Monthly Archive for April, 2009

You read correctly, Dear Reader. In the long list of atrocities against mankind, has there ever been one to match this? When I left the house that fateful morning, I was advised that “packing” would go on in a very vague sense whilst I was away. I discarded this information, as I do most sentences that don’t have “Batman” somewhere in them. My wife knows this, and she uses it to her cunning, feminine advantage.

When I returned to my marital abode in the late evening, there were several people standing in my living room. As is my usual custom, I ignored all of them and craned my neck to say hello to my Xbox 360, which has delicate emotional needs. She was fine, thank you for asking, but the shelf space surrounding her, which is normally filled to the brim with DVDs, was impoverished. Nothing. All gone. The look on Corelyn’s face was that odd mix of guilt and satisfaction, I don’t think she could decide if she was enjoying this or not. She walked over to me and wrapped her tiny hands around my wrists, looked up at me, and quietly stated, “We packed up the movies…and the games.”

It’s times like this that I wish husbands could exact any kind of revenge on wives that doesn’t actually come back around and hurt them in the end; believe me, I’ve tried to think of some. Your only recourse is to marry a woman who actually cares about your feelings, and in this regard I have succeeded. So at this point, she actually attempted several points to assuage my devastated soul:

1. “We don’t really watch our movies.” This was just an opening volley, a blind fire around the wall. I laughed openly at it and so did she. Her statement is correct, but it doesn’t change the fact that I watch those movies constantly. We both knew that before the discussion began, so moving on to the real battle.

2. “It was important to get done.” I feel like this is in every point she ever makes, it’s a nonspecific reference to some kind of invisible timetable our lives are always running on. Now sure, I believe this vaporous schedule is real, but sometimes the urgency with which it requires oddly specific things makes me skeptical of Corelyn as its oracle. Do I really have to stop playing “Left 4 Dead” this instant? Is a grocery trip really mandated for this moment precisely? I’d like to get a look at the hard copy of this thing.

3. “I left a few for you!” This was really the most adorable moment. Seeing that neither of those stratagems had prevailed, Corelyn pouted her lip a little and innocently pointed at a small stack of games sitting next to the television. I wandered over to see what she had left for me. The list was as follows:

“Fallout 3″–uh…ok. Now she did this because she had noticed me playing it again after not doing so for awhile, so it was a good guess, but it’s an exclusively single player game, and there are a couple of key multiplayer games that were triaged out. I mean, I’ll play it now, because it’s all I’ve got, but you know what I mean.

“Left 4 Dead”–she wins that round. I’d have gone crazy if she had boxed this one.

“Gears of War 2″–and there’s where she slipped, the boys and I have not been playing this one recently. But there’s something far more insidious at play here. Corelyn knows for a fact that we have been regularly partaking of “Halo 3″ and “Halo Wars,” and yet did not choose to keep them unpacked. Simple mistake? Afraid not. The “Halo” franchise as a whole is regarded by her as some kind of Anti-Christ, it literally stands for everything she opposes. She doesn’t “hate” it, because that word cannot convey the depth of fury in her soul. I think she sincerely wants to murder it, then dance on its grave.

I’ve given up asking “why,” there’s no reason. “Halo” features absolutely zero scantily clad women, very little gore, a science fiction story that is derived from books I know she loves, and an operatic tone very akin to the new “Star Trek,” which she desperately wants to see. It’s not some trashy “Duke Nukem” game with topless bartenders and decapitations, it feels like a Ridley Scott epic.

I think the truth is that Corelyn understands men better than most women, and she knows that “Halo” is a game which contains all the things our gender cannot resist, and she fears that no one brand should be allowed to contain such raw, undulating power. Let’s face it, if you want a dude to do anything, you need to keep him focused, and charging a Warthog jeep with a mounted gauss cannon into a wave of alien tanks is way cooler than doing laundry. The aesthetic, for her, is not the problem; it’s the implications for the future.

