Whither Prayer?

Perhaps I have become a bitter, angry, old man. At this stage in my life, seeing the heartbreak and the sadness and the loneliness and the unfairness in this world - I have come to one conclusion: perhaps there is no point in prayer.

I hear people saying all the time, "I'll pray for you," or "I'll pray for that," or "We should pray for this." It seems as if people are praying all the time. You have people praying to legalize abortion and you have people praying to make it illegal. You have people praying for gay marriage rights and you have people who want God to deny gays the right to get married. There are those who would ask God to put Sarah Palin in the White House and there are those who beg God NOT to do that very thing. And to what end, I have to ask? How often do prayers get answered? Some would tell me that we cannot know God's plan and it is up to Him whether or not He will answer our prayers. In matters such as these, I have to ask: why bother?

I do not believe God listens to my prayers any more or any less than anyone else's. For that matter, I don't believe that God listens to prayers at all. Some days, I'm not sure there is a God (especially when I watch the daily news on tv).

Which leads me to my point - how can there be a loving, caring, nurturing creator in this existence when there is so much evil and suffering in this world? How can there be war, and tsunamis, and terrorists, and earthquakes, and mudslides, and famine, and AIDS, and swine flu, and nuclear bombs, and Glenn Beck if there really is a God out there who cares about us?

Televangelists like Pat Robertson would have you believe that God is punishing the wicked when he sends these maladies to Earth. "God is punishing the Haitians for making a deal with the Devil," he said. Really? Did God send an earthquake to Robert Johnson or Mick Jagger - two people who are widely believed to have made their own deals with the horned one? 'Ol Mick looks pretty good for retirement age, and it appears he has lots of cash and women, and has for nearly 45 years...so ummmm, God? What are you waiting for? Smite him, already!! And why did you wait so long to punish the Haitians? After all, their supposed "deal with the Devil" to end the oppressive yoke of French rule took place in 1825 - ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. Not a single one of the quarter-million dead and buried in the recent Haitian earthquake were alive at that time. So, God? What do you have up your ass about these particular people, huh? What did these people in particular do to incur your wrath? Well, according to the Bible, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." (Exodus20:5) Any god that would make such a statement is worse than jealous, although that would be bad enough. He is cruel and unjust as well. Is that why it took you so long to get around to punishing them? Just for the record - I don't condone slavery and never had anything to do with it, OK? I never slaughtered a native American, either. So when you're dreaming up your next two-hundred-years-too-late punishment, you can just "Passover" my house, OK?

I'm a little off track here, but it brings me around to my point. If God created these calamities, then why are you praying to God to end them? Where do you get off telling God what to do? However, if you don't accept the lunatic rantings of crazy Christo-fascist octogenarians like Robertson, and like me, you don't believe that God is directly punishing people and that they are just unfortunate victims of Mother Nature, then what is God going to do for them now? Can he suddenly make the Earth spin backwards and "undo" the Haitian earthquake? (Superman could, by the way.) Is God going to miraculously lift the rubble off of the hundreds and thousands of innocent school children buried beneath tons of concrete and dust? What is it exactly, that you expect God to do?

"God, we pray for the victims of the tragedy in Haiti," someone somewhere has surely said by now. Again, what exactly are they praying for? I just don't get it.

If they are praying for God to send help to Haiti, and God has the power to make that happen, wouldn't God have the power to stop the earthquake in the first place? Are they praying for God to end the suffering? If God has that power, then doesn't it stand to reason that God had the power to not START the suffering? IF GOD HAS THE POWER TO HEAL, DOES HE THEN NOT HAVE THE POWER TO DO NO HARM?? If you accept that God has this power, then you must accept the fact that God has control of our fate - as we were told many times in Sunday school. And if that's true, then you ultimately have to give credence to the words of cretins like Robertson. And I can't abide that.

Don't get me wrong. I am firmly a believer in the creator. Lower-case "c". I don't believe in the bearded old white grandpa-dude sitting on a throne of gold up in sky-heaven surrounded by harp-wielding cherubs. That's juvenile. Neither do I believe in the angry, vengeful dude who rains blood, toads, lightning bolts, tornadoes, Ann Coulter, and locusts down on people. I don't believe in a God who creates earthquakes, I don't believe in a God who punishes gay people by giving them AIDS, I don't believe in a God who hates commies, socialists, liberals, blacks, jews, women, yankees, foreigners, or you. To be honest, I don't think God cares. At all. Period.

