There are times when an apology is just right and there are times when an apology is just not enough. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether one is called for or not. Maybe one won’t be enough, or maybe one will turn out to be unnecessary. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal to begin with. But usually, it’s the feeling of not at least trying to right a wrong that plagues us. We want to at least say that we tried.

I have something I want to apologize for. While it’s not serious, it has nonetheless been on my mind for some time, so here’s the story…

I was traveling late one night in mid-2008 when I got a case of “the runs” pretty badly. I had to make do with the nearest restaurant bathroom I could find. You can never get that Pepto-Bismol down quite fast enough! I remember kicking my feet against the floorboard, anxiously breathing, hoping, waiting, nearly praying to make it to my relief soon.

Beads of sweat were starting to form on my head. I looked over to the passenger seat and the back seat for something to “shield” the seat from a possible soon-to-be explosive rear-end calamity of the excremental kind. I ended up grabbing a sun reflector and got ready…just in case.

After several more minutes of driving, I knew there was no more hunting for ideal exits. It was time! I exited the freeway and drove into a strip mall, running on “blind faith” that an option would present itself. It was nearly midnight and everything was closed. The businesses in this shopping center were elegant ladies’ shoes outlets and such. I almost missed it, but finally spotted a driveway around back leading to a Jack in the Box that was about to close in 20 minutes.

Still breathing hard, panting, even singing to myself to hold the ass-full of human compost that was about to break forth from its own dam, I threw the seatbelt off and ran inside. No other customers were inside but me. Three young men were working behind the counter. One mopped, one was handling a drive-thru order, and the other was doing something at the cash register. I don’t know how I remember all that as frantically stressed out as I was, but I did. I even remember nodding at the guy on my big man’s sprint charging towards the bathroom.

I had already made it a point that if someone was in the men’s room, I had no problems using the women’s. This was an EMERGENCY! Luckily, no one was in there. I knocked the door open and then slammed it shut, being careful to remember to lock it with that cheap-ass little sliding latch. I ripped my own clothes off like a violent rapist, jumping up and down to hold my ass-cheeks together, believing at this point that I wasn’t going to make it.

This was so bad! I didn’t even have time to care about the dirty, filthy, partially burnt and chipped toilet seat that clearly had fresh fecal matter and urine on it. I never sit on public toilet seats unless I have my antibacterial cleaner with me, and so you realize that in this situation, that option was non-existent. So what was I to do?

I did what I always do, but am not very good at doing—I “cannoned” up and squatted down, arching my back to make sure that the junk I was about to jettison didn’t get on me. I didn’t so much as get halfway down when: POWWWWWWWWW!

…

The dam burst forth. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

…

The relief was better than great, but the discomfort of remaining in a terrible squatting position and having to spin an almost spent roll of toilet paper trapped inside those troublesome anti-vandalism devices was a new source of discomfort. There was not much toilet paper left, so I finished the nasty job with the lever-operated paper towel dispenser.

Cleaning up and checking to make sure that my hands were thoroughly washed and that I was “zipped up” was easy enough. It was when I turned around to see the mess…that was when it hit me: I MISSED THE BOWL COMPLETELY!

My undesirable ass-juice that night smelled bad enough to induce a coughing, nauseating death, and it was power-sprayed onto two walls that intersected behind me. Ay-fucking-Carumba! Sheets of shit water in a spotty splatter were everywhere. Good thing only gang graffiti and the names and phone numbers of sexual malcontents written in permanent marker was on those walls. One spot was nearly five feet high. Holy shit, I’m a five-foot shitter! There’s got to be some reward for that!

The golden-brown diarrhea that looked only a little lighter than dirty motor oil touched barely a spot on the toilet seat, but covered completely the pipes and flush handle. It looked like Kibbles 'n Bits with the chunks. It was like the flush handle was wearing a hat that day, a brown hat of undigested bits of a chopped beef sandwich. There was so much of it following the pull of gravity that it was heading towards the drain in the room’s center.