Anyway,

It’s a funny exercise watching women prescribe a series of video games for a man; both parties are utterly helpless, neither is going to be satisfied with the results. I sort of gently pointed out that she had missed some key ones, but her reaction told me that she felt I was being unfair. She had wanted credit for thinking to do this at all, and me responding with a metaphorical “you missed a spot” was not going to play out in my favor. I quickly adjusted my performance, because in truth I do appreciate that this occurred to her, and all three games she left me are regularly on my itinerary. I doubt many wives out there could have done better.

Getting a traffic ticket in the city of Los Angeles is very different from getting a traffic ticket in Virginia. Yes, I got a ticket. No, it was not recently, but I hid this information from you all because I take tickets really personally, for some reason. I think it has something to do with my father, and I don’t normally say that.

The standard dads give you crap for a ticket, and that’s understandable, because you’re going to negatively alter their insurance. My dad, however, did not really care about the insurance; it bothered him, yes, but that’s never what you heard about. The problem with receiving a ticket when I was growing up was that in so doing, you created an excuse for dad to begin an extended dialog on the “lesson” learned from the experience.

He has a gift, my father does, for picking the moment you are the most sensitive about your mistake to begin your instruction. Sometimes it’s not even the same day you got the thing, and it’s never the day you go to court, because that’s when you’re expecting it. He’ll pick, like, a Tuesday evening before dinner, and you’ll walk into the kitchen and he’ll be standing there with the ticket in his hand for no reason. He’s normally got a glass of something, probably orange juice or Diet Coke. “You know…” he’ll say, and the metal bar is already upon you before you even have time to recognize that you were in a mousetrap.

There’s no malice in these little talks, if anything there’s a hint of gratitude, because the sheer tonnage of what my father knows about the operation of an automobile is stunning. He is married to a woman who could not possibly bring herself to care less about this hobby, so these vast resources begin to crowd in his mind, desperate for release; it’s not entirely dissimilar to a volcano. As soon as a police officer hands you that little slip of paper, the door is wide open. It’s just a matter of time.

Also, my dad is a pretty tough nut to crack, so your anger does not frighten him. My mother has told me many stories of the times she has tried to win arguments through sheer intimidation and/or vulgarity, and received a disdainful chuckle in response. This is no small feat, my mother could scare the devil out of hell, but even she has to earn it with this guy. You can’t be like, “Don’t mess with me today, man!” because you both know that he brought you into this world and paid for your education.

I’m not going to claim my father scarred me by politely pointing out my mistakes, but I will insist that my already-fragile ego has developed a Pavlovian response of hyper-defensiveness to this event. My wife just called me as I was writing this to inform me that she thought the price of the ticket was far too steep. She intended this as a form of commiseration, but I responded by more or less hanging up the phone. Tickets just bother me, they make me feel stupid, especially because whenever you get them, no one else has one. I don’t know why that is, but tickets never occur within groups of people more than one at a time. You’re always totally alone, trying to justify your behavior to a cooly sympathetic but distinctly aloof audience. “That sucks,” they’ll tell you, but secretly they’re thinking: That’s why I always double-check. Good for you, you smarmy little barracuda. I am going to wait patiently for the next time some girl/guy breaks up with you, then whisper, “I’m married.”

See? See that? See how nasty that was? I hate tickets, do not mess with me when I have a ticket.

I never get pulled over for anything serious, nine times out of ten I just made a U-turn late at night where I technically wasn’t allowed. That angers me even more: my mistakes are harmless, I’m polite and cooperative, and I get slammed every time anyway. One time I went to traffic school, a place I absolutely did not deserve to be, and the instructor made a point that stayed with me: “Someone’s gotta pay for these roads.” He was right, handing out tickets is a business enterprise. They don’t take your money to teach you a lesson, they effing want that money. They got crumbling highways, vanishing pensions, and Crown Vics that don’t run without gasoline. A polite, well-meaning driver who sometimes makes a mistake is their bread and butter: they can keep you on the road, you won’t kill anyone, and every now and then they’ll find some reason to take your money. These guys would stop you without provocation, saunter over to your window, and bellow “Fork it over” if they could, that’s how bad they need your money. But they can’t do that, so they have to wait until you give them an opening.

