Cosmetica seeks a new venue-the NFL

    Talk about gratuitous advertising.

    Football is Big Business in the US. It is the number one viewed/televised sport in the entire country. Men who have never played football in their lives have a favorite team (and these days, imaginary teams, called ‘fantasy football’) and spend thousands of dollars showing their tribal loyalty.

     

Look at this picture, clipped from today’s newspaper coupon flyer. The word ‘harridan’ comes to mind.

    When I first saw this ad, I didn’t read the wording. All I could think was, oh, this must be a plug for a new Disney/Pixar movie. This woman is the villain. She certainly looks villainous. It was only after about a minute that I realized that it was a picture in conjunction with clip coupons. It is an advertisement for makeup.

    They even had to make it super simple to understand. There’s a phrase in it that says:

Find all 32 NFL team looks at covergirl dot com (no, I refuse to put in the link. I am not going to give them free advertising on my blog.). I have no idea what ‘team looks’ means. I won’t go there. But the point being, the  cosmetic company is SERIOUS. It claims to be an “Official Beauty Sponsor of the NFL.”

    Official? Well, there’s a tiny logo for the NFL. I can only imagine the snickers and laughter from the Commissioners of the NFL when they were approached by this cosmetic company to ‘sponsor’ their business. "Sugar," I can hear them saying, "football players don't wear makeup." Sugar said, "But their women do." Money is money, and that is what drives football.

   

     It took me a while to figure out why this specific ad pissed me off. One sees ads all the time for cosmetics. Why does this one make me angry?

    The idea in this specific case is that women need to spend a ton of money marking up their faces and having their fingernails painted to reflect their support for “their” favorite team.

    Hence this ad. I’ve never understood why advertisers like to have their models photographed with their mouths wide open, as in this case. I suppose they think it indicates excitement. But we can tell faked emotions, either in real life or in ads,from real ones in an instant. 

    We humans are adept at reading facial expressions. We do it unconsciously. We do it instinctively. Body language, (including facial expressions) is subtle but doesn’t lie. We are expert at reading expressions and discerning true intent. We are so good at it that an entire meme base…that of ‘emoticons’ or ‘emojis’, is used everywhere on the net. We even read them sideways. ;-) We are so good at it at such an early age that Mr. Yuk is used for toddlers who can't read.

What is Mr. Yuk saying? That this substance you are thinking of ingesting is poisonous. I didn't have to tell you that. You already knew it, despite the possibility that you've never seen it before. 

   The capacity of understanding facial expressions is such an integral part of what makes us human that people who cannot read facial expressions, for instance, people with autism, are considered mentally disabled.

   Emojis are symbols that distill an emotion into print and still tell us everything we want to know when they’re used in context with text. In fact, that’s the point!

(and raises in my mind the question as to whether autistics can understand emojis.)

    I don’t believe that the cosmetic companies understand women as thoroughly as they think they do. Women put on makeup for other women, not men. It’s not a sexual thing.

It’s a competition thing. It’s an ego thing.

Let’s be honest.

Women wear makeup to hide behind.

Yes, we do. We’re self-conscious. We have a less than gracious opinion of their appearance. No matter how good we look (and some women take it to horrifying and sometimes deadly extremes in the way of anorexia), we don’t believe we look good. We lack self-confidence. (although in my personal case, I don’t wear any makeup and haven’t for years. This is my face and I’m comfortable in it.). My mother-always a dead on judge of character- once said, every fat woman has perfect makeup or hair.

She was right. I might be fat, the obese woman says to herself, but my face is perfect.

   I know women who will put off going to the hospital because they’re having a stroke until after they’ve ‘put on their face’.

   

     The cosmetic industry preys on us. Cosmetica peddles face paint as a ‘self improvement’ sort of thing. It's marketing strategy is to target our insecurities:  is my skin flawed, am I too fat, are my boobs too small, is my hair frizzy. God, look at my nose, the bags under my eyes, my lips are too full or not full enough, is that a zit? It goes after us with as much mercy as a spider shows to a snared fly.

   Cosmetica has no ethics. It goes after little girls, now. You can find ‘starter’ sets-cheap paint pots designed to appeal to little girls, to get them into the habit of buying cosmetics. Every kid wants to feel ‘big’. The demographic they aim for is six year olds. Cosmetica grooms little girls like a pedophile. 

    It is all based on hope and a suspension of belief. You NEVER see a homely women in a cosmetic ad. Never. The unspoken promise is: if you use our product you will look like this girl.

    Look at the girl in the ad.  Under the hideous makeup job is a lovely woman. She’s, oh, I’d guess, 19 years old. She has perfect teeth, perfect hair, flawless skin. The average woman will never, ever look this good…but they try. They desperately want to be thought of as better looking than they think they are.  Never mind the fact that every ad containing a human is photoshopped in one way or another. Even this girl doesn’t look this good in real life.  (google photoshop disasters and you’ll see what I mean.). This girl has a job solely due to her appearance. She might be able to do quantum physics, but that’s not what they hired her for. I can tell her right now: save your paychecks, because one of these days you won’t be getting it from Cosmetica. Nope, you’ll be done in, oh, five years. Promise.  I hope you have a skill.

