Rasmenia

I hate flying. When I was a kid, I traveled by plane often, as many children of divorced parents do. Back then, it was a fun & exciting adventure. Because I was a wee one traveling alone, I received special attention. The flight attendant would bring me a little plastic pin with wings on it. “A gift from the captain,” they’d say.

I’d read my books & listen to my Walkman. The person sitting next to me was always nice. Or, at least quiet & polite.

Over time, things changed. I got bigger. My legs grew longer. My patience, shorter.

I take more international flights now. The airlines have changed, too. Now there’s a lot more seats crammed into a single airplane in order to squeeze more money out of every flight.

Flying anywhere — even a 2 or 3-hour flight — has become a fucking ordeal that one must survive, rather than a fun & exciting adventure. It’s no longer the happy beginning of a vacation to a new & exotic place. It’s a goddamn penance that must be paid for having the audacity to leave your home.

That’s without getting into the bullshit about customs, body scans, TSA & the inquisition of foreigners in the U.S., which I won’t get into here.

Most of my flights going back & forth between France & the U.S. have been a headache. Once, a crazy lady sitting next to me on a flight to Paris instantly poured out her life story to me & Olivier. It got to the point where we started speaking French to one another as a civil way of asking her to shut the hell up.

On another flight to Paris, the woman behind me got out of her seat & started shrieking at me in irrational hillbilly-speak, causing a scene on the plane, while her husband was scolded by the flight attendant for referring to the attendants as “honey.”

There was also the little old French lady who fell asleep on me on a flight to Paris, but she was nice to me, so I let her sleep.

All of these things were quite pleasant compared to our recent Air Europa experience.

About a month ago, Olivier & I, along with a couple of his coworkers met up at Orly airport in Paris for a flight to Buenos Aires with a stop in Madrid. We knew it would be long, but we planned ahead with snacks, gadgets & books.

Like any flight, we had to bum around the airport for a few hours before boarding. Lucky us. While waiting for our boarding time, who should walk by right in front of us with a couple of police officers but former French Presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen.

She strolled by, smoking a cigarette. Yes. Smoking a cigarette. In the airport. Because of course, the law doesn’t apply to everyone.

Paris to Madrid went smoothly. It was about 10pm in Madrid when we arrived, so the place was mostly deserted. Our flight was delayed, so we ate potato chips & Oreos as we marveled at the long line of passengers waiting to board the flight. Dozens of passengers who were using fucking trolleys for their carry-on luggage. No, I’m serious. They had too much carry-on luggage to carry.

Olivier & I, each with a single backpack, were stunned.

A little after midnight, we finally boarded our flight to Buenos Aires.

We got to our seats, which unfortunately, were located in that shitty middle section of the plane on a full flight. Immediately, I discovered that the guy next to me had already been discarding trash, blankets & pillows on my seat, leaving me with a pile of shit to deal with before I could sit down. Once seated, the douchenozzle in front of me reclined his seat. Sure, sure… you’re allowed to do that during certain times of the flight — usually once the fasten seat belt light has gone off. Reclining before take off, during the meal, or not putting your seat back up before landing is dickish. If I were boss of everything, they would never recline at all.

Of course, none of the Air Europa flight attendants seemed to be too concerned with safety regarding seat back position, or people’s garbage & bullshit cluttering up the aisles.

Not to mention the fact that Air Europa has the smallest seating area of any plane I’ve even been in. I’m 5’7″. My knees were touching the back of the seat in front of me before it reclined. Once reclined, I had about 6 inches between my face & the seat in front of me.

The trash dumper next to me was encroaching. I became enraged. Claustrophobic. Olivier switched places with me, being much larger & much better at counter-encroachment. He won the turf war, but we discovered that Trash Dumper was also a nose picker who liked to chew gum with his mouth open. I don’t know him, but I hate him.

So, I’m in my new seat. In front of me, the seat reclines. I don’t want to lean back. It’s uncomfortable to me. But I have to, in order to get this greasy, bald scalp out of my face. I turn in my seat, giving the polite, “I’m gonna lean back now” look, then slowly put my seat back… & the douchenozzle behind me tells me, “no” I can’t do that.

