Catholicism and other beliefs that the Middle East and America declare war over. While there are reasons to not eat animals and fish, valid reasons at that, I think some of those reasons are a bit too much. I ate what I ate and that was it. I don't eat pork, but not for religious or moral reasons, there are better meats to consume, but I will eat it if it's served by someone else.

But back on topic, my beliefs in religion were questioned and tried many times and a lot of that has to attribute to the stuff I watched. The countless nights of watching cable TV and a lot of other things that kids shouldn't be watching or seeing shaped my mind albeit in a dormant manner. When I would return to those same things years later, it not only clicked with me more, I understood them a lot better.

At fourteen, on a fucking Friday night, my brother had the brilliant idea to bring me to a church when I had plenty of games to play and internet sites to browse. We were there for an hour and I hated it. Hated it. I was an introvert and didn't go out much so maybe that was my mother trying to break me out of that. That wasn't the way to do it.

Fifteen, I questioned religion again when I detested going to church one Sunday. She told me that my dead grandmother taught her to teach me the christian way, which means she was a christian...but not really, going back to deism. Another thing I noticed when we were walking to church was a woman going to the same church but wearing a very provocative miniskirt. And her shape was indeed something that got me sprung. Now I made a little scenario that the preacher would try to fool around with her, basing it off the various sitcoms where the black preacher was pulling women or seeking sex in the name of god.

Hoo boy, at fifteen I was calling out the corruption and adultery in the black church subconsciously before I discovered it as an adult. I can't make this up. This woman had two sons my age if not a little younger and she was wearing this with her husband no less. Who goes to church wearing something like this:

Image courtesy of Romprom
Not this exact dress, but the length of the dress mainly. Now imagine that with a woman with say, Cherokee D'ass's shape. To quote a preacher in his moment of hysteria, good god!

End quote.

As I stated, I was questioning religion and god at an early age. The next year, I would move to Savannah, Georgia and it was there where I would not only come face to face with religion tenfold, but also make the ultimatum of where my beliefs system would lean toward...

Eight years of this hell I had to endure.

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

My love for cheese

Piggybacking off my last post, I mentioned that I adore cheese. Love it. But there's a dark period that I had to endure for a bit before I ascended to real cheese.



This shit. Here. Processed cheese. Cheese that is manufactured to where it legally cannot be called cheese. And melting is a selling point for this particular product. I had to eat this bile for years. It's not only an insult to cheese itself, it's not something that should be consumed by a human being. It tasted horrible, it felt like the plastic it was wrapped in and worse of all, it didn't melt. I had an Italian cheeseburger which was a sub with french fries in it with the beef inside it. The slices of cheese in it were wrinkled and warm, but not melted. I had to take out the 'cheese' and go out and get some at the local bodega.

Since then, I made it a rule to buy real cheese, and always real cheese. Never again.

Just now, I made a nice grilled cheese sandwich. Delicious. What I used to do was put a cheese sandwich in the microwave and come out with a half-melted, half-petrified disaster. It wasn't burned, but hardened. No idea if there's another word for it but petrified is probably the best way to describe it. I've learned from my mistakes.

Here's a list of cheeses I've tried over the years.