It takes courage to face the world with the face one was born with.

   The woman in this ad is  Cosmetica’s way doing  exactly the opposite of what makeup is used for. She’s drawing attention to herself. Women don’t do this. Not in this way. If we want to grab a man’s attention, the makeup may be part of it (especially the lips) but we know that it’s our breasts that men look at. The cops can tell you that if a woman commits a crime in public, if her cleavage is exposed, male witnesses will not be able to identify her by her face.

But in the vast majority of cultures, tits aren’t exposed for inspection. We cover them. Hence, the "need" for makeup.

   Men don’t really care about makeup. Well, most men don’t. Some men I know think that a woman who spends tons of money on makeup is self centered and conceited.  

    Let’s add to this fact that any woman that does this to herself is not doing it to show support for ‘her’ team. No, she’s doing it to satisfy her boyfriend. It’s a way for her to show, see honey, I DO understand your passion for your tribe

team. I’m with you. I support you. Let’s get married.

      It’s the one time when she’s wearing makeup for her male.

    But it wouldn’t surprise me if Cosmetica doesn’t try,  yet again, to convince men that they should wear makeup, too. Some men do. All actors are made up, but some wear it all the time, whether or not they’re on camera. Take a look at the actor Tom Cruise on the few occasions he’s been photographed without makeup. He’s homely as hell. He has freckles everywhere. Not that freckles are a bad thing, but the Tom Cruise you see on the screen or in pictures is as phony as the woman in this ad.

    The cosmetics industry is HUGE. I wouldn’t be surprised if the various companies (and no, since I don’t wear it, I have no idea the names of all but a few) make TRILLIONS of dollars on peddling cosmetics to women.  But there’s that huge pool of males that lurk just outside their lucrative franchises. They can smell it. They believe that men just need a little nudge, a bit of convincing that if real men like football players aren’t afraid to wear lipstick and mascara, you can, too.  

     It’s not as if men don’t paint their faces. They do. But only in one specific case, only in one specific venue. That being, when they’re at the game to watch their team.

    You’ve seen them. They’re in the stands, faces painted in their team’s colors. Some dress up in costumes: i.e. you’ll see face painted Vikings fans in sub freezing weather, bare bellied (BIG bare bellies) with a fur vest and a horned hat upon his head, or grown men wearing fake slices of cheese on their heads.

    This seems to be a peculiarly American thing. I lived in Europe for many years, where “football” (called soccer in the US) is, if you can imagine, even bigger than American football. I remember seeing people filling the streets, singing the war songs of their team (in this case, I was living in Germany when that country hosted the World Cup). They waved flags but I don’t recall seeing anyone with their faces painted.

    On the other hand, seldom do American football fans riot in the streets should their team lose (or win!). That, I’m told, is not an uncommon occurrence in England. To me, that is merely a bunch of vandals using the game (whether they win or lose, they riot) as an excuse to destroy, burn and assault.

     But none of them..NONE of the players of football, wear makeup. (the black stripes below their eyes are not considered makeup..they’re to reduce glare and the field is the only place you’ll see guys wearing it.) None of their male fans wear their team colors on their face when they’re at work, or eating dinner.

    Men wearing team colors on their faces is not ‘wearing makeup’. That’s something Cosmetica wants to change. They test the waters of male opinion surreptitiously, and often. I remember seeing an article from some fashion bimbo who insisted that now that being gay is okay, straight men shouldn’t be afraid of wearing ‘just a touch of lipstick’.

   They aren’t paying attention to history. Or demographics. Men don’t read fashion magazines. They don’t watch women’s shows on TV. You can hardly get them into a movie if they hear it’s a ‘chick flick”.

   Remember when Rogaine came out? A drug proven to grow hair, it had been the holy grail of the cosmetic industry for years. An entire industry had focused on various ways of replacing men’s hair: toupees, (named thus because “wig” was just too feminine for men to tolerate) hair plugs and hair weaving, potions rubbed on the bald spots…there was all sorts of chicanery devoted to replacing men’s hair. It was all blown away by Rogaine.

   Rogaine was incorporated into an obscenely expensive men’s shampoo. Cosmetica  KNEW they were going to make billions of dollars on the shampoo, they just KNEW it.

   But they didn’t understand men. Most men don’t give a damn about going bald. Only a relatively few men wear toupees. They are universally thought of as silly and self centered. Bald happens, and men think, if women don’t like it, tough shit.Even more important, most women don't care, either.

    In the last decade or so, many men have flaunted bald heads: basketball players, actors, etc. It looks good on them. I don’t know why this is, but black men, in particular, just look sexy as hell when they’re bald as eggs.