Seriously… fuck these people.

After 2 weeks in Argentina — which I’ll get to later — it was time to fly back to France via Madrid. I began dreading it about 2 days before we left Argentina. Incredibly, the flight & cast of characters we encountered on the way home was even worse:

- A couple at the airport in Buenos Aires, pushing & shoving to the front of the check-in line. “We have a passport problem,” they said. Really? So why wasn’t an airline employee assisting them, rather than letting them piss people off at baggage check-in?

- The couple to our right on the airplane, wiping the little plastic dishes from their meal with their tiny napkins, shoving them into her purse. They cleaned all the plastic cutlery & took that, too. And she kept stretching her legs out, putting her feet on every chair they could reach.

- The lady sitting to our left who kept crying, bouncing around hysterically, opening several boxes of creams, perfumes & bullshit, rubbing them all over herself, stinking up the plane & tossing the empty boxes everywhere. Oh, yeah… then she blew her nose & collected her snotty rags on her tray table.

- Whoever shit all over the toilet seat in the airplane lavatory.

- Whoever pissed on the floor in the airplane lavatory.

- The dozen people who were having some kind of party, drinking yerba mate in the aisles, being loud, sitting on other people’s armrests while they were trying to sleep & preventing anyone from going to shit all over the toilet seat.

Yes, it’s delicious, but no excuse to be a tool.

- The chick in front of me who kept reaching back & hanging her hands behind her head so that they dangled in front of me, covering the little movie screen that was too close to my face when I was trying to watch The Words, forcing me to flick her fingers out of my face.

- The weird & very large lady sitting in front of Olivier who decided to stand next to my seat, her body oozing into my tiny bubble of personal space, hovering close enough for me to smell her weird large lady scent, leaning one hand on my headrest & the other hand on my fucking movie screen while I was trying to watch The Words.

Bradley Cooper is terribly overrated, but I prefer him to the hands of weird, rude strangers.

When we caught our sunrise Madrid-Paris flight, I thought I’d finally get an hour or two of sleep. Wrong. We were sitting right in front of the shrieking, seat-kicking kid whose parents did nothing except attempt to placate their howling larva with loud, musical toys.

And I didn’t even mention how the baggage handlers like to go through the side pockets in your luggage to steal shit.

Luckily, the two weeks we spent in Argentina were nothing like the flight there & back. Quite the opposite. But, like I said, I’ll get to that. This is enough for one day.

You have two ways to know right away if someone is an asshole; two infallible personality tests that can tell you right off what kind of a person another human being is.

The first one, as you already are aware, is how they treat the waitstaff in a restaurant.

The second is how they behave on a plane. If they respect personal space, use some common courtesy & have a modicum of common decency, they’re all right. There’s still a chance that they’re shitting on the toilet seat when no one’s looking, but, hey… at least they don’t interrupt the movie.

“Religion is like a pair of shoes: find one that fits for you, but don’t try to make me wear your shoes.” – George Carlin.

“Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned–I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.” – Frank Zappa

“One’s own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one’s Maker and no one else’s.” – Kahlil Gibran

***

This is something I don’t enjoy writing about. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth; leaves me feeling dirty, like I need a Silkwood shower & a couple of shots of Jameson to burn it all away. In fact, while I was planning on sitting down today to write a blog post, I had a completely different & unrelated topic in mind. Something a bit lighter. Something less aggravating & polarizing.

That’ll have to wait for another day.

I changed my mind this morning because I received an email. I read it & vowed that I would bark about it to the Internet while shaking my fist & using lots of profanity. Because I love you, Internet. I want to share these things with you. Also because bickering with the sender of the offending email is pointless (I don’t speak much to them, anyway) & would be less entertaining for the rest of us.

So… what did it say? What was so annoying that it warranted a rant?

This: “I forgive you.”

This came as a surprise, since I’d never asked to be forgiven. The message went on to say that even though they don’t condone my “life of ungodliness”, they forgive me; that while they do not have a relationship with me since I “have denounced God” & am “not a Christian,” that they still had to forgive me. Because the pastor said so.