Knowing that has a double effect: it makes me feel better, and it makes me angrier. The former because now I know I’m being strip mined, not treated like some kind of hoodlum. The latter because they insist on their little “bad boys whatcha gonna do” attitude when they fine you, which is just ridiculous. Yes, I made a U-turn where that was not permitted. God help us. Talk to me like a human being, not a coke dealer with an Ak-47 in the backseat.

Anyway, like I said before, it’s different here. I showed up at the courthouse after weeks of frustrated attempts to pay my ticket beforehand, dressed in a nice suit and ready to talk to the judge. I actually rather like judges, and as long as you address them with due respect, they’ll normally give you what you deserve. Turns out, though, that the officer who served me didn’t enter the ticket correctly and it got kicked out of the system. As as result, I had to get the LAPD to re-register my ticket.

The absurdity of this dawned on me as the local sergeant dutifully punched the thing into the system. Right now they have no ticket for me, and I’m assisting them in producing one. Unable to hold back, I asked him, “Am I being a moron here? If I just walked away, would you guys ever know I was ticketed?”

“Yeah,” he politely responded, “It’s just a typo in the writing, we deal with this all the time. We’d have found out you had one, and that you missed your scheduled appearance. It just would’ve taken extra time.” Fair enough. So after that, I just paid someone at a cashier’s window and that was that. The sheer volume of people in Los Angeles who arrive to do this every day in is stunning, so they don’t really have time to put you in front of a judge unless you really want to. I probably should have set a date, got dressed up again, stood up in front of the judge and said, “Come ooooonnnn.” But I’ve got enough on my mind, I wanted this ticket gone, and that’s exactly what the LAPD was counting on.

Seriously, I hate tickets.

Certain parties have requested I do a blog entry on Job, since I rant about it constantly to my friends and loved ones, extolling its virtues to any who will listen and some who will not. I think the polite thing to do is not reveal who this anonymous petitioner was. It was Caroline.

An even surer sign that I should do this just occcurred, as I flipped open my Bible and it turned immediately to Job. Whee!

So, let’s begin our discussion with a quick overview of why Job matters in the grander sense, how it still applies today, and then I’ll hop you through some of the book’s highlights. This is a long, complex, philosophical piece of literature, and the extended discourse in the center is often a bit overwhelming, so let’s stick to the general ideas the story conveys, and try to avoid getting distracted by the intimidating stuff.

First off, I think it’s clear that the story in Job did not actually happen. The style of its writing, the inexplicable omniscience of its narrator, and the soap-opera events that transpire all say to me that this is a parable, much the same as the kind that Jesus would later grow so fond of. Job is a hypothetical, a summation of the world’s suffering into a single man and an examination of what pain and misery means. It’s also one of the most important books in the Bible, second (in my opinion) only to the Gospels and Genesis/Exodus.

Many people know the overall story here: a God-fearing man loses everything as the Devil torments him, trying to prove to Yahweh that mankind’s decency is provisional at best. In the end, Job holds out, never cursing God despite his misery, and so the Lord restores everything to him twice over, in compensation for his great struggles. The story is so simple, and its resolution so tidy and neat, that it’s almost comical, but that’s part of the point. We’re not dealing with literal events here, where messy gray areas dilute meaning. This is an allegory, an epic poem, and some absurdity is helpful for making its point.

What is its point? That God is a cruel jerk who lets Satan run amuck on His most devoted follower? That every misery will be repaid with joy someday? Many people seem to take these two impressions from the story, but they are far from the real meat of the story. Let’s roll up our sleeves and start reading, and perhaps we will begin to suss out what the anonymous author intended for us with this magnificent parable.