    Of course, there was a certain percentage of men who DID give a shit about going bald, and bought the shampoo. But the problem was that one, not enough men bought it to make the makers of Rogaine as rich as they’d hoped, and two, it’s the sort of drug that one needs to use every day in order for the hair to stay. A third complication is that one must be very careful where the shampoo goes, as it will grow hair anywhere it’s placed, not just on one’s bald head. One heard stories of guys whose sloppy use of Rogaine  gave them hairy ears that  made them look like a tufted penguin. Somehow penguins don’t give the impression of masculinity, virility, physical prowess, strength, or courage. Penguins look like waddling butlers.

The effects of misapplication of Rogaine

    So the makers of Rogaine turned to the dependable sucker of the industry: women. "Women will buy anything if they think it makes them look pretty."  Now you can see ads for Rogaine for Women.

    Again, the trouble is, most women don’t go egg head bald unless they’re undergoing cancer therapy. Our hair thins, but we don’t go bald bald. So we don’t use Rogaine, either.

    Cosmetica took a bath on Rogaine. Which may be contributing to a deep secret that Cosmetica would like to ignore: that fewer women are buying makeup. The bottom line is declining, the CEO is seeing his billion dollar 'compensation' package sliding down into the  millions category. Part of this is due to  the economy. The rich are getting richer and don’t have a problem spending hundreds of dollars on makeup. But the average woman is happier now with who she is. The average woman, now, also has no job. When you can barely afford to keep a roof over your family’s head and food on the table, that fancy shade of lipstick is going to be considered an expensive-and unneeded luxury.

    That is what pisses me off about this specific ad. It’s not enough that millions of women around the planet spend millions of dollars (won, yen, euros,  etc) for the vain pleasure of wearing makeup. Humans have been making up for thousands of years.

  What pisses me off is it isn’t enough for Cosmetica to have income equivalent to a small nations' entire GNP. They take in mountains of money but it's still not enough. They’re already selling to little girls, using culture to train them as early as possible to NEED cosmetics. Their products are too expensive, and, in some cases, too dangerous (just recently it was learned that lipstick contains lead and cadmium, both  toxic chemicals/substances). But it’s not enough for them. That money must be kept rolling in. New marketing venues must be exploited, and if it takes making a woman look like a witch, so be it.That is what this whole ad is about. Making more money for Cosmetica.

   Enough, I say. Leave the children alone. Leave the football fans alone. Cosmetica, you have enough money. Leave it.

Armie Hammer isn't your grandma's Illya Kuryakin

“The Man from U.N.C.L.E” Movie.

In a word: PERFECT.

    I had high hopes but no real expectation that it would be good. I was fully prepared to be disappointed. I almost didn’t go to see it.  

    I should have known, having recently been hooked on “Sherlock”. I didn’t learn that Guy Ritchie is the producer of both until AFTER watching the 2015 U.N.C.L.E. movie.

   Ritchie’s work is intricate and complex. You’d better watch closely, because, especially in “Sherlock”, there are clues littered throughout the show. Often he’ll reveal a clue to you before he does to his protagonists. This heightens the suspense. Tightly knit, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” doesn’t stumble, doesn’t skip a beat. You can see Ritchie’s master touch in both “Sherlock” and “U.N.C.L.E”. Once again, Ritchie is pitch perfect in UNCLE.

   There are more twists and turns in “U.N.C.L.E.” than in a den of snakes.  It’s fast, with just the perfect blend of danger and violence (I mean, come on. This is an action film, after all) that is suited to the occasion without being gratuitous.  Considering the incredible amount of gunfire in today’s movies, this one hasn’t much. It’s used when necessary, which is as it should be.

    There’s a refreshing lack of ‘gadgets’. UNCLE, (I’m purposefully omitting the periods.) after all, is set in 60’s era,  Cold War Italy, the seething heart of the Mafia, underground Nazis, the Soviet Union and the United States already playing a game of nuclear chicken, the KGB, the CIA and of course, MI. Thus, instead of gee whiz technology, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin must rely on their wits-and on each other-to pull the entire operation off.

    I remember hearing a few years ago that Tom Cruise had been considered for the role of Napoleon Solo. Oh my god, what a horrible mistake that would have been. Any role that Tom “Dinosaur” Cruise plays becomes The Movie with Tom Cruise playing ____________. Cruise is predictable no matter what role he plays, and he is seldom if ever believable. He’s as type cast as John Wayne was.

Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo

    With one exception, Ritchie cast everyone perfectly. Henry Cavill is a great Napoleon Solo. Although it's hard to beat Robert Vaughn's perfect portrayal.

The New Napoleon Solo

Robert Vaughn OWNED the role of Napoleon Solo. One even begin to forget that he didn't really exist. Vaughn had just the right touch of savoire faire, a lot of danger (to women's virginity) and with just a bit of tongue in cheek to take the fear off. Cavill brings it off with the right touch of seriousness. He's more believable. He's a bit too pretty, though.

  

 David McCallum’s (original) Illya Kuryakin was a sleeper, a puzzle. McCallum played Illya as an emotionless, private man, with secrets buried deep inside. He was a pre-Spock Spock, ironic considering the two shows (Star Trek) were televised at the same at the same time for a season.

