Tag Archives: trust

Young, Pretty Texas Girl Reminds Us All That Sometimes People are Greedy Sh**heads

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When I heard about this story, I was both shocked and awed, even though I keep telling myself over and over that nothing really can shock and awe me anymore. Well, I was wrong.

Young teen, Angie Ramirez, galvanized support for her battle with leukemia that she’s been struggling with most of her life. With only six months to live, she put out a call for help from all of the rest of us, and respond we did (with about $17,000 of supported donations). Well, as it turns out, a funny thing happened on the way to leukemia. You see, little Angie Ramirez, who is 18 years old now, doesn’t actually have leukemia. Her charity she created, The Dream Foundation, really only had one dream being fulfilled, and it appears that dream was to help a young, attractive girl make a shitload of money off of gullible people.

Now, having said all that, maybe she has leukemia, but detectives in Texas certainly don’t think so. And neither does the hospital where she claims she lived most of her sick childhood (turns out, they never heard of her). Maybe it’s all a paperwork mix-up. I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound very good from what I’ve read and heard so far.

But look at her picture. She’s cute. And I’m sure a whole lot of people saw a cute little girl who was suffering and really felt she was worth trying to help. But because of her, how many people who might have helped other people are probably going to think it’s not worth it because if they were fooled once, they figure they’re probably being lied to again.

In this country, we have Ponzi schemers who completely get away with their crimes, go to prison for a few years, and then come out richer than God. When you’ve got guys like Bernie Madoff, whose family then argues that it “deserves” some of the money that he bilked people out of because they have mouths to feed, you just shake your head and realize that there has to be a reason people feel they can, and should, get away with this kind of crap. Whether it’s bad rearing or a society that believes that winning is more important than anything else, including morals and laws, this kind of stuff is happening way too often. It’s getting to the point where whenever I hear a sob story about how someone is suffering for some reason, my spidey senses start tingling, and I figure that they’re probably full of crap.

The other day, I was reading a forum posting on a community site I have been part of for over a decade now, and a known person talked about some horrific things that have happened in her life recently, and she was asking for the community’s support. Now, I’ve known of this person for a very long time, and instead of immediately think “wow, let’s try to help her”, I started thinking of people like Madoff and this scum teen who cheated people out of their charity, and I immediately don’t want to help her. And there’s probably no reason to suspect a scam, yet the incidents of this nature make it so that I don’t trust anyone any longer.

That’s what this kind of stuff leads to, and it bothers me a lot because I’m still naive enough to believe that people should help people whenever they can. But when charity is treated as another income source, what future is there for people who hold out hope for humanity?

(Picture attributed to Ruben Ramirez/AP)

So What if Tomorrow Ends Up Being the Day of Rapture?

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Doomsday predictions predict that tomorrow, Saturday, is supposed to be the day of rapture, when God takes up all of the good people and leaves the rest of us to deal with Satan’s return, Armageddon and all the theatrics that entails. Most people talking about tomorrow completely get it wrong and think tomorrow is Armageddon, but don’t realize that it’s only the day of Rapture. My understanding is that it’s followed by four months or so of hell on Earth and then the final end.

As expected, most people are laughing at the predictions, mainly because they come from a crackpot guy who supposedly has predicted Armageddon six times before, and not surprisingly, he hasn’t goten it right yet. So, the confidence people have in him being right the sixth time isn’t all that strong. Therefore, it’s being treated as a big joke.

But what if he’s right? What if the Rapture happens tomorrow? What do we do then?

Well, most people aren’t considering that because once that happens, it becomes a bit too late. But the possibilities, and that narrative of the story going forward have always fascinated me. I mean, the argument is that after God takes up all of the good people, he leaves the planet to everyone else to fight over. But my question has always been: “Who is fighting whom?” I mean, if all of the “good” people are gone, once Satan returns, who does this final battle take place with? The apathetic? The undecided? People who suddenly turn good because they realized the Rapture was true and that has made them sudden believers? That part has never really made a lot of sense to me from a narrative perspective.

So that means that after Saturday, if a large segment of the population disappears, there should be a whole bunch of people left over who should suddenly become instant believers. I mean, what more proof do you need than to see it actually happen? Would someone really remain an atheist if subjected to acts of God that are so obvious and present that there’s no disputing it any longer? And then, does that mean that God would then punish a whole bunch of new believers because they didn’t sign on before it was too late? Questions of this type of religiosity have always plagued me because it means to me that we have what can only be considered an unjust God, and if that’s the case, then it negates the very wonderful nature that religion should be in the first place.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is most likely going to be a day as uneventful as the next. Except a bunch of people who were devote believers are going to be faced with the fact that their beliefs were taken advantage of by yet another deceiver who used them for personal monetary gain and a quest for power. As these people would have to be seriously devoted believers, this means that they put their faith forward for the wrong reasons, which means, to be, a total waste of such great devotion that seems truly unfortunate, because it’s hard enough to find anyone with an ouce of faith in anything these days. And once someone of such devotion has had his or her faith dragged through the mud once again, that can’t make the next leap of faith occur just as easily, which means that where faith has become forlorn, what is left for them to believe in? And will they ever believe in anything again?