1:1-4–”Blameless.” Notice here that Job is called “blameless.” He isn’t sinless, but he is without blame. That’s an important theological idea, even before Christ appeared on the scene: it is possible to be in right standing with God. We can’t do this because we’re good enough, but because the Lord shoulders extra burden.

1:6–”The Adversary.” This is dramatic, because it’s Satan’s first genuine appearance in the Old Testament; everything before this (and a lot of the stuff after, to be honest) is hazy and half-formed. Here we get several clear things about our enemy: firstly, he has some kind of association with angels, but he is technically separate from them. He can enter their assembly, but the text distinguishes him from their order. This supports later revelations about the Devil being a fallen angel. We can also tell that he has a skeptical view of humanity and God’s relationship with us. Thirdly, and perhaps most mysteriously, we will come to understand that humanity has absolutely zero conception of his existence. This is consistent with the times, when the idea of a Devil was only just starting to come together. This should not surprise you; you may notice that the idea of an afterlife is strangely absent from the early Old Testament as well. Much of what we take for granted was still gestating during this period.

The real question we will have to consider as the story unwravels is this: why, if Satan is doing these awful things, does God take credit for them? Why does He never “correct” Job’s assumption that these troubles come from Him? The text itself does not correct this assumption either. What does this mean?

1:11–”Your Hand.” You see what I mean? “Stretch out your hand?” Satan refers to actions he will commit as being done by God. In God’s reply, He will answer by saying “You may do this” or “You may do that,” and again there is no correction made, by the text or any of the characters. God doing something and the Devil doing something are synonymous. How should we, as modern Christians, interpret this? Are God and the Devil on the same team?

1:13-20–”Divine Comedy.” Let’s face it, this passage is funny. Here sits poor old Job, and round after round of messenger appears, relaying increasingly awful news. That is the basic formula of “escalation comedy:” keep making it worse and worse. The fact that these acts all happen simultaneously, and that the messengers all arrive one after another, is just…it’s comedic, it is.

2:4-6–”Skin for Skin” Again, let me emphasize: there is no distinction between God’s actions and the Devil’s. Why?

2:10–”Lament.” Job’s line, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Great line, and something few of us could boast to practice in our actual lives.

2:13–”Silence.” My mother has a saying: “Advice is overrated.” She meant by it that when people are in trouble, they often need your support and comfort, not your solutions to their problems. Job’s friends, at first, perform this task wonderfully by sitting in silence with him.

4-5–”Eliphaz.” He just couldn’t resist it. When Job finally speaks, he laments intensely, wishing he had never been born. His friend Eliphaz, who up until this moment had been faithful, opens his big mouth and comes out with it: this is somehow your fault. Notice the way he insists that the good prosper and the evil perish. Is that true?

6-7–”Job’s Outcry.” The professor who taught me the value of this book always said that Job’s anger at God was righteous because it was honest. Unlike his friends, who have axioms and wisdom sayings only, Job has a relationship with God, and communicates his frustration through it. Being mad at one another is a basic part of any real relationship where humans get involved, so Job’s fury at God is not sinful, but indeed quite the opposite: a sign of his believe and loyalty.

8–”Bildad.” Again, look at what is being claimed: the good guys win, the bad guys go home disappointed. Is this the truth? Do you ever hear people in the church community talking this way about non-believers? I’ll bet you do.

Okay, so this dialogue continues for awhile. Job grows increasingly positive that he has done nothing wrong to deserve this punishment, and his friends repeatedly insist that he must have, because God doesn’t just do this crap for kicks. He must have deserved it.

But here is what’s radical about the book of Job: we know for a fact that Job did not. In a manner of speaking, his trials and tribulations were just for kicks; God just felt like showing everyone what would happen. I know that’s uncomfortable to accept, I know some of you will resist that, but the book spells it out too deliberately for you to be able to avoid it. That’s why our omniscient narrator took us up into Heaven at the beginning: so we could know why this was happening, and that it had nothing to do with deserving it. Job is not being punished, bad things are simply happening.