  1. Cheddar. Basic yellow cheese. Works when I need it to work. Sometimes it comes in a white variety and that has some flavor to it if sharp.
  2. Monetary Jack. A decent cheese to eat with fruit often combined with Colby or peppers. Pepper Jack has grown on me in recent years.You need that slight spice to bring out the mild taste.
  3. Swiss. Hot damn, when I first tried Swiss, it was like an epiphany. I tried real cheese and then I tried this. Now I knew I was never going back to that sandwich slice shit. When it melted, man.
  4. Mozzarella. This one isn't good for eating alone, you have to cook with it. Great on pasta and noodle dishes and obviously pizza.
  5. Provolone. A nice cheese with some sting to it. I tried a provolone block at my last job and not only did it stink, it had a taste that went to your nose. Now that's real cheese.
  6. Havarti. This cheese is good for melting and it has a nice dotted pattern. It's definitely a good cheese for burgers.
  7. Muenster. I LOVE muenster. The orange rind, the salty ting, the soft texture, it's a good cheese overall, good for snacking, sandwiches and macaroni. I would say this is my favorite cheese overall.
  8. Gouda. Gouda has a particular texture and was my go-to pick with a summer sausage. The smoked variety isn't bad either.
  9. Brie. Don't like it. The crunchy crust and soft texture don't do it for me.
  10. Blue. I'd love to eat it as is, but the Blues I've tried have been very rich. I can eat it as is, but it goes best with something, in a salad or another dish. 
  11. Truffle cheese. This type of cheese I didn't get to eat much but the few times I tried it, it was absolutely delicious. It had the right combination of sting and stink. It may have been the mushrooms or the cheese itself but it's a great combination. There are plenty other types out there, so I haven't touched the surface.
  12. Parmesan. It's a tough cheese but it has a flavor to it. I was mad I couldn't eat it alone and I usually don't eat it unless it's with some pasta dish.
  13. Kerrygold Brand cheese. At my last job, I sold both Dubliner and Ballyshannon blocks. I adored Ballyshannon more than Dubliner but lo and behold to cut costs, they got rid of the latter and only sold the former.
I could go on an on, but I love cheese to death. If I don't restrain myself, I could eat a whole block of the stuff with no regrets or guilt. There are more cheeses out there to try and I'd love to take the opportunity to do so. Not too long of an entry, just an indulgence piece I wanted to write about.

One last reiteration: Fuck fake cheese.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Candy isn't as dandy as it used to be.

Since the last post I did in 2019, a few things have happened to me and I've discovered and realized a lot of things, now being 100% aware of said things. This topic will be relating to something my grandmother gave me.

A lifelong curse.
I have a sweet tooth. It can't be helped. As someone who was a husky kid and also at risk for obesity and other health problems, not at that point but overall something that would have been a problem if I didn't sate myself early on. I think I covered this but I'll tell the story again of my path to a healthy lifestyle and the times I cheated, my first blog post to be exact.

So I was sixteen and during my checkup the doctor told me if I didn't take the initiative to exercise or at least take better care of myself, I was going to keep on gaining weight. Later that year, I moved to Georgia. As I mentioned, I have a sweet tooth, so that meant I was buying candy and chocolate and ice cream and other confections that caused my grandmother's curse to tug at me. One instance, I ate a bunch of candy that may have been Hershey's Nuggets, a sweet mix of chocolate with a hint of strawberry and cookie crumbles. I have not found that particular flavor of nuggets since.

I ate bags of that stuff, one dollar at the dollar store in the neighborhood. I ate so much of that shit to where I fractured one of my teeth, I still feel it to this day. Just thinking about them is making want to search online for them for nostalgia's sake. It really was a one-of-a-kind flavor.

In addition to sweets, I also had a taste for soda. I had a habit for making my own twists on cola, mimicking the various flavors of Pepsi and Coca-cola. Vanilla, lemon, lime, ice cream floats, you name it. I had a taste for peach soda. Delicious. But I hated root beer and cream soda. Around 2014, I decided to cut the drink entirely. At that time I had grown to love fruit smoothies and fell back on those instead.

Best choice I ever made.

But despite cutting out soda, I still picked at candy and chips, another habit that needs to be culled. I tried to cut candy out and go for alternatives like sweet potatoes. The first potato I had, I couldn't get into it. My tongue was still adjusted to candy. It took a while but I eventually made sweet potatoes a regular food in my current diet, and I don't regret it.

Around this time, about 2017 I noticed that some things didn't taste the way they used. But another factor in the difference in taste was that some candy I used to love had a change in the recipe, mainly to cut costs. Too many items, not just candy but a lot of stuff. Look it up. My adult tongue could taste the corn syrup a lot better. I especially noticed a change in taste with one of my favorite holiday drinks, eggnog. Eggnog was a nectar of the gods as a kid.

As an adult, it's still good so long as you don't buy the cheap stuff. And I don't care for alcoholic eggnog myself, I don't think mixing alcohol and dairy is such a good idea, right?

But overall, candy isn't as dandy as it used to be. Getting older, my body doesn't agree with it as much due to all the healthy eating I've been doing over the years. I'm fine with it and it shows how your body can adapt. A co-worker of mine mentioned that his body rejects vegetables due to years of eating processed food and junk. While he doesn't look sickly, how he feels is another story. There were times where I cheated and had a sweet and my body felt like shit afterward, so I can understand what he was saying.

