The Seven Deadly Sins (5 page)

But then again, I still maintain that rage is not a sin. When properly expressed, anger can be beneficial. Some of the best art in the world is angry, jolting, and abrasive. Moderation—always practice moderation. You cannot place blame on the sin for one simple reason: If you blame one, you must blame all. If that is the case, then we are all guilty. The people who watched and did nothing are guilty. The ones who laughed and thought it was funny are guilty. The ones who suffered instead of saying something are guilty. Imagine a family tree of nothing more than the names of the people involved and you will get the idea.

The flip side to this rusty coin is that rage can make us do funny things. Have you ever been so mad you could not say anything? Have you ever been so mad that you just blurt out the most ludicrous shit known to man? It is a base idiocy that can be as infectious as the very anger itself. Try talking to someone when you are pissed off—words escape you and everything just gets louder and louder, to the point when you are using monosyllabic words and belting at the top of your lungs. You sound like an auctioneer with Tourette's syndrome.

To an outside observer, the telltale signs of someone getting angry can be hilarious as well. Their face might get red, then purple. They might start smiling or laughing while they shake their heads. Their lips might purse and their eyes will get all squinty like they are channeling Clint Eastwood or Steven Seagal. Watch
their hands—they could either start squeezing or sweating, depending on their mentality. Teeth might actually grind if their mouths don't go slack from incredulous shock. All of these things are incredibly fucking funny to me, and I find myself giggling when people are incensed. That, in turn, exacerbates the situation. I cannot help it. It is awesome. Then again, it drives me nuts when people do it to me, and I become uncontrollable. I have to walk away to keep from firing off.

Sins are the unwashed marks on your spiritual record. So how is it something we all feel almost every day is counted against you? I get it—rage can send someone down a disturbing path that can contribute to actions of questionable purity. But getting pissed shouldn't mean getting burned. To be mad is to react to a moment beyond your control. Reacting to something you cannot control is life in a nutshell. How the fuck is that a sin?

Let me clue you in on a real sin; actually it is more like a shame, or a sad fact. Around the 1990s, it became all the rage to start
screaming
in heavy metal music. Nothing wrong there: I was one of the progenitors of that whole movement, and I screamed my dark little heart out every night. But then, something truly fucked happened. People started mistaking screaming for genuine emotion, rage became synonymous with all feelings, like all you had to do to appear passionate was scream in a metal band. “Oh he is so emotional. . .” Judas fucking Priest, are you
kidding
me? Jazz singers get on stage and bear their souls every night, and nobody gives a shit. Fuckbucket, the lead singer for the band Land Fill (with a logo that is completely illegible, illogical, and hackneyed, just like the music) barks the vocal equivalent of vomit into an SM57 with healthy doses of “fuck” and “dad” and people call him the next Jim Morrison.

It is not the emotion you are experiencing but the experience you are engaging. You cannot be defined by the feeling if no one knows what you are feeling, so it is the reaction that is the quote-unquote “sin.” Why is the Church so scared of people feeling anything? I have a theory. I think it is because organized religion makes such an effort to control what people do that it makes sense to control how people feel, rage in particular because it is a natural reaction to anyone or anything controlling their lives. So how do you get people to stop getting mad when you tell them what to do and how to think? Tell them it's a sin. That is what's called a self-realizing philosophy. It is also virtually impenetrable the further you get away from the actual inception. In Martin Luther's day, you might have been able to reverse something so manipulative. Today, with hundreds of years of dogma and successful brainwashing under their belt, you can pound your fist against the walls of blind acceptance all you want. All you will end up with are bloody knuckles and modern frustration.

Yeah, if you could not tell, I have a big problem with religions. Organized religion has been the blueprint for more missteps than anything I have ever seen in my life. The thing I realized early on is that for an organization that preaches the benefits of love and calls anger a sin, they certainly breed a very opinionated and angry group of people, don't they? As I have said, hypocrisy is one of the biggest sins in the world. The effect of hypocrisy is that people are told to be one way, while the righteous can do what they please.

These people can sincerely go fuck themselves.

Much like lust, the only other “sin” that can be misconstrued as an emotion, there's a stigma attached to rage that has been
dog piled by years of misrepresentation and fear. When a person gets mad, people are conditioned to think that person is immediately going to do something terrible. Some of this can be attributed to what they call “the caveman gene,” but a lot of it comes down to propaganda. If I get angry, a majority of the people will automatically think I am going to kill someone or beat my kids or rape a horse or something else equally insipid. What is the bigger sin: the anger or the mudslinging about the anger?

Anger is a sin when parents beat their kids. The real sinner is the murderer who mangles a victim so badly she is left unrecognizable or the teacher who ignores the fact that he is supposed to actually teach because he allows his own negative feelings about children to get in the way or the wife who cheats on her husband because he did not buy her a big enough diamond for her birthday. The wheels on the bus may go 'round and 'round, but that bus might run you over if the driver gets fired.

There are so many levels to anger and so many ways to use it in noble ways. But rage carries the scars of centuries filled with unchecked degradation. Anger is a powerful weapon in the fight for humanity. Some would rather leave humanity alone, which begs the question: Which is the bigger sin, rage or fear? The adage goes “evil triumphs when good men doing nothing.” Why would a good man do nothing to help the world? Is it a better thing to fear the unknown or to use righteous fire to fight it?

Here is an odd posit: What is bravery, really, but the potent combination of rage and fear? What is valor but being so angry and scared you do the unthinkable? You see, anger permeates society; when the niceties give way, we are all just one fight-orflight away from eating each other. Can we get along with angry people? Of course we can—we do it every day. Can we get along
without being angry? Absolutely not. It is not in our DNA to coexist peaceably. We can “play” nice, but we will never be fully cooled off enough. So how can we keep this in the “deadly sin” pile? Forget what the idealists and the hippies say; rage is here to stay.

