Sit Down Comedy … June 21st, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

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God.

Would you stop talking about God?

Unless this God of yours has a goddamn idea on how to overcome this god-awful mediocrity.

I, for one, am fed up with anyone or anything that needs to be worshipped.

I can barely get someone’s attention at McDonald’s.

Where does God get off thinking we should stand up for thirty minutes, sing atrocious songs with insipid lyrics, and feed His ego—when He owns title and lien to the whole mess of the Universe?

And by the way, stop promoting books written by Bedouin prophets who believe that demons cause sickness. (By the way, they don’t.)

No more God talk until we have God walk

Here’s the problem—to be religious, you must buy into religion.

They won’t let you be religious by taking God in your everyday life and trying to love people. You have to purchase the whole package—kind of like a gym membership. You sign on the dotted line, it sounds like a good deal, you think you might be interested. But after you go there and realize you can’t measure up to the clientele who are lifting their heavy burdens, you don’t ever want to go back.

Religion says: God is in heaven.

I say: God is on Earth, or what’s the big deal?

Religion: God is to be worshipped.

But I say unto you:  God is a lifestyle—a way of living. Otherwise, if we’re just going to meet Him when we die, why mess around with Him now?

The church says God is a Savior.

I happen to believe that God is life abundantly. He’s just as interested in my pizza choices as He is my Bible study.

They will preach to you that God is a spirit. I happen to believe that God is the person next to me. If I treat him or her poorly, I register “suck” on the meter.

Of course, we’ve all heard that God is contained in the Bible. I will object and say that I think that God is my living word, if I dare to use my words for better living.

God is a Creator? Sure.

But more importantly, God is creating—even strange essays written by folks like me who might perturb those who pursue more of a divine sensibility.

And there are those who feel they can judge other people and tell you that God is Law.

May I proclaim to you that God is love, and if He isn’t, He’s not of much use to us at this point in our history.

OMG.

Stop talking about it, unless you’re prepared to bring something to Show and Tell.

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The F Word … March 12th, 2019

THE

WORD

I was there, live and in person, when “golly” surrendered, without a shot, to “OMG.” Oh, My God.

Likewise, when “Geez” transformed into “Jesus H. Christ.”

Darn it, after that, “heck” didn’t have a chance. “Damn” and “hell” reigned supreme for quite a season.

Then people stopped referring to the “butt of a joke” and screamed at you to “get off your ass.”

Time passed.

It seemed like “give a shit” would hang around, but the times, they are a’changin’.

Here comes “what the fuck.”

“Fuck” is like an old friend who got lost in the wilderness but came back into the house, was ready to sleep on the sofa and willing to throw in a few bucks for pizza.

It stuck closer than a brother.

It became a noun, an adjective, a verb, an interjection—and I do believe I have even heard it used, from time to time, as an adverb: (“…he said fuckily…”)

This disturbs many people, who yearn for the time when language was carefully watched by censoring forces who desired that anything untoward would not cross the ears of young children, or even mature adults.

We most certainly know that Rhett Butler would never say, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” if he was able to let Scarlett know that he didn’t “give a fuck.”

It is not the profanity of f-u-c-k that makes it particularly nasty. Although overused, it is not the foulness of the word that creates a problem. It’s just that on the journey from “golly” to “fuck” we got angrier.

We’re not using the language to be clever or cute. We’re using the word because we’re more pissed off than we used to be.

We even tease with a friendly “fuck” to remind people that just beneath the surface is a bubbling oil, ready to spill out and burn anyone in sight if they dare cross our path.

It would be absolutely fine if we could “fuck this, fuck that” and “fuck the other” if it was accompanied by a smile instead of gritting teeth.

It may be necessary to back off the language just to give us the chance to regain some civility. Because you can tell me I’m dumb all day long and I may not like it, but if you tell me to go fuck myself, we’re at war.

So let us not be childish.

First, let’s not be Puritans, pretending that language can be controlled and taken back to an 1853 purity.

But also, let’s not be so idiotic as to assume that the rampant use of more and more “fucks” in our society does not mean that we’ve lost control and no longer have the ability to deal rationally with each other, without tempers flaring.

So the F word is “fuck”

This is not because it’s particularly profane, but because it is a precursor to violent behavior.

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Sit Down Comedy … January 18th, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

(3929)

Sometime back, but still in my retainable memory, I was invited to speak at a youth convention.

It started out slow, as those kinds of gigs often do until the audience realizes you are acceptable and hearable. It ended beautifully, with enthusiasm, passion and even a few tears. I was feeling so inspired that I turned to the gathered and said, “God, you guys look great.”

Afterward, I was greeted by the sponsor of the event, who seemed to lack my joy. He shared that he was greatly uplifted by the message I imparted to the students, but found the use of the word “God” in my closing to be a classic case of using the Lord’s name in vain.

OMG.

Move ahead a little while and it is such a common phrase that we have an Internet abbreviation for it.

I ran across the same problem over the years when I appeared in front of pristine-thinking audiences, using the word “crap.” Once again, move ahead, and I’ve even heard “crap” used in prayers: “Lord, save us from all this crap.”