So! The conversation continues for awhile, and as the disagreement boils to a head, we arrive at Chapter 38, one of my absolute favorite passages in the Bible.

38–”Entrance.” On the wings of a gigantic thunderstorm, God unexpectedly bellows His way into the narrative, appearing from nowhere and scaring the Hell out of the characters and the reader. His first words are a thundering return-fire, probably the greatest single instance of a character being put in their place in history: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”

I think it’s essential to understand that God is not whispering these words, He isn’t speaking with His indoor voice, He is shouting. This is a heated argument between two best friends, and there are absolutely no punches pulled. Half-way in, Job throws in the towel (wouldn’t we all?), begging for God to recognize that he is unworthy, and he gets the point. God is not satisfied, He keeps going.

It’s important to remember that as God thunders angrily at Job, every word He’s speaking is really directed at you. I don’t care who you are, you have at some point deserved to have these words spoken to you, so here they are. The book of Job is the all-purpose reply to the insolence of human nature. Every word of His reply is a master stroke of literature, but let me point out some of my favorites:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions, surely you know!”–Notice that God uses sarcasm. Again, get your head out of reading this stuff like some kind of antiquated poem: this is a shouting match.

“Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his? Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor and majesty! Unleash the fury of your wrath, look at every proud man and bring him low, Crush the wicked where they stand, Bury them all in the dust together, shroud their faces in the grave. Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you!”–Again, look at the biting satire, the furious sarcasm. You should use passages like this to remind yourself of the immediacy of God’s voice. Stop thinking that He talks in “Thou Shalt Not…”s only. In general, though, I just love the idea that God is getting at here: you think you’re so freaking great, humanity? Prove it. Let me see you do what I can do. I dare you.

“Would you condemn me to justify yourself?”–God here asks a potent question: would you rather adjust the truth so you can take credit for it, or adjust yourself to know the truth? Too often, humanity is desperate to look like we run things, and we don’t. God is here suggesting that Job cares more about being right than knowing the truth.

“What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!”–God sarcastically reminds Job that the longest human life possible is a blip on creation’s radar.

I could go on and on, but the point here is simple: God is God, God will do what He will do. Whether God is “unfair” or not is ridiculous, God invented the concepts of “fair” and “unfair,” and He is no more bound to answer to them than an architect is conscripted to remain in a house he constructs. You should not walk away from the book of Job trying to justify God’s behavior to people, telling them how “It was all so God could give Job even more stuff at the end.” You’re talking nonsense. If God wanted Job to have more stuff, He would’ve just given it to him. God does not have to go through some ridiculous procedure just to have His way.

The truth is, God did what He did, and that’s that. There is no “explanation” for why it’s okay for God to let the Devil screw up an innocent man’s life, because the Sovereign King of Everything does not have to answer to you. If you don’t like it…that really is too bad. Is God just? I believe so. Is there a reason He let these things happen to Job in this hypothetical story? I believe so. But notice that the author never gives you this explanation. Why not?

Because the point of this story was not “let’s find out why God did these things that appeared to be awful.” The point is: God will do as He sees fit, get used to it. Maybe His actions will be explained to you, maybe they won’t, but He does not need to submit Himself for your little inspection, to see if you approve of what He’s up to. The book of Job intends to condition its reader with an attitude of proper reverence for their Maker. If God says it, it goes. That’s it.

But why is it wrong to want explanations? Why shouldn’t we desire to know God’s mind, to understand His motivations? I believe the answer is simple: priorities. Your first loyalty must be to God, and you must not associate Him inexorably with any value or ethic. You can only have one master, folks, and it’s either God or something else. If your conception of God is permanently tied to Him wanting world peace, or civil rights, or whatever, then you are loyal to Him only conditionally.

In our day to day lives, we are conditionally loyal to almost anyone. My wife is loyal to me, but if I started physically abusing her, she would be gone, and that would be the right thing. I love my country, but if the government began compromising our freedoms, I would rise up against it. We associate conditional loyalty with common sense and independent thought, so people are naturally suspicious when it is claimed that you should serve anything unwaveringly.