At moments like this, I am reminded of The Riddle of Epicuris:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

I truly believe that prayer serves no function. If you believe in God, don't waste your breath on servile ramblings, they only displease the Lord Stop your wailing, take off your sack cloth, wipe the ashes from your face and get off your knees and do something. Why don't you go raise some money for a relief fund? Why don't you help a child to read? Why don't you go volunteer in a soup kitchen? Write a check to a homeless shelter? Visit with the sick, the elderly and the lonely? The best way to serve your mythical, vengeful, jealous cloud savior is to get off your knees and help someone down here.

Instead of praying about it.

Get It Right the First Time

I am absolutely, completely, totally and wholly fed-up with people who can't do what they are supposed to do. (Do I sound like I'm 80 years old?). First Comcast got the ball rolling. I called them in mid-December to sign up for the "Triple Play" package where you get cable tv, high-speed internet, and digital telephone service for one price. I was trying to save a little money by dumping Verizon (with whom I have not been happy) and consolidate some costs. So, I called my friendly Comcast customer service rep and placed the order. I was told that a technician would arrive at my house between 8am and 10am on Monday the following week. Sure enough, that is exactly what happened! The technician arrived at exactly 8am! How about that!

Since we already had Comcast cable and internet, all the tech had to do was install my digital phone modem and swap one of our cable boxes. At the time, we had an extra digital video recorder (dvr) that we wanted to swap for a standard cable box, once again, to save a little cash. The tech asked me to retrieve the dvr for him, which I did, and when I asked for the standard box in replacement, he said bluntly, "That's not on the order." I assured him that I was clear with the csr and I ordered a replacement - or else we wouldn't be able to watch tv without a box. Doesn't that make sense to you? I thought so.

The tech informed me that he was unaware that we would be swapping a box, so he didn't have one on his truck. Would he go get one for me, I asked? "No," he said, "but you can go downtown to the office and pick one up." Well...OK, I guess that's not the end of the world. I'm on Christmas vacation, I didn't have much else to do with my time. Finally, I asked about the phone and he said, "Oh, right." He went back to the truck and returned with two small, white cardboard boxes. He thrust them into my hands and said, "You know how to do this, don't you?" I assured him I had no idea what he was talking about and he demonstrated that the phone modem was nearly identical to the high-speed internet modem - "should be a snap for you," he said. "I'm late for my next appointment and gotta run. If you have any questions, call our 1-800 tech support line, they can walk you through it." And with that, he left.

There I was, standing in the middle of my living room still holding these two boxes, feeling highly resentful that I just got the brush-off from a 23-year-old kid who was late for his 9am appointment. Knowing that I would be paying these clowns $100 a month to satisfy my need for communication and entertainment wasn't making me feel any better about the situation.

Later that afternoon, I figured I would head downtown to retrieve my standard cable box. I should have been prepared for the crowd assembled at the office due to the fact that this was the week after Christmas and there were lots and lots of new wide-screen tv's acquired in the last week. Nevertheless, I had nothing to do and I was in a really good mood since I was on vacation. I stood in line patiently for 45 minutes while the folks in front of me worked out their own particular issues with the customer service reps, of which there were exactly two to service all of these customers. Two late-middle-aged women who looked like they wanted to run away screaming. And why wouldn't they? Most of the people in the office that day were rude, annoyed, ignorant, and quite frankly, ugly. And I mean that in a visual sense. Why were all of these people so damned ugly and what did that say that I was standing amongst them? Do field technicians only help pretty people? Were all of the good-looking people skiing in Vermont that week? I dunno. Weird, though.

As I approached the counter, I tried my best to smile and be pleasant to the obviously over-worked and harried csr behind the counter. I said, "I have an easy request. I just need a standard cable box. That's it and I'll be on my way!"

You know where this is going, don't you? I mean, you know there's no way in hell I left that office with a cable box, don't you?

You would be right. The csr asked for my name and account information. After a few obligatory click-click-clicks on her keyboard, a screwed up look on her face, and a pencil tap or two on the counter for good measure, she informed me that I had an open work order and that my account was "frozen" for 48 hours. Since the technician had been to my house, he never "closed" the work order, or was unable to close it, or wouldn't close it...I'm not sure which. However, she was adamant that I could NOT have a box that day due to the open status of my work order. When I gave her my open-mouthed "You-have-got-to-be-kidding-me" face, she turned to her cohort and asked if they couldn't do anything.

The other woman working next to my customer service rep had the officious look of a state employee working overtime at the Registry of Motor Vehicles - the kind of person who looks like someone placed a small malodorous turd right under their nose. She said something that approximately resembled this: "Ya werkorda ain't pratfall redmeat dogface through the banana patch." Huh? I asked her to repeat herself, as I didn't catch what she was trying to say. Through gritted, annoyed teeth, she turned her head away from her customer and slowly rotated her seat so that she was facing directly at me and growled, "Ya waka ainna digbotch inna beefore yo lollimop toiletbucket."

