Fish and Jesus

I don't consider myself the jealous type. If someone has something, whether it be an item or ability, I know myself well enough to know whether or not I can attain it or not, and if I can, I go for it. I'm not like those fools on American Idol who get up on stage and imitate Hellen Keller a capella, fully expecting to be selected. I don't work out and train hard and tell people that I'm going to be a world champion, because I know I'm not putting in the time and I don't have the right mind set. I'm a realist. Either way, sometimes it takes a little persistance on my part, but I can usually land something I want once I think I can.

Still, for all my efforts, there are two things that, no matter how hard I try or think about, I will never be able to figure out.

Fish and Jesus.

More specifically, seafood and religious faith.

Fish

I'm jealous of people who can put fish (with the exception of tuna - raw tuna pwns) in their mouth and consume it without experiencing something not unlike an electric shock of nausea blast through their body, followed by aftershocks of revulsion. People seem to dig on fish a lot, especially on an island nation. Every where I go, people are eating almost every type of sea creature imaginable, sometimes live, often raw, and they think I'm some sort of freak for not eating it. It's funny how people can't seem to understand it, as if they don't find any food unappetizing. "Why don't you like fish?" they ask. "Because it's fucking nasty," I reply, and they say "No it's not."

Oh, ok, thanks. You're right. It's not nasty after all. Fuggin-A, load me up a plate, I'm gonna dig in.

I once tried to use a little analogy to explain what it's like for me. A person challenged me and my fish disorder, and I said, "Do you like eating human shit?" "Of course not," they cried, "That's digusting!" I said, "Same thing," but they gave me a horrified look and said, "No it's not. Shit's gross. You can't eat that." I sighed and sulked, explaining to them how cockroaches and shrimp were basically the same thing, but they ignored me while they wolfed down vile bottom-feeder after vile-bottom feeder, carefully deturding each one before consumption.

I've tried to "acquire a taste" for fish. I tried when I was a student in Japan for the first time, so that I wouldn't offend my host mother by refusing to eat her cooking. "It's important to respect other cultures' food," I was always told. Being the complete bitch that she was, she of course served me some form of sea mucous my first night there, and I subsequently offended her by not eating it. (I also pissed her off (unintentionally) when I tried to tell her that I didn't like the food, and I told her that her cooking sucked. Language barrier + Sea food = disaster for me.)

I lived in Monterey, CA for almost two years, a mile or so from cannery row. I lived in Hawaii. I live on an island now. What better places to square my taste buds away? But no dice. I've tried. It's. Still. Fucking. Gross. I'm sorry to all you and your fish-eating friends out there. I can't do it. I don't expect you to stop eating fish, I just expect you to not look at me like I'm a pedophile when I tell you I don't monj on sea creatures, that's all.

Jesus

I was watching UFC yesterday. Good show. But one thing that struck me was all the fighters praising God and Jesus after they won. This makes me a little jealous, because I don't really feel that important to any dieties. I don't have a Gunny in the Sky making sure I've got chow and clean linen. These guys, though. They feel like the creator of the universe helped them win. This amazes me. They know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Supreme Being, in charge of everything, took a little break from running Time and Space and the universe and creation and photosynthesis and everything, and hooked them up with the Dubya. The best part is that even if they lose, they don't really lose, because God is still hooking them up with something. The Creator still took time out of his busy schedule to show them something. To teach them a lesson. To make them stronger. Or to punish them for doing a line of coke off a strippers ass during the last UFC post-party. Or whatever. God works in strange ways, ya hurrd meh? Still, even if you lose, you win, because you have a personal relationship with the Gee Oh Dee. It's like they're trolling for attention from the grand sysadmin who created the innernets, and getting all excited when their IP gets banned because just because they were acknowledged.

A lot of people pity me for my lack of faith, but it just doesn't jive with the way I think. It's similar to the whole fish thing in that I could ask you to acquire a taste for mud or lint or rabbit pellets, but try as you might, you probably wouldn't ever really enjoy eating them, let alone devote your existence to them. It would be cool to experience God and religion and stuff like that -- not in the sense of "I wish God would speak to me" -- but that it would be pretty cool to be under the impression that I was so awesome and special, that the creator of the universe was hooking me up with the skills to beat the dogshit out of someone else. So before anyone reading this writes anything about "just having faith," save your breath, because I'll respond simply by telling you to get over yourself and learn to enjoy eating birdpoop. Both are silly ideas to their intended audience, though I'd venture to say that religion has led to more human deaths than birdpoop has.

So there you have it. Fish and Jesus. Two things that are beyond my comprehension and will never be a part of my life, and that until the day I die, people will pity me and treat me like a savage for not embracing. I might have the last laugh though, when we meet up in hell, and you tell me bout how you got to the Pearly Gates and found them guarded by this guy instead of who you'd hoped for.