I think people who do this disservice to them do the ultimate disservice to mankind and the better nature of humanity. But they are NEVER held accountable for it. Instead, they will hit replay on the calendar and start recruiting more devoted followers to follow them down yet another rabbit hole of future despair and ultimate depravity. Sadly enough, those they follow will claim the ranks of the truly religious, of highest faith, and in reality, they will destroy the very foundation of which that faith was first built.

And no one will ever question it well enough to keep it from happening again.

Why Do Men Cheat?

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I was reading today about how Arnold Schwarzeneger cheated on his wife, Maria Shriver and ended up having a child with one of the members of his staff. Now, I’m not going to get into the pro or cons of Arnold, or any of that. I’m not even really going to comment that much on that affair and the child he had with someone else while married. What I will say is that I always found Maria Shriver to be a beautiful woman who is extremely intelligent, and any man should have been as lucky as he could ever be to have been married to her. I don’t care that he’s Arnold and could have probably any supermodel he wanted. He had the one any man would have killed to have had as a wife, and he threw it away on something stupid. That’s all I’ll say on Arnold. That’s not what I wanted to talk about here.

What I did want to talk about is the very nature of cheating itself. It’s something I just don’t understand. I mean, I understand psychology and all of that, but what I don’t understand is why someone would do it when it serves no purpose other than an immediate, stupid need. Now, I’m not the most experienced individual when it comes to relationships, but when I’ve been in them, they were exclusive for me (at least for me), and while I may have had bad thoughts at the time, especially when someone else who was extremely attractive seemed quite interested in me, I never considered cheating as an actual, viable alternative. Yet, I know without a doubt that I”m a rarity at this. People cheat all of the time.

And that drives me nuts. I’m not married, mainly because I’ve never found anyone that could stand me long enough to ever consider doing so. Okay, there were a few in the past that probably could have made that leap with me, but let’s just say that I’m more of a loner, being a writer and all that, so I’ve never succeeded in making something like that work long term. But not once has a relationship ever ended because I decided I wanted someone else. The logic of that completely baffles me.

Which then brings me to the belief that if I ever do get involved with someone, she’s probably never going to be convinced that I’m legit and not cheating, and my supposition of that falls on the obvious fact that so many guys cheat, especially guys that should have no reason to do so whatsoever. You’ve got people like Hugh Grant, with someone like Elizabeth Hurley, and he goes and cheats with a skanky hooker. I mean, I just don’t understand it. The logic makes absolutely no sense.

There’s an argument that goes that men are only as loyal as their options. I hear this one a lot. At first, I used to hear it from comedians, but then I started to hear every day people using the phrase. And if it’s true, that really says horrific things about the average guy, because it basically means that we aren’t to be trusted AT ALL, EVER. I could understand if you’re in some loveless marriage, or that your wife has suddenly decided to become anti you, but those cases are very specific ones, and for all other logical reasons, the marriage should be ended there anyway. Even in those cases I don’t advocate cheating; I advocate divorce. I figure that if someone is going to be that upset by his current circumstances that he’s going to cheat, he needs to be brutally honest and then just end the relationship completely. Living a lie has to be a horrific experience, and I can’t imagine myself ever doing it. How others could do it is beyond me, yet so many people don’t seem to have that much of a problem with it.

Over the years, I’ve come across a lot of people who have stretched the boundaries of relationships. At one point, I hung with a open marriage crowd, and I was fine with that. I mean, in these situations, no one is cheating on anyone because everyone is aware of what is going on, and everyone is consenting to the relationship dynamics. It’s the sneaking around and deceit that I completely do not understand.

I come across it every now and then in my normal daily life, and from time to time, I find myself getting drawn into circumstances that drive me nuts. I’m talking about where someone is a friend who happens to be cheating on his wife or her husband, and then I’m asked to lie because the spouse might bring up a question that could reveal the dishonest behavior. People don’t seem to understand why I get really upset whenever I’m brought into something like that without my approval and any previous discussion. It’s literally asking me to cheat in a relationship where I get absolutely nothing out of it for doing the bad behavior, which not only goes against every fiber in my being, but also doesn’t get me anything out of the dynamic as well.

But back to the question. Why do mean cheat? Is it because they constantly want something forbidden to them? Is it because of a need to constantly fulfill a sexual desire? Is is because they feel a need to do something immoral, dangerous or wrong? I would hate to think that answer is that it’s because they had the oportunity, which makes us nothing less than Pavlovian beings, capable of being manipulated so easily by any manner of incentive. There’s an old joke where a woman claims she’s not a prostitute, but then some businessman offers her an absurd amount of money to have sex, and she relents. He then asks her to do it for the original offer or some nominal amount of money, and she says, “Sir, what do you take me for?” And he says: “Madame, we already established what you are. Now we’re just negotiating the price.” In other words, it only takes one time to be a cheater, and once you are, you are forever condemned to be one, no matter how much you might tell yourself otherwise.

What bothers me is that there are so many people out there who have no qualms about this. And yes, I understand that gender is not necessarily the distinctive factor either, as women cheat as well. That doesn’t make me feel any better, however.