A few words jumped into my mind as I read: arrogant. Condescending. Self-righteous. Judgmental. Stupid.

This wasn’t a sincere message. This was an “I don’t really forgive anything” message. A “What you are just chaps my ass & just wanted you to know” message. For a message of forgiveness, it was one of the most insulting, blindside emails anyone’s ever sent to me.

I cannot comprehend the misguided piety that motivates a person to sit down at a computer & compose an email that basically says, “I forgive you for living differently than I do. I judge you. I’m better than you & will not associate with you because of it, but I forgive you.”

Then again, I have hobbies.

Of course, they could never understand the most important thing, here: I am not seeking forgiveness. I don’t hand much of it out, either. Telling someone that you forgive them for something they were never, ever sorry for is one of the most obtuse & audacious things a person can do. Forgiving me for living my own life the way that I see fit? A terse “fuck you” just doesn’t seem appropriate here, even if it might be satisfying.

Perhaps it’s because a false & self-serving message of forgiveness is so pathetic that it doesn’t even merit the wrath or disdain of a “fuck you.” Jumping up on the dinner table & dropping a deuce in my soup is deserving of a “fuck you.” Passing judgment on my life, my belief system (essentially, who & what I am) & sending me sanctimonious bits of bullshit is much worse.

Please don’t misunderstand the meaning of my tirade: this is not a criticism of anyone’s faith. It’s about hiding behind faith as an excuse to be an asshole. If you’re going to be an asshole, be one, but find a better reason & be honest about why you’re being an asshole. Don’t throw heinous insults at someone & then say that it’s because some pastor or other nameless religious authority told you to. That’s a fucking cop-out. It’s cowardly.

Forgiveness is something that you do for yourself, to heal, to move on, or whatever you need to do. In many cases – such as, forgiving someone for being different than you – you can probably just keep that shit to yourself. Or keep it between you & whatever version of God you’ve chosen.

Many of my close friends & relatives are believers of some kind or another. I sincerely don’t care. They don’t judge me. They don’t get all up in my grill about it & I don’t get up in theirs. We have a firm grasp on the basic concept of mutual respect, so there’s no problem. We have millions of other things we can talk about. We can still enjoy conversations with one another, in spite of my godlessness. We care enough about one another to maintain a relationship, to nurture it with civility & laughing about stuff, instead of acting like dicks.

I’ve heard a lot of complaints about what big bullies atheists can be. Maybe there’s some truth to it. It seems reasonable to say that both sides would have their share of asshats. While it’s poor form to send someone a blindside email criticizing their godless existence, it would be equally wrong to spend your free time composing & sending insulting emails to a christian because you’re pissed off about their ignorance of Christopher Hitchens & rejection of science.

No matter how much science you can throw at them.

And what about my godlessness? What’s the big deal?

I spend a lot of time reading the works of prominent atheists, but I’m not an atheist.

I might burn some sage to clear out the bad vibes, but I’m not a pagan or wiccan.

I’ll meditate & do some yoga, but I’m not a buddhist.

I grew up Methodist, but I’m definitely not a Christian. I’ve never tried to hide this, because I’m not ashamed of it. But I don’t run through the streets shouting about it & rubbing people’s noses in it. The reason being: it isn’t anyone’s goddamn business what I do or do not believe. I don’t have to pick one thing & one thing only to believe. I can do whatever I want. So can you. We all have the right to think, feel & believe as we see fit. However, you do not have the right to bother anyone else with it & use it as a reason to insult or belittle another person, regardless of what the more extreme members of various religious groups & political parties say or do.

Trust me. She doesn’t make a lot of friends.

I never asked for forgiveness. Because I’m not sorry. I am not sorry for who I am, for the kind of woman I am, or how I live my life. That is not something I would ask to be forgiven for. If you don’t like the way that someone lives their life, then don’t be a part of it. Move on. Do your own thing.

When someone offers forgiveness that wasn’t asked for, it’s false, smug & selfish. They’ve lost the meaning of “Christ-like”. They’ve warped the concept of forgiveness. Worse yet, they could end up as blog fodder for some bigmouth on the Internet.