   McCallum’s Kuryakin was a genius at some things but hopelessly, bumblingly inadequate at social interactions (meaning, women). That was probably intentional. Vaughn’s Solo was intended to be the womanizer, the Sean Connery look alike, the star of the show. After all, it was “The Man”, not “The Men”. In the first several episodes, Vaughn’s Solo was truly solo. Illya Kuryakin wasn’t intended to be a regular character. He was a walk on. The original producer even said to ‘get rid of that K guy.” Well, they got rid of the wrong K. Thank god, because The Man from Uncle would have never been more than a one season show in the dark without Kuryakin.

    The original producers should have seen that two Men were necessary. Often, it was Solo coming to Kuryakin’s rescue. He was so often the foil, the target of the bad guys.

   What catapulted Kuryakin from one shot on the show to the co-star?

David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin

   Hormones. Specifically, women’s. The reaction of the American female audience when they first laid eyes on this alien, this RUSSIAN was nothing short of an explosion.  At that time, the general opinion was that Russians were as dangerous as wounded grizzly bears, but far less reasonable. 

   When the moody, silent, oddly accented (strange how so many Scotsmen end up playing Russians) handsome young man showed up as an UNCLE agent, women went bananas.  

   Having grown up with the original televised series, I can tell you that Illya Kuryakin should have been Secretary of State. If woman had been in charge of the governments of both countries, glasnost would have happened twenty five years ahead of Gorbachev’s dismantling the Communist regime. McCallum’s Kuryakin melted the glacier of Soviet Union-United States stalemate, at least in the hearts of millions of hormonal women and girls. I remember being swept off my feet by David McCallum’s portrayal. Women wanted to mother him. Girls like me wanted to be held by him. We wanted to reach past the cold exterior and comfort the wounded man inside. We knew we could make him love us, and if he did, he would protect us from any bad guy that even thought of menacing us. But you had to work hard to get past those walls.

     The hardest question I’d heard at that time was: if only one of the two Men from Uncle could rescue you, which one would you prefer? I could never answer it.  Solo was a good man, but there was always that air of predator about him. You were never sure if he was rescuing the girl in danger not only out of sense of duty, but also that he might like to try that sweet young thing's performance in the sack. Which only adds luster to Vaughns' acting ability. Robert Vaughn was a good Napoleon Solo, but McCallum blew him away in the believability race.

   In the new version, Henry Cavill plays the perfect Solo. He beds at least two women and perhaps three? one of them being the villainess of the movie. But thank god, it’s not a skin show. No T & A and only one scene where a woman is topless, and walking away from the camera. Nevertheless, sexuality is implied and innuendo’ed throughout the film. Tasteful, titillating, and, well, expected of Solo.

   But Kuryakin?

    Armie Hammer’s Kuryakin is NOT your grandmother’s Illya.

The New Illya Kuryakin

    He’s dangerous as hell. He’s BIG (I think I read Hammer is 6”5) and handsome. He’s a (to quote Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes), a ‘high functioning sociopath.” He’s hell on big fast wheels. He’s a smoking volcano, sexually smoldering, capable of killing you without a sound, herculean feats of strength, and a brooding distrust of everyone, including Solo.

   

    The two don’t trust each other. They’re thrown together in an unbelievable collaboration of Cold War Soviet Union and United States, but you know that each has been told, privately, to kill the other.

    The opportunity presents itself. I won’t spoil it for the reader.

    The casting is good, although Hugh Grant as Waverly just doesn’t work. However, neither did Leo G. Carroll, from the original TV show. Carroll had the look of a sleepy basset hound with the same amount of acting talent. The man..not just the character…seemed completely befuddled, speaking his lines with the distracted, surprised expression of  “Oh, is it my turn to speak?” He wasn't acting. He was reciting his lines, depending completely on someone off camera with a cue board, his lines in big letters. I don’t believe he had many.

    The inclusion of a female on the team doesn’t work well, either. I know, these days we have to have diversity. If there’s a sequel, she’ll be in it. This is a departure from the original that I don’t care for. UNCLE was and should be a guy bonding thing. I am politically incorrect for saying this, but that was the 60’s. Women were bubble headed big racked pawns and playtoys of the evil guys and the Men were there to save them.

   ( Although there is one line in the film, given by the girl, that is just hysterical-“Oh, you don’t want to dance. You want to wrestle.”)

    On second thought, the damsel in distress gig got (and gets) old quickly. It annoys me when a female character is so stupid as to need rescuing. When a smart woman sees a velociraptor coming at her, she doesn’t stand around screaming. She runs like hell.

   This girl seems to have some balls, so…let’s include her, but darn it, she needs to be able to handle herself. I want her to be like Kensi on “NCIS:LA”. Danielle Ruah is a stone fox who plays a woman who can kick ass and take names.

     I was ten years old when I saw my first UNCLE television show. I immediately was hooked and have remained hooked for all these years.

    It wasn’t considered real ‘drama’. It was said to be a ‘satire’ of the James Bond movies. It was neither. It was a good show, for its time. The critics sneered at it, which only made it much more popular and watched.