This was worse than bad! There was so much of it! This place saved me from “going” in the weeds or worse, and this is how I repay them? I couldn’t just leave. I couldn’t just clean it up either because there appeared to be no more toilet paper or paper towels. I used what few remained in cleaning me up. It was futile to try anymore. It would take an entire stack of throwaway newspapers to do this fucking job! That left me with just one option, a rather shameful option.

I walked out of the restroom and up to that guy, that guy who was still working at the front cash register. “Uh, hey uh, buddy…your sign in the restroom says to report any unsanitary conditions to management. I’m doing that now. Somebody sure did a number on you!” The man looked perplexed for a minute, and then replied: “That’s odd because nobody’s been in here for 20 minutes before you.” The guy may have been just smart enough to suspect something was up. I said, “Anyways, just passing that along. Have a good one!” Then I confidently walked out, cringing under my breath.

The guy was sharp, but he appeared to be tired and wanted to go home. You can just see it in a man’s eye. Walking out, I could see out of the corner of my eye that the fellow was turning around slowly, dreading going in there to see the biohazard mess. I think he suspected it was me, but he was still stuck with cleaning it up. This made me feel extra bad.

Part of what made me feel worse was that I realized I didn’t bother to check the other stall for some paper to clean. It wouldn't really have worked too well, but yeah, I wanted to take the easy way out. I can remember thinking: “Well, sorry, but you do work here.” That’s why I feel the need to apologize now.

I did what I did and then quickly drove off into the night like a thief…like a shameless, shitting, Imodium AD-needing thief. Now I want to apologize to that guy and to anyone else who had to deal with my...shit. I’m sure just seeing it caused him to curse the day he was born.

Sorry! I really am!

(JH)

It's one of the worst blunders in the scriptures, and it comes from James, writer of the New Testament. He says: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.” (James 1:13)

Studying the New Testament without the blinders of Christian dogma on reveals that James – like that sadly ignorant writer of the gospel of Matthew – had no idea of the things he was saying. James says that God doesn’t tempt men to do evil. God doesn’t want to see us fall. He’s not going to do anything about it if we do fall, but he wants us to prosper, and he’s not going to tempt us to do “evil.”

The abovementioned Bible quote would be nothing but another pious passage, were it not for the fact that James is wrong and that his statement creates a contradiction with the Old Testament. God does for sure try (test, tempt, all good words) men.

Genesis has God tempting a man, his servant Abraham: “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.” (Genesis 22:1)

You remember what happens with the story. God says “Go offer your son Isaac as a burnt offering to me.” Abraham is about to comply when God essentially jumps in and says: “Whoa, buddy! I’m just pulling your leg! If you kill the chosen seed I gave you, there won’t be a way to have all the seed I promised you, but thanks anyway for not thinking and just obeying me without question!”

Abraham was praised for being willing to obey God, but what if he hadn’t gone about to obey God? What if he had disobeyed God? Would that not have been a sin? Of course, it would have. But God was tempting Abraham. He was trying him with a test of faith, a test that could have been to his detriment.

God shouldn’t have needed to test his faith since God knows everything. He already knew when the last time his faithful servant went solo on himself in a tent in Ur of the Chaldees when the wife was on the rag, but God tests him anyway. If God wants to play the game, you’ve got to play it.

So had those Israelites who were commanded to exterminate non-Jews found en route to the promised land been conscientious objectors who refused to “save alive nothing that breatheth” (Deuteronomy 20:16) as commanded, they would have been violators of God’s law. You’ve got to do what God says, no matter what. Those who school girlishly boast “I have a foundation for my morality” should remember that.

A bartender who serves alcohol to a person who is intoxicated can face charges by the deceased’s family if the intoxicated individual leaves the establishment and gets in a car wreck and is killed. It’s called accountability, and it must apply to God too. What we read of God's character should show accountability problems—maybe not for Christians, but for all who think.

God may not want you to fall to sin, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that God causes men to fall, despite what James says. Read Deuteronomy...

