Dear Natalie

With all due respect, Natalie, your decision to get yourself pregnant was very inconsiderate of my feelings. I will excuse your insensitivity on the grounds that you have absolutely no idea who I am, but that does not mean that I will not expect an apology after I tell you exactly who I am, and why I am upset. Who am I, you ask? Well, I am the nice young man who was supposed to marry and impregnate you.

Over the past few years friends and family have made many efforts to set me up with many, many women. All of them were beautiful, funny, and smart, just like you but not as much. Any guy would have been lucky to have a conversation with some of these women, not to mention a relationship. Because I am such a joy to feast one’s eyes on and an extraordinary human being in every respect, I would have had no problem finding a wonderful woman to marry and impregnate.

But I told my friends, “Thank you very much, but I want nothing to do with these women. I plan to marry and impregnate Natalie Portman.”

Naturally, my friends and family didn’t understand. They said things like, “but you don’t even know her,” “she’s out of your league,” “you’re obsessed,” “this isn’t healthy,” “Star Wars was shit.” You know what? They were right. Sure, I could have listened to them and moved on with my life. But if I learned anything at all from Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, I learned that anything can happen if you just believe in magic.

So, I would lie in my bed at night, staring at my V for Vendetta poster on the ceiling, trying my hardest to visualize you lying next to me. Oh, how I fantasized about kissing your hairless head, licking the tips of your eyelashes, pressing your eyebrows against mine, whispering Hebrew gutturals in your ear (ani ohev otach; ani ohev otach). I dreamt about you once a week, and three times during the High Holidays.

I should've known not to buy into that new-age nonsense. No matter how much I believed that I would wake up with your fingers in my mouth and your tongue on my neck, I always woke up with my fingers in my own mouth and my tongue on my neck. How I ever managed to make that happen, I don’t know. I just know that the malignant emptiness caused by you not magically appearing in my bed was unbearable. A man can only wake up Portmanless so many times before he finally moves on with his life. So I masturbated one last time to my V for Vendetta poster, took it down, wiped my hands with it, and tried to move on with my life.

Then, last month, I saw the trailer for Black Swan. You came soaring back into my life, Natalie. I immediately dropped my breakfast sandwich and rushed over to my local theater. “One for Black Swan, cinema employee!”

Literally every second of the movie was pure erotica for me. The rash on your back, the blood on your toenail, the bathtub scene, and your pornographic pirouettes all brought back those feelings that I tried my best to suppress over the last month or so. That scene in which you masturbate with your mom in the room brought me right back to that time that I masturbated to your strip-club scene in Closer without realizing that my mom was in the room (ha!).

I was falling deeper in love than I had ever been. By the time you turned into the black swan I was ready to release my feelings all over the heads of the people who were sitting in front of me. That certainly wasn’t the first time I wanted to fuck a weird human-swan creature, but I had never been that turned on by any non-human animal in my life.

I left the theater and went straight home to pack my suitcase. I knew I had no choice but to find out where you were so I could meet, marry, and impregnate you. I really had no choice at that point. There were times when you looked into the camera a certain way, and I just knew you were calling out to me: “Michael, marry and impregnate me.”

Well, Natalie, as I was waiting for the holiday airport rush to die down so that I could finally find you, I heard the news. This guy, Benjamin Milli-who-gives-a-fuck, had already won the race to your womb. Where does this guy get off getting off with you when I wanted to get off with you? Where do you get off, Natalie, ruining my dreams? Is that what gets you off, Natalie? Crushing the dreams of people who love you more than anything? Is that what gets you off? I’ll tell you what gets me off. Fantasizing about taking you from behind while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. That’s what gets me off, but I won’t be able to do that now, will I? Now that you’ve shown how much you really don’t give a shit about your fans.