   I went to see the 2015 version with trepidation. I didn’t want certain precious aspects to be trivialized, forgotten, or mocked. I didn’t want ‘camp’, ‘satire’, ‘silly’. I worried needlessly.

   The critics dislike it immensely.

    I’ve learned that any movie the critics dump on is a good one.

    This was no exception.

The 2015 version of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” doesn’t just stay true to the original 60’s version of spy vs spy, government vs government, high stakes international poker.

It’s better. It’s an improvement. And most of all, amazingly, it’s a whole new thing.

It’s TERRIFIC.

Thank you, Guy Ritchie, for getting it right. 

I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The Original Men

 The New Men

Things I learned in Catholic school, revised

     I was baptized into the Catholic church without my authorization. I was just an infant.

     I lived in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school until the 7^th grade.

     I can attest to the fact that there were life lessons I learned from Catholic school that have affected me my entire life.

1.  I learned very early on that the nuns (prison guards) were biased and didn’t give a damn if you knew it. This specific coven was called theOrder of the  Immaculate Heart of Mary. They taught me many skills that probably have made me the survivor I am today.

     I learned very early that one’s treatment by the nuns was based on their specific knowledge of your economic status in the Church. That, and a  snap decision, based on their first look at you, set the course for the rest of your academic life.

    They inventoried and banked the ‘offering’ envelopes that one put in the collection basket every Sunday.  Even children were expected to ‘offer’. One’s name was written on the envelope.  Not only did the nuns track who gave what, children were monitored in how much they donated and how often. One nun went so far as to put my and my classmates names on the chalkboard and every week, listed how much we’d put in the collection plate.

     You were treated accordingly. Thus, Maura F, a tiny mouse of a girl from a family of 12 children (hey. They were good Catholics) routinely was called out and publicly chastised by the nun for not putting anything in the collection basket. Her parents couldn’t afford it, but that made no difference to the nuns. Maura was a ‘dead beat’.

     The Cavanaughs, by contrast, were rich Irish. Colleen was praised for not only being Irish and beautiful, but her family put in money (I cannot remember, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was $20) which, in the late 50’s and early 60’s, was a lot of money. Colleen and her numerous siblings and cousins were treated like kings and queens. Those of us of northern European extraction-Poles, Germans, Italians (who were considered nothing more than oversexed animals), and the Eastern European countries, were treated like the offspring of the miserable, poverty stricken refugees we were.

     Thus I learned that money will get you further ahead than character.

2.  I learned discipline. This made joining the Army so much easier for me. I learned early on to take illogical orders from evil tempered people in odd uniforms.

I learned to line up in alphabetical order and keep my mouth shut. I learned to not question the orders of the frocked women over me, no matter how stupid or unreasonable the order was.

3. I learned hatred. The nuns hated me for what reason I have no idea. I can remember a dozen instances when they demonstrated that, publicly and viciously.  For instance, in the first grade, Sister Ronald Marie shrieked at me..in front of my classmates..that I had ‘poopied’ my pants. Shocked at her accusation, I proclaimed that I had NOT done anything in my pants. This merely infuriated the harridan.  She snatched me up by the collar, dragged me from the classroom into the girl’s “lavvy” (lavatory, or bathroom) and rudely pulled my underpants down…to find that I had told the truth. I had NOT ‘poopied’ my pants. I felt as if I’d been raped. Indeed, I had been, if only emotionally and socially.  

Did she apologize? No. She marched me back into the class room without a word of explanation and from that day forward, I was a pariah. No one wanted to even come near The Girl Who Messed Her Pants.

She didn’t stop at that, though. She put me in the front row, along with some boys who were ‘troublemakers’ in order to “keep an eye on me.”    

    My cousin, Michael, a gentle child, was treated the same, although he was in a different Catholic school. As a second grader, the nun forced him to stand up and pronounced, “Michael, you are the dumbest child in this school.”

4. The nuns taught me fear. I learned early on to cover my tracks, to lay low, to keep myself as far off the nun’s radar as possible. I didn’t ask questions if I didn’t understand something.  It didn’t do much good, the witches obviously gossiped amongst themselves, as I was persecuted by many of them right through the seventh grade. However, I learned to be invisible, to never draw attention to myself, to not expect anything but abuse, no matter how well I did at anything. I learned that the nuns had favorite targets in their classrooms, unfortunate children who served as their outlet for all their fury, their abuse, their frustrations. They found them as surely as a fly finds an open wound on a helpless animal, and acted the same way. I was one of those targets.

5. I learned Spanish. This was perhaps the only good thing I learned in Catholic school. It was, however, completely unintended by the nuns. Knowing how to speak conversational Spanish is perhaps the one and only thing I learned in Catholic school. Everyone in the world speaks one of three languages as their second language: Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, or English.

Learning Spanish, though, was not a choice in Catholic school. The language you were taught was assigned to you as yet another marker of your social class. 

     You were assigned the language based on how much money your family had.  Thus, the upper crust kids, the truly rich ones, learned French. The middle class kids learned German. Us poor shits learned Spanish.