Even when eating sweet potatoes, I still caved in and ate candy, brownies and ice cream. My grandmother did just that and I get it from her. She'd keep a box of brownies under her bed and a big jar of peanut butter with a big spoon all for herself. I'd do the former but the latter was too much for me. Fighting old habits is hard, but rewarding.

It's not just candy, I've stopped eating chips or buying chips to try to build up a habit of not eating junk food. Back in 2003 I discovered Utz no-salt chips and they're my go-to flavor after the Chesapeake-seasoned crab chips. I would pick those whenever I saw them on the shelves and down in Georgia it took a while for Utz to arrive down where I was living. I leaned on low-sodium vegetable juice in that same time, the difference is literally night and day.

I'm happy to say I don't have any pre-existing health problems and in my last post, I mentioned Covid-19 claiming so many lives of those who had health problems before. All the healthy eating I've done over the years has made a difference. It took a while, but I'm starting to see the fruits of my labor. There's still some work to do, I'm not out the woods yet. There's still meat, cheese, bread, sugar, you name it. As I get older and older, I'll likely have to cut those out eventually, and meat especially with the seedy underside of that industry. I took the knowledge The Jungle gave me for granted.

Cheese however, is the biggest hurdle. I can't give up muenster or havarti. I've loved cheese since before I could walk.

Live by the gruyere, die by the gruyere.

Friday, June 5, 2020

Dusting off the blog.



Man. It has been a while. So, I'll do a general tumult of topics.

-First, the Fighters Pass from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The pass finished in January and well, here's a rundown on things from my perspective.

Joker
Joker from Persona 5. While I am a fan of Shin Megami Tensei, I'm indifferent to Persona. I played Persona 3 and enjoyed it but and I have a copy of Persona 4 unopened but that is it. So, no connection to Joker. Neutral. I do get this little jingle if I play on Mementos with the P3 music, so there's one positive to highlight.


Hero
Hero was a pleasant surprise shown off at E3 2019. The default hero from Dragon Quest XI appeared at the start of Nintendo's presentation and with that hero come the protagonists from Dragon Quest III, IV and VIII respectively. As a Dragon Quest fan, I was hoping for the iconic mascot, the Slime but I call Hero a pleasant surprise because of their execution with having all the various spells from the series in their moveset. I won't get into too much detail, but Hero was a plus for me. I need to pick up XI.

Banjo-Kazooie 
Whoo. This one knocked it out the park for me. Not only was this reveal the highlight of the pass, it managed to overshadow the sequel of Breath of the Wild afterward. What is there to say? A literal never-ever pick comes to reality. I wanted Banjo-Kazooie in Brawl and my sixteen year-old self would have probably shit himself with hype.


Nothing else to say here. This prompted me to buy the pass.

Terry Bogard
Terry hails from Fatal Frame, an IP by SNK Playmore. I've played their games so I knew who he was. A lot of the Smash Bros. fanbase however did not. You gotta love how quickly people were attacking Terry because they don't know anything about him. Even better when you hear the talk about 3rd party characters being more exciting and hype and then those same people get a very iconic 3rd party character added and then complain. Which is it, hype 3rd parties or boring 1st parties in their own words? It can't be what you want personally, and I'm guilty of this as well.

During Terry's initial reveal, Sakurai also dropped this as well.

Joy. More shitflinging.

That said, we come to the very last pick of this pass.

Byleth
Byleth hails from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Yep. ANOTHER Fire Emblem character, totaling to eight characters. Naturally, everyone was outraged. I wasn't mad. In fact I called it given Corrin in the last Smash Bros. game. Nintendo and even Sakurai himself are that conceited and out of touch to do it. And if the second pass is anything to go by, it's going to be the same with the last character. By buying the pass instead of each individual pack, I technically got Byleth for free. But that's like getting an extra skittle in a bag containing an average of forty or so candies with forty-eight being the max and then you get fifty-one in a bag. Not the best analogy.

I'm not buying the second pass until I see what they're showing, like the first. I may have to hold off on buying the pass, even if I see a Banjo-tier character.

With Smash out the way, let's change gears.


