Wednesday, May 6, 2009

God, Pepperoni Nipples and Tara Reid

God either doesn’t exist or is a big jerk! There… I got it off my chest. Speaking of getting things off one’s chest, I finally saw the Tara Reid video where she accidentally flashed her cans to the media at a red carpet event. Aside from being hilarious, my first reaction as a doctor was, “Damn, who did her boob job? That guy fucked up!”
It’s sorta a regular tit except the nipple is off center and looks like a piece of desiccated pepperoni that a terrier chewed up. I know women aren’t fond of boob jokes, especially if it challenges the symmetry, but this a fact: Tara Reid’s left nipple DOES resemble a piece of digested pepperoni.

And I feel bad for her. She obviously has $$ and a top Beverley Hills MD. Bad things happen to good people. I know it’s a stretch of common sense and imagination to assume that Tara Reid fits the description of a “good person”. Shit, I know at least 30 people I call friends who I’d take a punch for but still KNOW that they’re not really “good”.

I’ve seen soooo many patients come in with belly pain or a headache. And the ones who are pricks end up having migraines. But the nice people…. The really cool, interesting people… they get brain cancer. I haven’t formally analyzed the data, but I’ve seen 1000’s of patients and there’s a direct relationship b/w kindness and poor prognosis.

It’s like inverse karma. This leads me to Theodicy. It’s a branch of philosophy that deals w/ the problem of evil. Why would a benevolent God allow rape, murder of innocents and torture to continue? Theists maintain that there’s a bigger picture. Remember that U2 song “Mysterious Ways”? It’s like that only about Jesus, not some drunk chick dancing at a bar.

There wasn’t a class on this at my undergrad but I read all the leading books on the subject b/c it fascinated me. As an atheist, I can chalk this all up to the yellow smiley face t-shirt: Shit happens.

If you believe in a traditional God you’ve some ‘splaining to do, Lucy. If you own a goldfish and (s)he gets caught in the filter, you take it out and let it free. You wouldn’t want it to suffer unduly b/c you give a shit. That’s normal. But if an omnipotent God sees a woman walking to her car and some psycho w/ a carving knife rapes her, Jesus just sits back and watches?

Fuck free will. Help her out, man. That’s NOT cool. Even if there is some bigger plan, humans aren’t embodied w/ the intellect to understand it while we’re alive so we still suffer. Here’s a corollary metaphor. When you were a kid, probably 7y/o, you went to the pediatrician to get vaccinated and it sucked. But the MD and parents DID know better. They knew that the temporary pain was worth it vs. getting polio or mumps.

The problem is that no one can explain to the kid of that raped woman exactly what part of his “Daddy” (the serial rapist) defiling his Mom was part of God’s plan. B/c I don’t see any good part about rape. I actually think it’s about the worse thing one human can do to another. Still it happens every day. And Jesus watches w/ hands folded, when he could clearly intervene.

Maybe this is a challenge of sorts, right? Even if that’s the case, it’s a helluva challenge. And if a wiser, smarter friend of mine ever wanted to watch me grow as a person or experience enlightenment by being raped; I would kick him right in the nuts. Same goes for Tara Reid and her pepperoni nipple. Same goes for God. He either doesn’t exist or is a big jerk.