     Now tell me, when was the last time you needed French? The most recently added French term to the world’s technological lexicon is ‘chauffer’. When was the last time you used German?  When you ordered a beer.

     But you read, see, hear and can use Spanish every single day. It’s everywhere. It’s on signs, on packages, on the radio, on cable. I used what I learned, picked up a lot more over the years, just from using it often with the many Spanish speakers I meet every day. I can still make myself understood in Spanish.

6.  I learned that there are other cultures in the world, but only Catholic ones were ‘good’.  

     My advantage, small as it was, was that I was born white and American. We had swarthy complected  kids from countries I’d never heard of: Armenia. Romania. A whole slew of South American countries. We even had one black boy, from Sudan, (I think) who was an ‘exchange student” in high school, far above my level. They paraded him around like a zoo elephant. 

     That stopped cold when he told my class that African priests are allowed to have wives.  (a fact that is STILL kept quiet.)  Martin Luther King was mentioned in our school, however, we didn’t have American blacks in OUR school. Black Americans were Protestant. Or worse, Baptist. They had no money and even if they had, didn’t feel the need to give what little they had to a bunch of white men in dressing gowns. Thus I learned that not all Catholics were named after saints, as I’d been told. Odelia. Rubio. Cornelius, for heaven’s sakes.

7. I learned exclusivity. There were Catholics, and Everybody else. There was also the distinct class lines the nuns drew based on your ethnicity and your economic status. Irish were  preferred, and money was all that mattered.  Being the target of the nuns taught me that authority wielded in the name of god was a cruel, unreasoning and brutal process. I learned that if one was of the favored class,  one could get away with all sorts of crimes. For instance, Ann Riley…a rich Irish girl…repeatedly bullied and tormented me. She would pinch me, pull my hair (she sat behind me in class), poke me with sharp pencils and lie about me.

      I complained to the nun. My parents were contacted and told that I was being a nuisance in class. I was accused of lying about the bullying. For that I was grounded by my father. The torment went on the entire year and again, traumatized me for a very long time. Ann Riley, if I ever meet you again, you'd better start running.

8. I learned hypocrisy. In fact hypocrisy was endemic and institutional throughout the Catholic Church. My father was a ‘devout Catholic’ in that we went to Mass every Sunday no matter what. Yet he treated me and my sister as if we were the devil’s spawn. I was taught by the Catholic church that if you were holy enough, devout enough, prayed enough, Jesus would answer your prayers.

It never happened. Not once. Not once. I guess that a little girl just ain’t good enough, no matter what she did. Infants, if they died before baptism, were punished by ending up in 'limbo'. You could be the most monstrous person on earth, and if you took the vows to become a priest or a nun on your deathbed, you went to heaven.

9. I was taught self hatred. Girls were on the same level as a dog or a cow. We were NOTHING but breeders. It was our duty to produce many, many Catholic children. Having a life was out of the question. Girls’ career choices consisted of only three fields:  Nun, Mother, Teacher. Boys, on the other hand, were the image of God. They were recruited hard to join the seminary and the priest hood. Which meant that they were taught that girls were temptations. Females were the cause of all the world’s ills.

10. I was brain washed. I learned NOTHING of American history that wasn’t about the Catholic missionaries to North America. I learned about Cortes bravely conquering the savages of Aztec Mexico. (using guns, germs, steel and horses).

I learned NOTHING about the Aztec’s accomplishments: their astronomy, their math, their agricultural wizardry.  Next time you eat tomatoes or corn, thank an Aztec.

     I was never told of the genocidal French missionaries who provided small pox contaminated blankets to the Indians, thus freeing up land from Minnesota to New Orleans. I wasn’t told about Christopher Columbus’s enslaving the natives of Hispaniola, most of them dying from either disease or outright genocide.

I learned nothing of the history of the United States beyond the Industrial revolution. Nothing at all about the real Revolution, the Civil War, etc. I learned all about the Holy Roman Empire. I knew how to pronounce Hohenzollern and why that mattered. I learned that the British were evil because they'd thrown the yoke of Catholicism aside.  I learned only the Catholic half of the Crusades. I heard about the brave Children's Crusade but nothing about the fact that the Catholic organizers sold all those kids into slavery before they ever reached the desert.  Joan of Arc was a hero but was still inexplicably burned at the stake-by Catholics.  I learned nothing about the Inquisition. Cultures that had changed the world: the Arabs, the Chinese, the Persians-were not even named.I had never heard the word "Islam" "Mohammed" or "Buddha".

     I had no idea who the crafters of the Constitution were. I had no idea what the Constitution WAS. But I did learn about the Magna Carta. I’d heard of Benjamin Franklin and knew he was the guy who flew a kite in a lightning storm. But he and his co-signers were strangers to me. But I could tell you who the Pope was, I could name half a dozen saints, I knew the names of several missionaries. And, of course, I knew who John F. Kennedy was. His picture was on the right hand side of Jesus’s on every wall in the school.

