20060519,00

Get It Try It

The greatest crime of all.



In the very very very old days there were no village chieftains. People sorted things out like they did in that Stanley Kubrick movie with the monkeys. That became too much of a hassle. Too many conflicts, too much wasted time.

So they invented the village chieftain and looked for a volunteer. First problem. No one wanted the hassle. Everybody was happy living the lives they were leading and no one wanted the extra hassle. How cajole someone into becoming village chieftain?

They started by offering perks. Village chieftains would be allowed two wives. Everyone laughed at this. Everybody was fooling around and fucking everybody else anyway.

They tried offering more goods and status. Everyone laughed again. More goods? Everyone had more than adequate food, clothing, and shelter already. Status? What a laugh. What's status? Who needs that?



Somehow they found a dupe. An imbecile. Someone who was a little 'slow'. 'Developmentally delayed'. They made him chieftain. They bullshitted about 'divine blood' and 'royal blood' to keep the imbecility in the same bloodline and in the same chieftain's abode.

The new chieftain learned straight on what the score was. He was expected to make all the decisions for the village. There was only one problem - actually two: 1) he was too dumb to arrive at anything on his own; and 2) if he arrived at a decision that was unpopular he'd have hell to pay.

So the chieftain struggled along for a while, got more and more neurotic, got more and more strained from all the pressure, and finally sought a way out of the morass. And in finding a way out he came up with one of the most important - and evil - inventions in the history of the planet.

The witch doctor.

The witch doctor was the primeval con artist. He was the meister of bullshit. He'd proclaim who knows what and talk of impending doom and augurs and omens - and what a coincidence, for it always coincided with the whimsical (and downright stupid) decisions of the village chieftain.



After considerable time the witch doctor and the village chieftain gained a foothold. Their word was truth and their word was law. We saw the birth of organised religion, the one cause above all others of war and pestilence on the planet.

People eventually took the word of the witch doctor at face value. A good witch doctor could scare the shit out of people - to the point they didn't dare doubt his bullshit. He put the people in his grasp and turned over the reins to the village chieftain. Batman and Robin never made a better team.

Throughout history we've seen organised religion create slaughters and genocide on an unparalleled scale. We've seen the wars of Charlemagne fought for the 'one true new god'. We've seen the Crusades. We've seen the muslims. We've seen the Spanish Inquisition. We've seen Galileo Galilei imprisoned because he dared to attack the Vatican.



We've seen Dalai Lamas slaughtered by the monks dangling the strings. We've seen strife in Northern Ireland. We see strife in the Middle East to this day. We've seen fundamentalists in arabic countries behead and blow up innocent people - and even themselves - all the while shouting 'Allah is great'. Bless the religious.

Now we have a new movie about to break all box office records. It's supposed to be fiction but it's based on actual historical theory. The theory is that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was - if he actually lived - just a dude like any of us. And that his bitch Mary of Magdalene was not a hooker as everyone told you but just a nice soft squeeze to have around. And that they had kids - and lots of them.

It also says Jesus had about half a dozen siblings. And in the period in which they all lived - which ironically is placed at about 5 BC - there was a lot of insurgence against the Roman Empire. And one thing led to another and suddenly they had a political movement on their hands.



Which cunning people turned into a Scientology scheme. And they started roaming the Roman Empire and setting up camp and starting to pull in the big bucks.

Then the Jesus people - the real relations - thought enough was enough and wanted to move the seat of their movement back where they were living and wanted to take back control again, given that they were the guy's real relatives and not some daft charlatans.

No way, said the powers that be. We're keeping control. And then began a systematic coverup to hide in history itself what the real score was.

Fact? Fiction? Does it matter? Isn't it all fiction? There are historians who insist this is the truth. But here's where the witch doctor comes back in.

Two of the culprits in this theory are the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. Both were involved in usurping power and the later coverup and both were supposedly up to their eyeballs in evil.



Now the book by Dan Brown becomes a movie starring everybody's Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks, and everybody's favourite Amélie, Audrey Tautou, and these two churches are pissing all over themselves. Don't go see the movie, they say. In Greece the right wing (paramilitary) religious sued the court system to have the movie banned. Something like The Life of Brian in Norway. The court however said 'no'. The movie will be shown at around 200 theatres. Good.

Sir Ian McKellen, who also stars in the flick, was interviewed by Matt Lauer and asked if there shouldn't be a disclaimer in the beginning of the movie that it's all fiction. McKellen's retort was classic and straight to the point.

If you want disclaimers, then start with one on the inside cover of the Bible. Or for that matter the Quran. Or the Talmud. Or any 'book' like that.



Minitruth controls reality. Witch doctors could scare the shit out of people and in so doing 'reign them in' (which is the literal meaning of the word 'religion' - you think about that tonight when your head hits the pillow). But the witch doctor could not necessarily warp people's minds. That took a lot longer - many centuries more.

Now we have witch doctors in Rome, in Mecca, and in Constantinople not only still trying to scare the shit out of people BUT ACTUALLY TELLING THEM WHAT TO THINK.



Bullshitting (a) people to screw them into doing things they don't want to do is bad enough; being able to bullshit to the point where fantasy becomes reality and you're actually trying to tell people what they can fucking think is perhaps the greatest crime of all: you're stealing people's souls.

And that's not what's meant by 'intelligent design'.

PS. Poor Apple: they pick tonight of all nights to premiere their new New York City location. See the movie instead like everyone else. Apple's just another religion.