this is getting out of hand...

so here i sit-- i'm even listening to an xmas album, albeit a my morning jacket one, for christ's [ha!] sake-- feeling like little steven on the sopranos doing pacino in godfather III. they keep pulling me back in!

i should explain: for the last couple of days-- this is going to feel good to get off of my chest-- for the last couple of days i have been feeling bad about the couple of columns i wrote a little while back concerning religion, people's religions, etc... well, not feeling bad* as much as feeling misunderstood and that i didn't quite explain myself fully.

for the record, i have no problem with people's religions, up to a point. inasmuch as i don't care, for instance, what kind of music you're into. pulling up next to me at a red light in your car, blasting some dreadful, tuneless horror, adding to the cacophony of things in any given day that i don't want to hear, well that's something different altogether now, isn't it? that's how i feel, basically, about religion.

when someone quietly tells me they go to church on sundays and then leaves it alone, it's like telling me you're an ashlee simpson fan. and i'd never, in good conscience, through the course of a conversation, tell a teenage girl that ashlee simpson-- though she does-- totally sucks and has no redeeming value whatsoever**. nor could i ever look a hardworking dude in the eye and tell him that i think limp bizkit almost singlehandedly destroyed all music as we know it and in the future must be stopped at all costs. i mean, i just couldn't do it***. someone's awful taste in music is totally their own concern and none of my goddamn business.

force me to have to listen to it and you're on your fucking own, on the other hand. watch out.

bringing me back to silvio dante's bad michael corleone impression... my ire had just about calmed when i saw this. for the most part it's hilarious-- let's watch two republican nut jobs try to out- christ each other-- but it got me to thinking: this republic has stood for the better part of 250 years and this is, in a huge respect, is as far as we've gotten? a bunch of people blasting shitty music next to me at a stop light?

~lee.

*insert hilarious catholic guilt joke here. c'mon, you know you wanna.

**i'd be wrong, anyway: the redeeming value is inherent in that teenage girl's appreciation of her [pp. 202. the republic, plato].

***how 'bout those for cliched examples, huh?