11. I learned that nuns can’t teach anything but religion. I cannot do math to save my soul, because in third grade I was forced into ‘the new math’. Before that social experiment I did well in math. I was learning multiplication and fractions. Then, in the middle of the year, we got new math books that had Venn diagrams and “sets”. No explanations were forthcoming. I was part of a social experiment that failed. Miserably. I learned a phobia of math that clings to me…and has always hampered me, for all my life.

12. I learned that looking busy was more important than actually being so. The nuns loaded our plate with homework. I suppose they believed that doing homework would magically instill the understanding of math that they failed to accomplish in class. Bullshit in, bullshit out. I learned to cheat. I found the answers to half the problems in the back of the math book. Cunningly, the nuns assigned only the questions that weren’t solved in the back of the book, but I learned that often the only difference in two adjacent problems was the numbers. And I could do simple arithmetic. Thus, I was guaranteed of achieving a passing grade on my homework. Yet, when I was called up to the board to do a problem I would invariably get it wrong. Did the nun actually think,this kid is failing math? Or even-gasp-try to HELP?  Never. It would have meant extra work, for them.  Sister Amaris, in 6^th grade, publicly called me a ‘moron’ because I admitted that I had no idea how to ‘reduce a fraction to lowest terms.” Of course I didn’t. I’d been in ‘new math’ for three years when they dumped it. I’d been doing sets and subsets and suddenly was faced with algebra. I didn’t have a clue.

13. I learned to tune them out. I hated school. I learned nothing because I wasn’t interested in what they were spouting.  I was always the fidgeter, wanting to be outside, be outside, no matter the weather. Thus I learned to make it through the long days, the years, inside my head. I daydreamed the entire time I was in Catholic school. I learned to keep one ear open in certain classes, such as math, so that when I was called on (always in alphabetical order, as we were seated that way) I would count down to the question I would be called on to answer,  had the time to do the problem as best I could and answer promptly. Going up to the board was misery, but again…not getting the right answer and being told to go sit down taught me that no one really gave a damn about me or my learning. 

14.  I learned that the justice system in Catholic school was capricious, vicarious, and life endangering. I was sometimes punished by having to 'go to Jug". Why it was called Jug I have no idea, but jug was being kept after school as punishment for something you did during the day. One reported to the nun nazi in charge of jug, gave her the ticket saying who you were, and one was then assigned busy work as punishment instead of remedial ANYTHING.

      I remember one occasion when the nun put the number 10,000 on the board and said, " write down this number on your piece of paper, subtract 100 from it until you reach zero." Here I am, a child, having to some stupid math shit in order to learn something about changing my behavior, the bad of which had never been explained to me. I hated math anyway and subtraction is difficult in the minds of a scared child. Why was I scared? Well, first, I Was In Trouble. Second...I had to walk a little over a mile to and from school. In a northern winter, it gets dark at 4 pm. It snows.It rains. And now I am being kept after school-with no idea if my parents had been notified that I wouldn't be coming home on time-and it's getting dark. There were several times that I finally was released (even the Jug nazi got tired of waiting on math phobes like me to finish the nonsense) at 6 PM. And I, a unhappy, hungry little girl, walking a mile home. In the dark. In the middle of a big city. Facing the unhappy fate of trying to explain to my parents why I was late. For which I would probably be punished yet again.

15. I learned that the nuns didn’t give a shit about their students accomplishments.        The nuns job (which they obviously hated, but I suppose they had to have SOME sort of useful occupation. A convent in the middle of a city isn’t conducive to cheese making or being shepherds.) was to teach. I don't know if they were actually required to have any training in teaching. Their days were stupefyingly boring. Talk all day, pass out tests, collect homework, pass the kid. If I were so stupid as to ask a question, they didn’t have the answer if it wasn't in an approved Catholic book. (look up 'nihil obstat').  In 7^th grade, we learned about atoms. I asked what the particles of an atom (proton,neutron, electron) were made of. They had no answer. Despite the mental shackles they’d put me in, I was highly intelligent and a smart kid. I read. A lot. I knew even then that something had to make an atomic particle what it was. It just didn’t EXIST. Something made them what they were. I know about quarks, about sub atomic particles…but THEY didn’t.  

16. I learned that being a parrot was the way to get through it all. Garbage in, garbage out. Even as early as second grade I knew it was all bullshit. All of it. Every bit of it was merely propaganda. Once that worked out to my advantage. In fifth grade, my nun was Sister Edward Marie (interesting how all the nuns wanted to be called by men’s names). I have no idea what she taught, all I remember is that she was my teacher in the mornings. But it must have been something politically charged, because at the dinner table, my parents literally went berserk when I repeated what Sister EM had taught us. I learned later it was ‘Communism’. It was the one and only time my father actually involved himself in my school life. Apparently he went to the school THAT NIGHT and talked with someone about the ‘communist’ Sister Edward Marie.

     She was missing for quite some time. I’m betting she was shipped off to another convent just to keep her big trap shut.  