-Covid-19. Or the Coronavirus. The Coronavirus festered in 2019 and started to blow up around late February of this year. Since then, plenty of businesses shut down and millions of not billions of dollars were lost as a result. But for me, it was the people's reaction and response to the whole situation. As a recluse and introvert, I had no issue with staying inside. I've been doing so for the last...fifteen years. The amount of times I've gone out with 'friends' and associates can be counted on my hand.

But to those who can't handle a little bit of isolation is laughable, to some very hilarious results.
And this is not the only incident. Seriously, I could get outraged and pissed off, but I have to laugh at this. If at least the thought of a few months in isolation from a potentially fatal virus is enough to drive you to suicide, that only shows how weak your will is as a person. There are way more serious matters to deal with and you pick this as an excuse to kill yourself. Natural selection at work.

The virus itself, I'm sure I have. In fact, I know that just about everyone has it in some way shape or form. I had a stomachache around the time of cases popping up in the US and the following diarrhea that came with it was not pleasant. I may as well have been shitting out my stomach acid at that point. Covid-19 can kill anyone at any given moment, no matter what. I'll risk Covid-19 but I won't pretend I'm fully immune from it, and I know I'm not and wasn't. But I know I'm in a good spot due to one thing...



Years of eating right and exercise can do wonders for you. It's not just for wanting to live long and healthy, it's also to be prepared for situations like Covid-19 so that your body has the resources to fend off new and unknown threats. Covid-19 can be detrimental and fatal to those who have preexisting conditions. Of course with black people, at least in America, that is a very common factor. The Coronavirus should not have been the turning point where you eat healthy.

In good times and bad, you should be eating your vegetables. Matter of fact, fruit is a double-edged sword as it does contain natural fructose. Vegetables however have dietary fiber, minerals and vitamins needed for a healthy body and how coincidental that most 'adults' do not like to eat their vegetables.

Overall, I'm not bothered by this too much. Wearing a face mask is a bitch and a half but that's one inconvenience. This was a decent wake-up call for the world and the way things are set up. Perhaps this awakening will be the start of a new status quo.


-Third topic, I got fired recently from my job back in February, right at the doorstep of Covid-19 coming to fuck everything up. Let's just say this much about that job: I don't need it as much as some people would think. The work is too much for the little amount of pay you get and the work I was doing was far beyond what one person can do. Two and a half years of that shit. Never again. Covid-19 made me reconsider my stance on retail and working in general. A kick in the ass if you would, one everyone needed, me included.

I was ready to find a new job, but then quarantine happened and well...

I won't say that I won't work another job again, but I will say I'm at that point in my life where I can't stomach the bullshit that comes with a job. Keyword, job. A career is another story. I don't need to get into detail the situation that comes with a black man trying to get a job in this world. Last to get hired, first to get fired. I didn't get my job because I was hard-working, I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. That's it. I knew this for years, but I finally realized what came of that scenario and it shows.

You don't have to be competent at your job to get it or keep it. Competence means jackshit, just know the right person and you're in. That is it. Know enough people and you're set. For me being an introvert, that is a death sentence in this social world we live in. This is why I wasn't mad at being fired and this is why I enjoy the situations above with people committing suicide just because they couldn't socialize. Building a social network is beneficial, but working on yourself is a plus as well. Sometimes you just need to fall back and relax. Just chill out.

The general politics with working in retail irks me. I don't like most customers, I want to do my work, I don't do small talk and if I don't like a manager or supervisor, I really don't want to interact with you. I'm here to make money, not friends. And don't pretend I had a chance to grow, your actions say otherwise even if I don't tell you my actual ultimatum. The benefits of being an introvert, you can tell who's genuine and who's a goober. No offense to the candy.

For introverts like me, it was just another lonely day to myself. Some people will never have that problem and this pandemic forced the hands of a lot of people for the better. You can look at my past posts and see where I stand on social distancing.

So, that's that on my job. I won't go on detail with my scenario for now but I'm happily content with my current situation and will try to build my own brand and platform.


So, that covers up most of the relevant stuff. Will I go into dormancy again? I'm going to try to put some material on this blog if it's still around. May as well go for it.

Pay a visit to my site while you're at it. Volume 10 of The World of Mission is finally out!