“If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” (Deuteronomy 13:1-3)

When a false prophet comes and tries to deceive the faithful into idolatrous apostasy, it is to be considered the work of God in that God is testing you to see how loyal to him you are! The text says not to pity the idolater, but to kill him. He is an abomination. Have no part with him. Don’t be led astray by him, no matter how “tempting” he/God is. Get all the people together in ending his life. That is the word of Heaven.

Just think, an eloquent pagan who can do convincing magic tricks, some worshipper of snakes from a temple where the blood of babes is scribbled onto parchment, who uses smooth words to move Israelite households into rebellion against the followers of Moses might have been doing the will of God!

So much for “God doesn’t tempt you with evil.” It’s clearly not true. God will test your faithfulness using an evil false prophet, one so evil that God himself says they should die! How much more “tempting with evil” can God get? God wants you to be faithful, but if you fall prey to wickedness, God is still pure and you are still unjust and dirty. God bears no blame.

Like the words of today’s apologists, James’ words have no real meaning. If he had great knowledge of the Old Testament, he wouldn’t have said: “When you are tempted, God doesn’t do it. God doesn’t tempt with evil.” What he’s trying to say is, “Don’t blame God for your temptations. It’s always you who screws up and gives into them.” But it makes no sense to say that God doesn’t tempt with evil because James, even with prophetic endowment, could not know the limits of God’s involvement in testing every human being.

James’ words are on level with modern statements from evangelistic eggheads, like “God is sinless.” What does that even mean? If God creates all standards of righteousness, then to say that he could ever be sinful is, correspondingly, nonsense. “God had to come in the form of a perfect man to show us how it’s done.” is another clueless statement made by believers. God no more needs to become human than he does have a son. Only a stupid, pseudo-intellectualized, half-pagan, descendant of a lobster-hater would contend otherwise.

(JH)

I want to introduce you to my friend Terri. She is a person of simplicity, and yet her depth of character has you looking down and not seeing bottom. Being a complicated person is not what I am talking about. Any chick – any dude, for that matter – can be complicated, conflicted, unpredictable, with “issues.” That’s not what I’m talking about at all. I’m talking about a person who is enough of an individual to have a personality you can nail down. You can predict them, and yet they can teach and surprise you in unforeseen ways. Such a friend is Terri.

Terri is about my age. She doesn't have a lot of money. She doesn't own a car. She lives in a small apartment in an obscure city in the mid-west. By society's standards, she is nothing. By my standards, she is nothing if not an amazing person. She has a big brain and she never hems herself in by having less than an open mind. She’s made her share of mistakes, but the world would be a better place with more people who had her robust intellect.

I met her last year in that deep sea of online fishers called the internet. We share no romantic chemistry. She is just a friend, albeit one of my true friends. One is doing well to have five good friends in life. She is one of those. We've never met in person. I’ve seen her, but she's never seen me. That's because Terri is blind. She was blind from birth. Her eyes never formed correctly in the womb. She was born without retinas and other essential components that make eyes work.

Never having known the ability to see is, to me, a huge thing to take in. That means she has never seen a sunset or the stars or a peculiar cloud formation. The things the bulk of us take for granted, the things we have forgotten to be amazed by, are the things she will never get to experience.

The conversations Terri and I have can be interesting, but very often, would be boring to the point of tears for anyone to listen to. We have covered nearly every subject you can name. No topic is too personal or private. We can fill up four hours of talk until we drop into an unintended slumber. While much of what we talk about wouldn’t interest anyone, some of it would. Take, for instance, my trying to explain to Terri what it is like to see.

I have tried to describe to Terri colors and shapes and what things “look like.” I have tried and tried and failed every single time. Only recently have I admitted that describing to a person who has never had sight details of what it means to “see” is an absolute impossibility. No, Terri doesn’t “see black” like people always ask. “Seeing” is a meaningless term to her.

It's funny…really it is. For all of her intellectual fortitude (she has a registered I.Q. of 143 as opposed to my 134), Terri will never understand how people see through glass. It really is a big mystery to her. And she doesn’t understand when I say that things looked at up close appear smaller as distance increases. She will never understand it.

