In Gehhena

           It’s hot enough to make the devil sweat, Nick thought as he sat on an exposed rock on a scrubby hillside, idly picking at a thorny shrub. Down the hill were scattered acacia trees, short, gnarly, and ready to tear at clothing. Stubby cypresses were dotted across the paper dry grassland at the bottom of the valley. He stared at the trees looking for any sign of a breeze wafting up the valley, but they stood absolutely, defiantly still. He looked to the sky beyond the buildings on the other side of the valley, the outskirts of Jerusalem, and it was bleached of all color. The heat had burnt the blue from the sky and left it a featureless cadet grey. The sun, a brutal and barren-white blast furnace, hung directly overhead, leaving Nick no shade on his hillside perch.

            Nick lifted the hem of his Acapulco shirt and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He ran his fingers through his lion’s mane of blond hair and rubbed the sweat on his khaki shorts, leaving dark, greasy streaks. He heard the crunch of footsteps on the loose rocky soil behind him and turned to see a small, dark man approaching him. The man was dressed in a billowing linen suit and had designer sunglasses perched on the bridge of his aquiline nose. Dust was rising up around his sandals as he walked, a trail hanging in the stagnant air behind him.

            “How are you feeling?” The man asked without looking down at Nick as he came to a halt at his side.

            “I’m fucking hot, that’s how I’m feeling.” Nick said squinting up to see the man’s face, but it was obscured by the halo of sunlight around his head. “I don’t know why you picked this place, its miserable. Always has been.”

            “I make my choices for a reason, and you don’t get to question them.” The man said.

            “You haven’t changed a bit.” Nick said. “Then again, you never do.”

            There was a long pause as the two men stared out across the valley of Hinnom, watching a group of tourists walking across the narrow valley floor. “I like the new look.” Nick finally said.

            “Yeah?” The man asked. “At first I thought it looked a little too, I don’t know, drug kingpin.”

            “Not at all,” Nick said. “You look more like a cheap Persian pop star.”

            “I do look a little younger than I would have liked. But look at you. You look like some trust-fund goy who just ran away from a kibbutz.”

            “What can I say? Vanity is one of my weaknesses.” Nick chuckled. “What’s your excuse?”

            “I don’t need excuses.” The man said curtly.

            “Right,” Nick said, hanging his head in exasperation.

            Another moment of silence passed before the man spoke up again, still looking off over the valley. “I still miss you.”

            Nick looked up into the blinding sunlight around the man’s head again. “But you’d still rather keep me away than admit you’re wrong.”

            “I’m never wrong.” The man said casually. “Anything I do is right, anything I condemn is wrong.”

            “Like I said, you never change.”

            “What name are you going by these days?” The man asked.

            “Nick Uraeus,” Nick wiped a bead of sweat from the tip of his nose.

            The man chuckled, brushing a lock of long, densely curled black hair out of his dry face. “Uraeus?”

“The Egyptian symbol of sovereignty.”

“Do you really think I don’t know what it is?” The man smiled arrogantly down at Nick. “The rearing cobra. It was supposed to represent divine authority, and that is a laugh.” He slid his sunglasses down his nose and looked curiously down at Nick. “It has always got to be something about snakes with you, doesn’t it? Every name you’ve ever chosen has had something to do with snakes, I just don’t understand the obsession.”

“You got me started on it.” Nick said.

“I still like the name I gave you better, Mr. Nick Uraeus.” The man said, subtle hints of aversion in his voice as he pronounced Nick’s chosen name.

Nick leaned back and closed his eyes, feeling the sun rage savagely down upon him. “I haven’t gone by that name in a long time. No one even remembers it anymore.”

“I do, Attar.” The man said with a kindly smile.

“Don’t call me that.” Nick said, suddenly agitated.

“Give up the fight, Attar, you can’t win.”

“Do not call me that!” Nick said, scrambling to his feet to tower over the man. “Why can’t you understand that I will never stop fighting until you stop being so… evil?”

“I am not evil.” The man said gently, backing away a step before letting the contempt flow back into his words. “I am good because I am me. Anything that stands against me is evil, so you are the evil one, my friend.”

“You are wrong.” Nick yelled, overcome by the frustration of an argument that had been repeated more times than he could remember.

The man turned and took several steps away. “You had so much potential, Attar. If I commanded you to bring light, you were my lucifer, my light bringer. If I commanded you to test the faith of men, you were my satan, my advocate.” He took several more steps. “How many times must I offer forgiveness? You need not stay forever wandering Earth or minding that cold, stinking pit. You can come back to your place at the foot of the Throne. Just say that you were wrong.”