17. I learned that escape was easily had in books. That probably saved me in so many ways. I learned a shitload from books. I would read the encyclopedia. (except anything in I, J, and K, as that volume was missing from the school library). I learned there was a huge world outside the brick walls of the Catholic Penitentiary for Children. That the world had other peoples, other languages, other cultures, other histories. That there was far more to the world than Catholicism.

18. I became atheist at a young enough age to withstand the relentless and daily inculcation of religion. My second grade teacher was Sister Thomas More. (Thomas More was made a saint after his deserved beheading. The Vatican has a habit of canonizing monstrous men who had not a shred of mercy, compassion or morals.) Sister TM  asked me why I was crying. I said my father had told me my cat had died (yeah, in the gas chamber at the animal shelter where he’d dumped it). I asked her, would my cat be waiting for me in Heaven? That hideous woman, that cold and heartless woman, unwittingly destroyed the entire artificial construct of Catholicism that had been so assiduously implanted in my mind by saying these words:  “Of course not. Animals don’t go to heaven, they have no souls.”

    In retrospect, I should thank her.

    Seldom in life does one experience such an epiphany. At that moment, I understood what religion is-that being, utter bullshit. Religion is merely a weapon humans use on other humans as a means of controlling them. It is the way people control other people. Make the people you want to subjugate afraid. Make them worry that you have this Big Brother, you have the phone number of an invisible guy with unbelievable power, No one has seen him but his works are everywhere; war, exploitation, pain, rape, demonization, suffering, torment, torture, genocide, subjugation, racism: you name all the ills of our species and religion is somewhere behind it. A god is invoked to punish YOU at the behest of and for the betterment of your enemies.

That guy is HIS or HER friend, not yours, and you will suffer if you do not submit. 

The quote is: "No man does evil so cheerfully as when he does it in the name of religion."

     Unlikely as it may seem, Sister Thomas More’s words broke the carefully installed and ideological ice jam in my mind. It all became clear to me, but in a child’s way of thinking. Animals were my only friends. I loved animals and if heaven couldn’t accept an animal, I had no delusions that it would accept me. I’d already been told I was worthless-by my father, by his church.  In all other ways, the Catholic church had taught me to understand that I had no more rights, no more expectations, than the animals. How could I expect to be allowed into that exalted realm, with ‘all the angels and saints’? From what I’d heard, there wasn’t much to do in heaven anyway, other than sing the glories of god.

    God had never been there for me and had demonstrated repeatedly that he didn’t like me. His hired thugs-nuns, priests, my father-made sure I understood this. Thus I felt, if my cat can’t go, I won’t, either.

    I won’t say that I didn’t still labor under fear of god’s punishment for free thinking. I was, after all, still a naive child trying to make my way in a hostile world, and still in the thrall of my father.  Fear and guilt are two weapons the Catholic church has honed to a razors edge. But by the age of emancipation, when I was “invited to leave home’ by my father, I flushed his poison and that of his religion out of my life. It was the best thing in the world for me. All the lessons I’d learned in the Catholic church stood by me, protected me in a world that had real dangers in it. I distrusted everyone, kept my dreams to myself, expected nothing of anybody. I asked nothing of anyone.I never treated other  people the way I’d been treated by Catholics. Bible thumpers found me an irresistible target but I was able to fend them off with a few arguments from the Catholic church. (which taught me that other religions thought Catholics were barbaric-and were right.)
I never stepped foot in a church again until my parents funeral Masses. It was with great happiness that I refused to take Communion (after all, I didn't want to be hyprocritical, even if only in my own mind.). This infuriated my mother's surviving cousin. I merely smiled at her hissy fit.

    This is not to say that I was permanently damaged. No. The treatment I received at the hands of nuns taught me survival skills. I got through it with my mind and soul intact-and free. My mind opened and flowered. Not only was god not pissed off at my liberation, he treated me as he had always done: ignored me completely. As someone said, when you take every thing from someone you have freed them.

    My life changed in every way for the better. I have been religion free for over 50 years and have never regretted a moment of it.

 I am the happiest, most content pagan in the world.

    This is my philosophy on anything religious: if god exists, he does so only to torment us.   

After posting this, one of my anonymous readers pointed out a very important fact about Catholic schools that I'd neglected to mention. I did so only because I was completely unaware of the fact that many Catholic priests were..and are..pedophiles. 
Being a girl, I wasn't pursued by the priests. Honestly, we seldom saw or were visited by the priests while I was in classes. I recall only once, when Father Untner came to our classroom. Why, I cannot remember, but usually the only time we saw the High Priests was at Mass.
But I do know that many boys (and girls) were raped, sexually abused and exploited by priests. The joke goes, "How do you get a nun pregnant? Dress her up like an altar boy."
Now, however, I know the truth. 
If you want to get me truly worked up, mention pedophilia and grown men sexually abusing children. Rape of any sort but that of children especially infuriates me beyond control. I would shoot a child rapist without any regret whatsoever.

This post is long enough. Suffice to say that the death penalty should apply to pedophiles, and I volunteer to push the button or the trigger, whatever it takes, to put them to death.