Terri may not be able to see, but she takes in the information of what is around her that she needs. She shared with me a story about how she first began to be aware of her ability to sense what is around her. She was just eight years old and walking around the block with her father the way they always would. Terri would walk next to dad and hold his hand. On one occasion, they walked some ways and then Terri felt the need to walk in front of her father. “There is something here,” Terri said. Her father said: “Yes, there sure is.” “What is it?” Terri said. “A mailbox.” her father replied. But that mailbox was probably 25 feet away, and yet she knew she was going to need to move to dodge it.

One of the things people say about being blind is that your other senses are raised to mega-high levels, and there is a little truth to that. But it's not so much true as is the fact that you learn to rely on your other senses more. And there is one particular sense that develops that is the biggest help. It is sonar. Just like bats, blind people acquire the ability to use a very low-level sonar, which is how they can tell when they are next to a wall or piece of furniture or out in an open space. To them, the information translates from subtle sounds as a slight airy feeling on the face or cheeks, which gives an idea of distances and surroundings.

Terri types through a program called JAWS. It enables her to hear messages that the rest of us see on any computer screen. I have listened to this electronic speaking voice, which she has set to speak at the fastest possible level. I can't make out a single word, and here she is reading entire novels in the space of four to six hours! That girl’s got an amazing auditory processor!

Maybe Terri is a sharp cat, but sight is still better, yes? I asked her one day: “If you could have sight right now, would you not take it?” I almost felt bad about asking since the answer is so “obvious,” right? “Oh no!” she said, so emphatically with that windy-sounding voice of hers. I couldn't believe it, and in the course of our discussing the matter, she nailed me to the wall. She pointed out that sight would change her world forever, and there could be no going back. We argued, but she ended up convincing me.

Terri’s taking on the ability to see visible light was analogous to Joe Holman taking on the ability to see in infrared or in x-ray vision or perhaps the ability to see germs and things on the microscopic level. Nature dictates that abilities connected to the senses cannot be turned off and on at will. If you had super hearing, you would have to live out in a field somewhere because every TV and radio playing in a city or apartment building would drive you insane in a week’s time! My having the ability to see in x-ray vision, for instance, would mean that I could never turn that off. Imagine seeing skeletons instead of people’s faces! Muhahahaha!

That means my world would never look the same again, and nothing in the world would look the same—not a pair of naked breasts or the most benign patch of skin on an elbow. Nothing would be the same. It would be a different world…

So yes, Joe, it would be very nice to be able to drive myself to get groceries and shop, but this is my life. I don't want to know any differently. This is how it has always been for me.

What faulty assumption did I make? It was my own (human) arrogance that set me up for the fall. I simply assumed that the way I perceive life was the best way to perceive it. I assumed that because I know the beauty of a sunset that I somehow got the best seat in the house for observing the universe. This brings us to a powerful observation: if we had evolved to see things in infrared light or if we had developed x-ray vision, we would be parading around about how wonderful our observations are just as when we see them in the visible spectrum and marvel at “the glories of nature.”

This is the arrogance of consciousness. We and any other life-forms out there that can think would, of necessity, fall prey to this same ignorance: “You should see what I see! I got it good! This is the way it should be!”

I can make fun of it, but it sounds so convincing to remind myself of what I love about perceiving life. Do you want to experience life as a dog that sees everything in the color of a late summer evening or as a spider that cannot take in the whole sky and views things in ultraviolet light? I‘d say no, and I suspect, if you could ask the spider, the thing would not be looking forward to viewing things like I do.

We arrogant humans can go to bats or people in Terri’s position and say, “You will never know the beauty of a sunset!” Or, we could go to a deaf person and sign to them: “If only you could hear Bach and the sounds of a symphony!” But we might just as well run to a cockroach and say: “You are so damn disgusting and small and are missing out on what it means to be at the top of the food chain! Hah!” A smart cockroach would reply: “And you don’t know what it’s like to be able to survive a nuclear blast, so fuck off!”