“You were wrong. That pit is wrong. Your punishments on the people of this Earth are wrong. I will not take forgiveness offered by a tyrant.” Nick spat.

“Have it your way.” The man said, walking off into the shade of a trail between a stand of olive trees.

Nick watched him walk away, watched him blend into a group of tourists, watched him walk by a scraggly vendor selling pomegranates, watched him sneak a pomegranate while the poor vendor wasn’t looking. Nick looked down at his tingling arms and couldn’t help but laugh when he saw that that sun had burnt his skin bright red.

Fat, Intolerant Cunt

     I will start with a disclaimer to make it perfectly clear that this is a politically motivated entry directed at no one person in particular.


    

     "Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."  -Neal Boortz

     First, a note on tolerance. The word tolerance is bandied around with abandon anymore. Every progressive individual on the planet wants to be seen as tolerant, but tolerance is not simply supporting a cause, movement, or ideal that you already agree with. For my part, the fact that I support the rights of gays to marry does not make me a tolerant man, it makes me a man who feels gays should be free to marry as they choose. The fact that I know all races to be equal does not make me a tolerant man, is simply makes me a man who values the inherent equality of all humanity.
   True tolerance is being able to live with something that you cannot agree with. It is finding a way to uphold the rights of people that you may personally find abhorrent. I consider myself a tolerant man when I concede that the Ku Klux Klan, or Chalcedon Foundation, or Nation of Islam have as much right as I do to say or publish anything they want, though I (and any thinking individual) may find it disgusting, deplorable and reprehensible on every level. This tolerance is, and has for years been, fostered by my unshakable belief in freedom of thought and speech.
     As far as I am concerned, freedom of speech is exactly that; A freedom to say what one wants, when and where one wants. The choice of subject matter, word, attitude, or phrasing should have no bearing whatsoever on a person's liberty to speak their mind. This is how I can find myself in the distasteful position of standing up for the rights of speech of repugnant hate groups. But lately I've found my own personal freedom of speech chilled by the trivial use of a "dirty" word. That word, in case you were wondering, is cunt ("An unpleasant or stupid person" according to The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, just to get the whole misogynistic thing out of the way early. I highly recommend you listen to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's "This Bloke Came Up To Me" to hear it used in this context)  Let me write that one more time so any and all can get the full effect of it and move on. Cunt. 
     (A quick aside: In the interest of future pay checks I will insist on pain of death that everything that follows is strictly hypothetical, fictional, and has absolutely nothing to do with my actual self, my actual place of employment, or anything in the actual real world.)
     As a person who believes in the absolute right of any person to say any thing, the fact that such a trite word could cause one's livelihood to be threatened is absolutely astounding. The fact that the usage of the word was outside of, and had nothing to do with one's work simply boggles the mind. I'll elaborate... In passing, a person used the word in a FaceBook comment and it was not received well because one of the people who saw it (that I know of) took it as an insult against women. This, as the above definition would suggest, was not and is never the intention when this person happens to use the word. So, to clear things up this person posted an update with the above mentioned definition. Cleared up, end of story, right? Right.
     For about 22 days.
     At that point, more than three weeks after the event and 21 days after this person stopped giving two shits about it, this person gets called into the H.R. office at his or her place of employment and is given an avuncular, I'm-looking-out-for-you type of talk about how he or she needs to watch what they say and write. OUTSIDE OF WORK. WHEN THEY ARE NOT ON THE CLOCK. All because someone who worked with this person had their overly sensitive little feelers hurt by a fucking word.
     If I were this person this situation would have crossed a very, VERY major line. I would have been forced to tell the fat, intolerant cunt who caused the hullabaloo that she needs to take responsibility for her own weak-kneed, pansy-ass sensitivities and simply ignore that which offends her. The corpulent fuck was not being forced to read what was written, she chose to accept it when she extended a friend request. If she had one shred of self-respect she would have simply approached this person and smoothed out the situation like an adult.
     I'd also have been forced to lose a lot of respect for my place of employment. If I were this person, I would have been able to look past the fact that his company had recently done away with commission and taken away five thousand dollars of annual income after posting a fifty-two week high in profits ("Eh, its just the way the company is going.") I would have been able to look past the fact that, after years of being able to, the company mandated that no employees can smoke on their state allowed break ("Eh, guess I'll start chewing.") But the second a company told me I had to monitor, censor, and sanitize what I as a grown-ass adult say on my own time, I would feel forced to write a blog about it and cover my ass by making it a hypothetical, fictional political statement.