This is fairly personal for me because I have always been angry. I think I gave up being cheery and gleeful when I was nine. As soon as my world turned upside down, it was over for me. So I suffered through poverty, humiliation, molestation, and abuse for most of my teens. And with every taunt, my anger grew. With every strike, my mind raced toward a judgment day that would have my aggression pouring through every street in every country all over the world. I wanted karma to drive stakes into the dark hearts that kept me bitter most of my adult life. I remember it all: I remember leaving school covered in food because all the bullies threw their trays at me. I remember memorizing all of the safe routes home because countless pricks with nothing better to do might jump me at any moment. I remember the prank calls and the toilet paper in my trees and the feeling that I would never ever be safe. I remember wanting to cry every morning before I left for school. I remember the shame and the bruises. I remember coming home to a house that wasn't safe either.

Now I remember all of their names.

I know what they do and what their lives are like: horrible holes of ignorance and banality morning noon and night. And because I am still angry—and always will be—I think of how those knuckle-dragging mouth breathers ended up.

And I smile.

I may never let go of my wrath, my anger, but I will
always
have the last laugh.

Is that bad? The Germans called that feeling
schadenfreude
, which means “pleasure derived from someone else's failure.” Is it wrong to be ecstatic because the fucking bullies from my childhood turned into bigger pieces of shit than I ever could have imagined, and they are floundering in lives that I would not wipe my ass with?

I guess to some people, it would be. Do I think so? Fuck no.

Is it a sin? Of course not.

It is damn near the definition of being human to be happy when your enemies eat a bigger helping of life's shit than your own portion. How else can we get through days that are quite clearly the “worst we have ever experienced”? There will always be a yardstick for our achievements, and it will never be tall enough. And we will always be angry about it.

But can we let go of the bitterness?

That is the terrible and guilty taste that anger leaves in your mouth when you have finally vented, and even though you may have felt the reciprocity, the bitterness lingers. You see I have been able to move on. I have been able to release, to tap the valve of hatred and turn it into something positive. But the bitterness circles around me like cigarette smoke. Maybe it will never go away. It is okay though—it takes a journey to know where you are.

Let's talk about something awesome, like mindless wish killing.

Now before you get all weird and beatnik on me, this is a harvested practice that has gone on for years. Everyone has angrily wished death on total strangers at least a hundred times in their lives. Think about it: the person driving in front of you who is either looking for an address or severely medicated. The people at the airport who have all the time in the world swerving languidly, interrupting the flow of pedestrian traffic. The morons
who hold up the line at McDonald's, spending twenty-five minutes “ummmm”-ing for something that is on a menu older than most people reading this book until they inevitably order the same #2 with a Coke they always fucking order. Mall walkers, dog walkers, speed walkers, slow walkers—these people are so frustrating they make us all want to chew and ingest stained glass until we pass out from internal bleeding. Impatience can breed fatal fury, in which case we wish the most dastardly and fucked up demises on those eating up too much of our precious fucking time.

God knows I have.

And if you say you are too “mature” for that, you are either a liar or in denial. We have all “Jack the Ripper”-ed our way through a crowd of people before, albeit in our profound little imaginations. It is that “self” shit again, the attitude in which “the only one who exists today is me.”

That is all fine and fancy, but take it from me: There is nothing worse than passive-aggressive anger. I am just as big a cynic as the next guy, but when a close friend's bitterness manifests itself in shitty smart-ass comments that knock the twinkle off of your twilight, then shit has got to stop. I am the first motherfucker in line to admit I have been extremely lucky in my life. I am fortunate to have a career, my family, even the opportunity to write this book. But when people I have known for decades come at me with this “remember where you came from” nonsense, it drives me straight up Homicidal Avenue. It is even worse when people openly refuse to recognize what you have achieved in life and instead treat you like you are still in second grade and it is your Friday to split the milk money.

Grab some pen and paper, children, here is another free lesson. The best friends you will ever have are the ones who do not
make you feel like you owe them a damn thing. Some of my “friends” have a tendency to insert themselves in places they did not earn the right to be. What the fuck do you do there? If you call foul on the play, somehow you are the asshole, and that is five years in a small city. If you do not, it is your own damn fault and you wallow in it alone. See the conundrum? It is even better when your family tag teams you—thank you, Christmas. You are officially the worst thing ever. I blame Coca-Cola: god damn jolly old St. Lick My Staff, sitting in judgment on harmless fucking toddlers with their acolyte trolls—you can call them elves if you want, I know the truth—and it is the same shit every year. Wish in one hand, shit in the other: Do not get me wrong—I love ties like the next guy. But I draw the line at singing ties. Horse shit, whoever invented the singing tie should be lined up and beaten with every fucking singing piece of shit they are responsible for bringing into a world that did not ask for them. And do not even get me fucking started on Pete Rose. God damn Cincinnati Reds—I get it, one guy can make the Hall of Fame because he had huge hands, but ol' Petey makes a couple bets and he gets fucked. Do not even pretend that the other players are angelic—they are all fucking crooked.

Where in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, did that come from?

Quite frankly, that just made me pee. But only just a little. It will be dry by the time I get up from my counter space where I am allowed to write in the kitchen, giving me time to have a cigarette, change, and be piss-free by the time my wife realizes I am in bed. That, my friends, is time management. It is also the story of Jesus. Really. Most people would save their mangers for last when it came to cleaning them, so the last place on earth people would look for the Mini-Him would be the garage, which
is all a manger is really. A stable is just a garage for your horses and shit, or, more to the point, their shit. Managers will only rent those rooms if they are stacked for the night.