Here is this blind woman, this friend of mine, a woman who has lived an immensely difficult life in so many ways. She was supposed to die at birth, but medical technology kept her alive. She had every reason to be dissatisfied with her life, to hate her existence and to finish herself off by doing something like mixing a bucket of ammonia and bleach.

But Terri doesn’t hate life. She loves it. She wants to grow old and die of old age with someone special. She has not a religious bone in her body, but she has hope. She is a survivor who awakes to each new day and finds meaning and purpose. That almost makes me angry. How envious I am!

Here I am, with all the faculties, and I’m half suicidal. I wanted her to see things my way. At first, I felt sorry for her. I kept wanting her to do what I would do and give up. But she didn’t. “If only you could see you as I see you!” I kept thinking. Then I got to know her, and I quit saying that. It’s in her nature to find the good in things. I don’t feel sorry for her anymore. I almost want to feel sorry for myself. If I lost sight, I wouldn’t be that strong.

I have known sight. To know sight and to lose it is different than never knowing it to begin with. Take the most beautiful pair of twins in the world who are the pride and joy of their father and mother and cut them up with a filet knife. Many parents could right nearly die from the grief. But go back in time and get rid of the children by not allowing them to be conceived and those same parents will never shed a tear for them.

It’s universal arrogance. We think we have the best seat in the house to live lives envied by all. Even the Bible says we are the highest creation. Is this a religious thing? Isn’t it faith that helps us overcome the trials and tribulations of life? Isn’t it getting on our knees and having a little talk with Jesus that makes things right? Not at all.

And here you were thinking I was going to tell you how evil the world is and how a good God couldn’t have created it. Or maybe you thought I was going to blame the arrogance of humanity on Christianity. You got me all wrong. I’m not blaming the Christian God. No deity did anything…as usual.

When we pull through tragedy and pain, we do so of our own strength. Sometimes that strength is not enough, in which case, we don’t make it. But other times, it is enough, and when we pull through, we assign reasons for it. Sometimes “finding Christ” is one of those reasons. That’s when things get dishonest.

Your genes tell you to survive, pal. All other voices are superfluous. You think by following the course of nature and then boasting about how triumphant God has made you gives brownie points? Might as well bestow sainthood on every Border Collie for having the “strength” to get his freak on with a neighborhood bitch in heat!

Sorry. Ole’ Jeebuz didn’t do a flippin’ thing, just as he never does. We don’t have the best seat in the house. Our seats are just warm and we prefer not to move.

(JH)

Two weeks ago was a turning point for me, as it was the end of a living situation nightmare that made the whole month of September an exceedingly miserable time.

As I write, I'm sitting in a pearl white recliner at home in San Antonio, that place that has the sometimes taken-for-granted benefit of a city-wide smoking ban in all businesses, something the Dallas/Ft. Worth area needs to get and enforce. I'm presently sucking down a 44 oz sweet tea and getting caught up on some writing as the fourth heap of clothes dries.

Why all these clothes? Because I had to wash every garment and blanket I own to get the smoke smell out that was put there by gaunt, leather-faced, saggy-forearmed, red-nosed, denture-wearing, baggy-eyed, dirty, unkempt, white-trash pieces of shit who made it a practice to smoke INSIDE their apartments instead of stepping outside, like a normal person getting their tobacco fix.

I never found out who they are, but I couldn't have done anything about it if I had. The place where I lived allowed smoking in the building, and that made my already bleak existence an even more enraged and bitter one...until two weeks ago when I got my ass out of Dodge!

I can't reproduce it here as it is an Associated Content Exclusive. Read the full story HERE.

P.S. If you smoke in your apartment, I'm telling you to go fuck yourself for being inconsiderate of every non-smoker in your building who is exposed to the offensive 4,000+ chemicals that make smoking bans a needful thing to enforce.

Fuck you for every couch you've ever ruined and every wall that had to be repainted on account of your nasty, stinking, nicotine-craving ass! Take your shit outside! Get it away from us!

(JH)