But God is God. He doesn’t get corrupt, or lose sight of His ideals, and the rules are not the same for serving Him. Obedience to the Lord must be unconditional. Obviously, this is a sensitive subject in modern-day America, since “unwavering loyalty to God” (or more accurately that was the justification) navigated a couple of commercial airplanes into the Twin Towers. I sympathize with the worry that a human being ready to do anything is inherently dangerous.

But God is God. I don’t make the rules here, guys. God exists, and because He exists you either serve Him or you are the biggest idiot ever. This is why the Devil endeavors so rigorously to make people atheists: the only way any sensible human being would ignore God is if they didn’t think He existed. Anything else is lunacy, direct defiance of a Sovereign Deity is borderline funny.

Now the good news is that God IS merciful, does love us, and is almost always in the mood for world peace. Yay! But remember that your loyalty to Him goes top-down, not the other way around: Him first, THEN the ideals you associate with Him.

So.

With that accepted, we now see the final piece of Job’s puzzle fall into place: why are God and the Devil united in action? It’s easy to think this might be because they’re on the same side, but I think something more deft is at play here. Evil does not come from God directly, but I do believe He fully accepts responsibility for it. Technically, Satan was the one who took everything from Job, but God is (as we’ve established many times) a Sovereign Entity, and nothing can possibly occur without Him allowing it. It’s not like bad things happen because Satan tricks God, is it? Therefore God, in His wisdom, does not mind taking responsibility for things His hand did not directly do. I think that is a wonderful gesture on His part.

Whew. Hope you enjoyed our little discussion of Job. Incredible, incredible book.

Okay, I’ve had enough, “Family Guy.” I’ve seriously had enough. I have been grinning and bearing your crap for years, and it’s finally so obnoxious to watch you even for two seconds that I’m going to roll up my sleeves and start hitting you in my mind until you get canceled, “The Simpsons” becomes funny again, and “Futurama” gets a three-season greenlight; I’d wish something for “South Park,” but that old gal is doing just fine, and more power to her.

I’m so sick and tired of you. You are absolutely not that great, nor have you ever been, and what little potential you had you have squandered judiciously in a pissing contest with your own ego. Everything substantive you do has been done before. Everything you contribute that’s hasn’t been done before wasn’t being done for a ^&*^ing reason. Let me list your sins.

1. You Break the Fourth Wall Like Every Ten Seconds. Fourth wall violation is a cheap thrill, a parlor trick that quality shows almost never embrace; I’m not sure I’m surprised that you can’t possibly resist doing it. I mean, every single episode, Peter or Lois or somebody looks right into the camera and makes a remark that falls into one of the following categories:

a) “Hey viewers, here’s what we anticipate you might say about this episode on internet forums.” Nobody gives a flying *(&^&*^&*&% about your wounded ego. You just have to do it, don’t you? You have to start arguing with your fans before they even open their mouths? You’re so freaking proud of yourselves that you have to start stomping your feet and pointing your finger. Do you think anyone’s impressed because you know why we hate you? Is anyone thinking, “You know, it annoyed me at first that they played a Conway Twitty video for ten straight minutes in the middle of an episode for no reason, but now that they’ve preemptively criticized me for disliking it, I’m going to concede the point.” No one does that. You are the most preening, self-obsessed, prima donna in history.

b) “Now we’re going to eat up screen time with something that makes no sense because our writing staff sucks and cannot fill out an episode with jokes or stories like other shows.” I don’t know why you think I’m fooled when you show Peter fighting a chicken for the fifth time, and the fight lasts for a third of the episode. Or, worse yet, when you cut to live action clips, often archival footage you didn’t even have anything to do with. If you’re under the impression that this “fools” me, then I sincerely hope ignorance is bliss. What actually happened was, you guys just aren’t that funny. You possess about an eighth of the creative wit that the team behind “South Park” has, or hell, even “Two and a Half Men.” At least they fill out their episodes. The most hilarious part is that “Family Guy” is, by definition, a show built on non sequitor jokes that, by your own admission, you can shift around between episodes without anyone noticing. This should be the easiest show in the world to write, you can pull gags out of a hat. Other writers have to do little things like make any sense. Every episode should be gut-busting, but instead, you’re too lazy to do your jobs.