Oh, ok - I'll remember that for future reference.

The original csr who was helping me shrugged her shoulders and said, "Sorry, we can't do anything for 48 hours until your work order clears." At that point, I lost it. I started yelling about how I was paying over $100 a month for this?!? To get treated like a piece of dirt? I turned to the 25 or so people lined up behind me and said to all of them, "I'm sorry folks, it's been a very bad day and I've had it with these arrogant, idiotic nitwits and their little freak show. I'm pissed off and at my wit's end. If my wife and kids didn't watch the tv, I'd yank it right out of the fucking wall - and you should too!"

And with that, I stomped out of the office.

After a very nasty call to the Comcast main office, I got my cable box hand-delivered the next day. My phone still wasn't installed, but that's an even longer story and one for another day.

Recently, I took my van to the dealership to have a few small adjustments made to the headlamps and fog lamps. After working on my van for a while, the mechanic came into the waiting area and asked, "Are you the owner of the green van?" I informed him I was and he continued, "You know your Anti-Lock Breaks had a warning light on your dash right? Well," he said nonchalantly, "the reason the light was on was due to an unplugged wire. I plugged it back in for you."

That may seem like good news to you, but I almost blew my top. Why? Because I sometimes have my van serviced at a garage located near my house and the owner of that garage told me that he would have to pull the entire wheel bearing assembly to get at this particular wire. Total estimated cost? $350. Three-hundred and fifty smackaroonies. For fixing a warning light on the dashboard. You can understand why I've been driving around with that light on for over a year now. But now - NOW some new guy tells me that all it needed was to be "plugged in"?? I was beyond livid. I wanted to drive straight over to my other mechanic and strangle him with my bare hands. Except he also plows my driveway when it snows. So...I changed my mind and decided to pick up a prescription that I had at CVS.

When I got to CVS, I was told that the bill for my prescription was $150. Normally, I pay about $35, so this was quite a change. Apparently this was because insurance wouldn't cover it any longer. I said, "It has been covered in the past, and I have a prescription for 8 refills, what's going on?" only to be told that I had to call the insurance company and work it out with them, CVS doesn’t know anything. So I called and was told that I could only have 3 refills at a local pharmacy and had to go through "Medco" mail-order prescriptions for the rest. Thanks for telling me. So, Medco faxed my doctor to ask for permission to refill my prescription and after a week, they emailed me and said the doctor never responded to them, so sorry, no pills for me. I called the doctor's office and was told in a very stern and agitated voice that indeed they faxed back the prescription the same day they got the request from Medco. I called Medco back and they claimed they never got it, so…I had to call the doctor back and ask them to resend it. With a huge amount of irritation in his voice, the guy on the phone (not the doctor) agreed to re-fax it. After a few days, when I heard nothing from Medco, I called Medco back and they said too much time had passed since the original request and they had to re-issue a new request because they can only be open for like 3 days or something. Medco resent the request and the doctor faxed Medco ONE MORE TIME.

I finally got a confirmation email today that they will mail my prescription to me "sometime NEXT WEEK." Jesus, I'm glad it's not heart medication.

Now I'm dealing with AT&T regarding a cell phone battery on a relatively new phone that won't hold its charge. I have made 3 calls so far and each person keeps sending me back to the other one who then sends me back to the first one. This is a warranty repair, but you can't just walk into the AT&T store to exchange them, you have to do it through the mail, but they won't just send a new battery, they have to send an entirely new phone, where they send you a new phone and then you send your old one back to them. The problem is one AT&T person tells me I have to have the phone with me when I call, and then when I called from home, another AT&T person said the warranty office closes at noon. NOON?!?!? WTF is with THAT?? So, anyway, I spoke to someone for about 45 minutes last night and gave her all the info and she said "Call the warranty repair office back tomorrow before noon and they can just see all my notes and you should be all set." So I called the warranty office this morning and was told that they were open 'til MIDNIGHT last night, not noon, and that the idiot yesterday doesn't understand the difference between am and pm and I could have resolved all of this last night. However, today's warranty person said that she can't just read the notes, she needs me to have the phone in my hands for some reason, so she couldn't help me, but told me to call back when I get home (like I did last night).

Aaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhh! Can't ANYONE do ANYTHING right??

I swear to God, movies and tv shows about this kind of stuff used to be funny because it was the exception. Now it seems to be the rule.