If you enjoy fighting with people on Facebook, or elsewhere on the Internet in those boring religious debates, that’s fine. But, when you start sending people direct messages disguised as normal correspondence with the sole intention of knocking their lifestyle & inflating your own self-righteous delusions, it’s harassment. It has all the assholery of leaving someone a flaming bag of poo, but without the comedy. When your bigotry drives you to do something like this, when you can’t find anything better to do with your time than to antagonize the people in your life, it’s not forgiveness that’s important.

What is important is something simple. Something basic that you’ve now abandoned: kindness.

***

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.” – Charlotte Brontë

In July of 2005, I went to see Batman Begins at the Holiday Twin drive-in in Fort Collins, CO with a friend of mine. We’d been bouncing around in anticipation for several months waiting for this movie to come out. Leaning forward in the front seat of my Oldsmobile, we shoveled snacks into our faces & geeked out. She was one of my geek girl friends. Getting excited for superhero/fantasy/action movies, standing in line to see them, then jabbering excitedly about them afterward was something that connected us.

Many people have been brought together by things much less awesome.

We weren’t on Myspace. We didn’t have Facebook. We talked in person, over plates of food & big glasses filled with adult beverages. We chatted at the office where we both worked. It didn’t matter much that she was a Conservative, Christian gun owner from Texas, or that I was basically the exact opposite of all those things.

Sure, we gave each other shit about it. We made a lot of jokes. We also asked each other a lot of questions & somehow, it worked out fine.

Fast forward to 2008. I’ve left Colorado to live in France. The sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, had been released. I saw it at a movie theater in Paris with my husband. Barack Obama was about to be elected president. Like many of my friends, I had an account on Myspace, which I was getting fed up with. I joined Facebook in 2007 & preferred the clean, quiet of Facebook, as opposed to the glittery, .gif-ridden shouting & bickering of Myspace.

It was right around this time that the pro-Sarah Palin posts from my Conservative Geek Girl friend started showing up. We’d kept in touch through various places on the Internet since my move & up til then, most of the posts I saw were geeky & personal fragments that I was interested in seeing. Yes, I want to see your vacation pics. I am interested in looking at entire photo albums of your new hairdo, or that weird thing on your cat’s neck. Yes. Absolutely.

Or, whatever’s going on here. Yes. This is interesting.

What I wasn’t interested in seeing was right-wing propaganda from websites stating that the U.S. should put Arabs & Muslims in interment camps.

I feel very strongly about this because I detest hateful, racist bullshit. It also hit too close to home. My last name is Arabic. I chose to take this name when I married my half-French, half-Arab husband.

So there it was… the first friendship I had that crumbled as a result of social networking stupidity.

Could we have talked it out? Maybe. If I were more of a talking-out kind of person & could rid myself of doubt – if I could look at her without wondering if she would be okay with my husband being put in some fucking interment camp.

Nah, for me, it’s sometimes easier to just tell someone to stay the hell away from me. I know many people say that “life is short” & “don’t burn bridges” & some other clichéd shit about how it’s bad to sever friendships, but I feel that life is too short to spend it being surrounded by ignorant, bigoted shits who piss me off.

If you disagree, then you’re more patient than I am. Good for you. You’re nice. I’m mean. You’re the winner. I’m okay with that.

Since then, I’ve fired more friends. Some them I didn’t know very well. When someone I never have any contact with is posting horrible things online & our only common link is that we both come from the same shitty little town, it’s easy to unfriend them. It’s also unlikely that they’ll care or even notice. They’ll just continue posting their nonsense.

Other times, it was people I’d known for 20+ years. Just because you went to high school together & got into some trouble together back in the day, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re still friends – or that you even like one other at all.

In the past 5 years I’ve been on Facebook, I’ve discovered where almost all of my friends stand on every single issue. I know who is for or against gay marriage. I know who thinks Obama is a gay, Kenyan-born Muslim bent on destroying America. I’ve been preached to, bitched at & insulted. I know who thinks being Palestinian or pro-choice is evil. I’ve heard why I shouldn’t eat meat, wheat, Oreos, Chick-fil-A, daisies & yellow snow.