c) “Look how offensive we are.” You’re not that offensive. Your jokes are either lame or in poor taste, but no one is gasping at their televisions here. Watching you try to shock my sensibilities is sad. You’re swinging at the fences, sweating and grunting, and no one is impressed. You sure did love all that controversy you used to stir up, didn’t you? You’re like the KKK, you just live to be hated. What are you going to do when we all start ignoring you?

2. You Are Preachier than Church Television. And this is the one I can’t believe. Am I seriously getting a lecture on tolerance from Seth MacFarlane again? Is it, like, every episode now? You guys are in the least possible position to make any kind of statement about anything. I prefer to get my satire from people who have brains, not a brood of amateur Howard Sterns who think it’s funny to call John McCain a Nazi just because they disagree with him. I love that you just spent a whole episode reaming Fox News for being biased, unfair and judgmental. I love that. You call people you don’t like “Nazis.”

I cannot believe I’m getting sermonized on the evils of Christianity and the Republican Party and what the hell ever else you people don’t like every freaking week. I know, I know, you’re going to tell me that you like to “push the envelope,” but that’s not what you’re doing. Good social satire has to appear unbiased, has to take every deserving target to task, creating the illusion of simply observing things as they are. When you can’t get your head out of your own behind, no one wants to hear your smarmy little self-righteous quips. No one is thrilled by a blind, thoughtless opinion that whips itself into fanaticism. Your little world, where all Christians burn books and atheists are smart, sexy (and surprisingly Aryan looking) people who stand up for the disenfranchised, is hilarious. It makes no sense, it means nothing.

You probably get off on this kind of reaction, and that’s your problem: you can’t see the difference between extreme reactions. You assume that getting any response must mean you’re “breaking down walls” and being “progressive,” but this is a fantasy you are living in your own head, plugging your ears and singing “Lalalala” while the world grows weary of you. You want to see what you think you are? Watch “South Park.” There is a show that goes fearlessly into the breach, takes all targets, pulls no punches. Sure they’re probably biased, but they at least make some effort to counteract it, and be a fair-minded show. You, “Family Guy,” are not that. You are a liberal propaganda machine, twice as biased and unfair as “Fox News” could ever be, and only a quarter as well-produced.

3. You’re Not Funny. Which is sad, because it wasn’t always the case. What in the hell is going on over there? You came up with these great characters, like Peter and Brian and Stewie and Quagmire and what have you, and every time I turn on the television you just waste them. You’re not trying.

4. All Your Good Parts are “Simpsons” Knock-Offs. It’s not even funny how much you would not exist without “The Simspons.” You’re like those little fish that swim along with sharks, eating off their bellies. It’s almost painful. Like I said above, there are numerous things you do that Matt Groening never has, but there’s a really big difference between innovation and doing stupid things on purpose that other people deliberately avoided. You know what I’m talking about: those cutaway vignettes of yours. Their existence basically hands you the keys to whatever joke you want, whenever you want, and that should make “Family Guy” the easiest show on the planet to write. And yet you still manage to fail. Maybe you really do have a team of manatees over there.

5. You Won’t Last. Yeah, you had a miraculous comeback on the wings of DVD sales a few years ago, but you were basically a different, and vastly superior, show back then. Now, you’re becoming the girl who nobody brings home to their parents. You may even get good ratings, but watching you is like some kind of cheap, comedic fling. My guess is that 13 year olds probably think you are the coolest bunch of dudes on Earth, but anyone with a life doesn’t have time for your crap. When they’re still studying “The Simpsons” in museums, you my friend will be a footnote.