This is a loaded time for sure. it is the Easter celebration and I think it was when Jesus was found to be disappeared from behind a seriously heavy boulder blocking the cave where he was laid to rest after his torturous death. Some time before that, his people took flight from Egypt, where they had been enslaved since before the birth of Charlton Heston. They were quite pissed off about their mistreatment and their God unleashed a series of plagues that would have been the rage of FaceBook.

Yul Brynner was incredibly pissed off about the loss of his first born son, simply because he didn’t know about slapping painted “x”s” on his doorway. The Jews were in such a hurry to get out of town. they couldn’t wait for their bagels and had to deal with this awful unleavened bread, called matzah. By the way, it is a terrific breakfast, when you soak the matzah in water and then scramble some eggs with it. Anyway, as soon as they whipped the flat bread out of their ovens, they headed out toward the Red Sea, or maybe the Dead Sea. I am not sure, because I am a lousy Jew. Needless to say, Yul was furious and was in hot pursuit.

Charlton, likely in conjunction with the NRA was not about to give in and somehow, regardless of meteorological forecasts, was able to actually part the sea and the Jews escaped all the way to New York City, although it did take some time to get there. They were a persecuted people and miraculously managed to survive and thrive wherever they found themselves. Education was always number one and while constantly outnumbered, they were never out thought. It is a fabulous story of survival, always against terrible odds.

I am not sure what it is about our nature that makes us always look for others to blame for our misfortune. Germany was made to feel humiliated after the First World War and they were desperate to find anyone responsible for their victimization. Here were the Jews, thriving in their country, which by the way, Jews felt was their country as well. Hitler, a man with an incredibly small penis and awful mustache, found the target for their anger. That son of a bitch killed my people and liberated all that pent up hatred. There is nothing uglier than the wrath of the victim, looking to blame everyone other than themselves for their dilemma.

Today is 4/20 and I am no longer getting stoned. No angel am I and a second glass of cheap wine is all I need to get into a Passover state of mind. I swear I don’t know why it seems so easy for us to hate, rather than love. It seems so goddamn convenient to blame others for our suffering. I am a huge fan of the Buddha and amongst the many incredible things he said, was that life is suffering. This is so because we simply cannot except that all of us are here temporarily and all truth is a matter of perception and subject to continual change. This is very unsettling shit to deal with and we have an awful history of accepting these immutable truths.

I am not sure exactly when we decided that our planet and all other sentient beings were put here solely for our enjoyment. I don’t think Darwin was much help, putting as the top of some silly ass ladder, feeding a misguided sense of superiority over all creation. To me, it means we are responsible and have no dominion over a snail. I know this is a particularly religious time and blaming these disciplines is definitely not cool, but these various versions of God are shameful in my mind. Priests have been abusing little children for centuries, with blind blessings from above. Muslim mistreatment of women is not what God had in mind. A history of a people, who have survived the most awful persecution of the 20th century, should be the last ones to brutalize those who follow another God.

We seem to hate with such ease. Our own leader doesn’t hesitate to make fun of people he disagrees with. I don’t understand how easy it is for our politicians, regardless of affiliation, to lie to us. How can the richest country in the world even debate the idea of providing healthcare for all its people?

We are losing species at an alarming rate. To be clear, when I use the world species, I am talking about living beings, all of them here long before us. What right do we have to do this? Our world is disintegrating right in front of us and we deny it? We make fun of people, who care about our future. We are in the midst of a moral decadence that threatens the lives of our children. We allow people to starve to death every minute, because it is politically advantageous and outrageously profitable for our corporations, most of whom don’t pay a fucken dime in taxes.

OK, it is 4/20 and I am not smoking pot any longer and this is the voice of merlot speaking, but tomorrow morning, under the light of a new day, I will own every goddamn word of this.