And it works both ways. I’ve been deleted by at least two dozen people. Maybe it’s because I’m a godless, foul-mouthed, carnivorous, Obama-voting, pro-choice lover of gays & Palestinians & that I live in a wicked, socialist country like France. If none of those are reasons why, I have to assume it’s because of all the fart jokes & if you can’t handle fart jokes, then it’s probably for the best.

I try to refrain from the initial impulse to delete someone. That ‘hide’ button on Facebook is an excellent feature. But, a friend of mine recently pointed out: if I have to hide posts from people & I can’t stand anything they say, how can I call them my friend?

I think there’s a lot of truth in that, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to delete someone every single time I see a post that irritates me. So, I hide them. And sometimes, forget that they are even there at all. So, I guess when that happens, we’re not such good friends, right?

I’m not under any illusions about myself. I know I’ve posted things on Facebook or Twitter that someone didn’t like. Over the past year or so, I’ve refrained from sharing certain things on Facebook because my group of friends, while mostly like-minded thinkers, is still rather diverse, so I don’t want to force all of my opinions on everyone & don’t feel like dealing with the backlash & bitching.

I prefer to reserve most of that for this site, which people can visit only if they want to.

And there’s my main problem with the obnoxious & constant political & religious posts on Facebook – the assumption that everyone on your friend list wants to be force-fed your belief system & opinions. Go shout about those things on a personal blog, or on Twitter. Why fight with former classmates in front of your coworkers & relatives?

Filling everyone’s news feed with an endless stream of shitty Facebook memes about politics & religion will not convert anyone, or convince people with opposing viewpoints to come over to your side. This is like flashing a bunch of bumper stickers at someone instead of using your words. We don’t all live by the same set of social standards. Your rhetoric will not prompt me to start voting Republican, or to be okay with religion. (Yes, it works both ways, but this is my rant, so we’re looking at it from my viewpoint.)

Of course, if you tell an obnoxious poster to shut it, they’ll likely come back with something about their Freedom of Speech. This isn’t about your fucking 1st Amendment rights. It’s about common courtesy, recognizing the varying ideals of your friends, acquaintances & family members & making an effort not to inflame them.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t discuss things, but one of the nice things about Facebook is that not only can you hide what you don’t want to see, you can also hide what you don’t want others to see. Try putting more energy into playing nice & being courteous & a little less into trying to to shove your belief system down everyone’s throat.

Now here we are. The third movie of this Batman trilogy has been released & we all know what happened in Aurora, so I won’t even get into the details of that. Suffice it to say that being from Colorado, a huge fan of Batman & Christopher Nolan’s movies, it hit close to home. Reading the news hurt. Watching my Colorado friends trying to locate friends & loved ones hurt. Wondering if all of my friends were okay… it hurt.

It still hurts.

Before victims had been identified, before families had been notified, the rotten, repugnant ranting had started with people spouting off about their own political & religious agendas. The trolling & conspiracy theories popped up. My level of disgust & disdain is hard to articulate, but I can tell you that I’ve been making good use of that hide button recently.

I said to my husband, “It’s so damn annoying, all of this shit cluttering up my news feed: guns, the 2nd Amendment, religion, politics… aren’t you getting sick of it, too?”

Olivier, he shrugs. “I guess I would, but I don’t see much of that. Most of my friends aren’t Americans.”

I thought about this & he’s right. The people I have to hide, who do the most shouting, are Americans. So, Americans, why are we shouting like this? Why do we have such a useless fucking need to be right & convince others that our belief system is best? Why do we feel the need to make spontaneous announcements & sophistic arguments about what we think & why others are wrong for thinking something different? Unless the goal is to alienate a certain percentage of the people you’re acquainted with, I really don’t get it.

Would you go to a party with all the people you know & start randomly shouting about religion & politics, or would you just chat, laugh, have some snacks & a few cocktails?

Sometimes I miss the days when my news feed was filled with vacation photos, status updates about someone’s day, what they’re eating & whatever the hell that thing is on your cat’s neck.