It’s pretty easy to attack religious faith. After all, the stories you read in holy books are pretty far fetched. Those books are full of miracles and wonders and basically shit you don’t see on a day to day basis. When was the last time you saw somebody walking on the water, or talking to a burning bush? What makes things even harder to have faith are the holy rolling idiots who seem to think that the only way you can be saved is if you check your brain at the church door. Moreover, those holy books were all written long after any of those events took place. They have been translated...

I love literature. At one time, I wanted to teach literature. I wanted to be a poet, too. Then I noticed that there was a dearth of jobs for poet listed in the want ads. I might have been a professor of literature, however, had I not become addicted to teaching young children. It’s much easier to subvert young minds as opposed to those already set in their ways. One of the things I learned while in university about literature is that poetry doesn’t, and I repeat here, doesn’t mean whatever you want it to mean. The poet had something in mind when he or she wrote the poem. That’s what the...

Today is Palm Sunday.  This week ushers in what Roman Catholics refer to as Holy Week.  Today is a commemoration of the day Jesus came into Jerusalem, a week which would end with his arrest, crucifixion, and death.  It is a week which Christians believe will ultimately lead to his resurrection and new life.  It is also a week which usually coincides with Spring Break.  So, being a teacher, I am on vacation. Today, all over the world, people will process into churches carrying palms fronds. Both the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew describe the manner in which Jesus entered Jerusalem. ...

I’ve had my share of hard times. I guess we all have. And we get through them. But it sure is hard. I remember back to a time when I was a retail store manager. I like to say that because it sounds more impressive than what I really was. I was a dime store manager. There aren’t any dime stores around anymore and I imagine that a lot of you young folks here don’t even know what a dime store is, or was. Dime stores started a very long time ago. They were stores that sold a little bit of everything and everything they sold was pretty cheap…hence, dime store. Everything was under a dime. Of...

I can remember many years ago, lying in my bed in a great deal of pain. I had hurt my back. I had two herniated discs. Now for those of you who don’t know exactly what that means, it means that the gelatinous material that exists between two of my vertebrae had been punctured and was leaking out and making contact with the nerves that run through the center of the spinal column. Chiropractors refer to these as slipped discs, which calls to mind an image, which is somewhat less than accurate. A “slipped disc” makes you think of discs out of alignment. This is not the case. Imagine...