We get nowhere with language by thinking that certain words are perverse, others are acceptable and a chosen few are supreme.

Let me give you an example:

I have a bottom. I don’t call it a bottom very often, because the occasion to use that word doesn’t arise, and I don’t feel the need to ever be that formal. So instead, I may say, “I’m going to sit on my backside.”

That’s about as vanilla as I can get. I refuse to use the word “tush.” Sometimes when I’m trying to motivate myself, I will say, “I got off my butt and finished dinner.” (“Butt” in this case is required to express to the hearer that a process was necessary to change my stationary position to an active one.)

I would never say, “I got off my derriere and finished dinner.”

Moving along, if I were referring to a woman’s attractive backside today, I might call it a “booty,” only to be playful. But I don’t think I would get the same reaction from her or anyone else by saying, “She certainly has an attractive gluteus maximus.”

Words justify us—meaning they make us come across clearly—or they condemn us—causing us to sound foul or overly cautious.

I have to be honest with you—if I were discussing the government of the United States in its present stand-off, I would certainly put forth this sentence: “The government should get off its ass and fix some things.”

I wouldn’t use “bottom” and I wouldn’t use “butt.” In this case, the word “ass” has a double meaning. It refers both to their languishing position as well as their attitudes, which prevent them from being proactive.

Do you see what I mean?

We need to stop this foolish, politically correct mindset regarding the American language. If a word communicates, it communicates.

For instance, I never say, “I’m going to have a bowel movement,” but I might say, “The baby did a poop.”

If I run across something that’s plain bull, I will call it crap.

If someone is being mistreated and bigotry is being fostered, I might spout, “What the shit is going on?”

If you feel that I should say, “What the potty is going on?” I think you’re either being insincere or you should find a time machine and join us here in the twenty-first century.

Stop looking for whether words are perverse, righteous, foul or sacred. Start noticing how they fit into sentences or questions that communicate the depth of our passion.

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PoHymn: A Rustling in the Stagnant … July 26th, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(3380)

 

Lippy

For Christ’s sake, do what you can!

OMG, would you bring a plan?

What the hell is heaven for?

Jesus H. Christ, don’t shut the door!

Ye gads, they’re everywhere!

Guard your nads–a national scare.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph moved into town.

WTF, let’s shut it down.

For heaven’s sake, attack the hell.

Gee whiz, ain’t America swell?

Freakin’ A, I want my way.

Holy Moses with halitosis.

Cuss on the bus if you must.

Few in the pew to ever review.

Crucify is a dirty bird.

Declared sacred, a holy word

It stinks to high heaven

Come on, Mama, roll me a seven

Talk is cheap, lies are deep

Arguing a word is so absurd

Is the Pope Catholic? I wouldn’t know

Give a damn–nice to grow

You can watch your tongue

I will look for need

For when the hymn is sung

The Savior does still bleed

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God Needs a Job … September 6, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1998)

He has an impressive list of abilities and accomplishments.

After all, He created the universe, and even if you only want to give Him credit for portions of that process, it’s still pretty magnificent–if He only came up with the idea of evolution.

I think every child of earth should be appreciative of His ingenious proposal of sexual pleasure leading to procreation.

Sunrises and sunsets would be very difficult to duplicate.

Needless to say, the Fellow (or Lady, depending on your sentiment) is predisposed to creative bursts of energy and rejuvenation. So it’s fascinating to me that we take this well-qualified candidate and limit His job description to “bless” and “damn.”

Truthfully, the only time we ever invoke His name, other than the Facebook “OMG,” is when we’re asking Him to bless something or we get in a fussy mood and require His damnation skills.

How odd.

But I’ve always believed that if you want to understand the nature and future of a society, you should study both it’s prayers and it’s comics.

When the prayers are insipid–lacking mercy, justice and practicality–you can tell that the spiritual systems that exist will not have the energy to lift the burdens they’ve levied upon the people.

When the comics are more preoccupied with silliness, foolishness or just a general spirit of grumpiness instead of leading us to do something rather than damn one another, then you pretty well know there is no common enlightenment of the people in store.

Thus, OUR time. We choose to bless things, and if we don’t feel we can do that, we damn them. So we take the greatest intellect imaginable–and relegate Him to ceremonial acts of bestowing mystical fairy dust on certain projects, only to bring down the thunder of Thor on those who would dare to disagree with us.

To say it is childish would be an insult to children. It is worse than that.

It is short-sighted.

And people who possess that lack of vision always perish by falling off a nearby cliff.

I’d like to give God a job. I am hiring Him, as of today, to do four chores for me:

1. Show me where I’m stupid before everybody sees I’m stupid, which makes me feel really, really stupid.
2. Lead me to one person in this twenty-four hour period who needs help, so I can feel good about myself and he or she can have a meal in their belly.
3. Let me stay current with world events without becoming cynical or escaping into fantasy.
4. Let me notice the natural order already exists and has lasted a long time. The more I learn it, the smarter I appear.

The wage I will pay for this magnificent list of accomplishments?

• My devotion.
• My “thank yous.”
• And my reasonable conviction that You not only exist … but You would love to do something other than bless and damn.

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Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about personal appearances or scheduling an event