Actually, I’m happy for you, Natalie. I mean, it would never work out for us. Two insanely beautiful people would probably be too insanely beautiful to carry on a relationship. Our insanely beautiful DNA would probably make a baby who's too insanely beautiful to even bring out in public because people would just want to kill themselves for being so ugly and having such ugly families. They'd fucking hate themselves, Natalie. So, I think you’re better off with someone who doesn't come anywhere near my genetic prowess. I just hope that he will make you happy.


Mazel Tov!

M.E.

The Right to Believe

I’ve always been aware that Christians held outrageous beliefs, but I recently became aware that they also believe in Jedi mind tricks. I’m not talking about some obscure Christian cult, either. I’ve heard this from Catholics, Protestants, and many other mainstream Christians. By now you’ve probably thought of opening up a new tab to search for something that would back up my claim, so I should clarify.

I’ve heard Christians claim that atheists are trying to take away their right to believe. My conclusion is that they must believe in Jedi mind tricks.

Theist: “I believe in God.”
Atheist: “You don’t believe in God.”
Theist: “I don’t believe in God.”

Anyone who is interested in the truth and not merely being right would gladly welcome any criticism of their beliefs (I gladly welcome anyone to comment on this post). It’s only the intellectually weak that choose to shield their beliefs from criticism by hiding behind this absurd notion that their right to believe is being threatened.

I once heard someone say that he was glad to live in a country where he has the right to believe anything he wants. Well, everyone in the world lives in a country where you have the right to believe anything you want. This is not a state-given right. This is a right that we all have as a result of nature giving different people different brains. There are, however, countries in which people are not allowed to practice certain religions freely. The United States is not one of those countries. Since Christians in the United States wouldn’t dare claim that criticizing their beliefs equates to taking away their right to practice or express their religion freely, the “right to believe” has become the buzzword of choice for those with a persecution complex who attempt to raise mere criticism to the level of a violation of human rights.

Initially, the “right to believe” seems like a rather effective scare tactic. When one claims that people are trying to take away their right to believe, images of brain probes, dystopian novels, Ellen Page and Leonardo DiCaprio invading elaborate dream cities, and stormtrooper-duping Jedis may come to mind. It’s an attack on everything that makes us who we are: our brain. Fortunately, the Force is not strong with our species, and that keeps us from having anyone ever take away our right to believe.

Complaining about someone trying to take away a right that couldn’t possibly be taken away is an attempt to distract everyone from the real issue: actions that are the results of beliefs. If a therapist is fired for refusing to work with a gay couple, he is not being fired for his religious beliefs; he is being fired for not doing his job. If a couple is arrested for not taking their dying child to a hospital, they are not being arrested for their religious beliefs; they are being arrested for neglecting their child. I wish those two situations were just hypothetical situations.

The irony of this empty Christian rhetoric is that Christianity does not respect people’s right to believe. Since when is childhood indoctrination--essentially, forcing children to believe what you believe instead of allowing them to form their own beliefs--respecting a person’s right to believe? According to Christianity, thought crimes are punishable by eternal torture, and the worst offense of all is disbelief in God. Quite simply, believe or burn. Why doesn’t God respect my right to believe that he doesn’t exist? The next time a Christian asks me to respect their right to believe, I’ll simply say, “well, that’s not very Christ-like.”

Airplane

Because I love you, I will give you a choice: follow my blog, or I will lock you in my basement and torture you forever. I’m not forcing you to follow my blog. The choice is yours. But if you don’t choose to follow my blog, you will be tortured. How unfair would it be for me to rob you of your right to choose? I also want you to leave comments about how witty, intelligent, and beautiful I am. I made this blog for you, and it would be evil and hateful of you to not leave comments about how witty, intelligent, and beautiful I am.

Topics of discussion: current events, death, cats, DEATH CATS, my beard, morality, anti-theism, logical fallacies, cognitive biases, irony in African-American history, Kristen Bell, your beard, child abuse, semicolon abuse, and the most mentally unstable animals on our planet (humans).

You can suggest topics that you would like me to write about. I will write about that topic, if I was already going to write about it before you asked me.

I don't expect this to bring me fame, but that just means more people for me to burn.