And the winner of the Best Religion Award goes to...

So we've been hearing all week about the American Gitmo guards who may or may not have flushed the Koran down the toilet as a means to break their Muslim prisoners. The latest is that the incident didn't occur, but the ICRC does attest to other abuses of the Muslim holy book. In response, violent anti-U.S. protests -- some resulting in multiple deaths -- have taken place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, even India. The Pentagon and the White House are blaming Newsweek for stirring up anti-American sentiment around the world. Nice try, guys. Foreign nationals in American military-run prisons have been beaten to death, physically tortured, sexually humiliated, and denied access to legal representation, without indictment or trial, for a few years now. The Bush administration has been wiping its ass with the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners of war. None of this is a secret, and Newsweek is not to blame for any of that. But that's not my point. My point is the overwrought reaction to the news. Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in several Islamic countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Excuse me, DEATH? Newsflash, radical Islamists: it's a BOOK. Relax, okay?

And I'm not restricting this diatrabe to Islam. Ousted Georgia Chief Justice Roy Moore's ten commandments monument went on a national tour recently after he was ordered to remove it from his Supreme Court building. Masses of people lined up all over America to caress the granite slab, weep, and express indignation that their holy monument cannot legally be displayed in a government building. Hello, idiotic Christians? It's a ROCK. And you're wrong, this country wasn't founded on Christianity, it was founded on the grand principle of separation of Church and State so that citizens could practice any religion they like, or no religion if they prefer. The reason "the pilgrims" sailed to Massachusetts in the first place was to escape the dictatorial Church of England. And now you seem to think it's a good idea to impose your Christian monuments, books, and teachings on the rest of us. Back off, okay?

You know who gets my vote for Least Offensive Religion? The Buddhists. In March 2001 the Taliban blew up a bunch of Buddha statues in Afghanistan because Mullah Mohammad Omar deemed "false idols" an offense to Islam. These weren't ordinary graven images, though. A couple of them were the tallest Buddha images in the world, carved out of the living rock of cliffs in Bamiyan province almost 2,000 years ago. These sculptures were a page of world history and a part of our human cultural heritage. Thailand, Japan, India, France, Germany, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, the US, the UN, and and a host of other countries all appealed to the Taliban to no avail. As the demolition was taking place, however, I heard a Buddhist monk being interviewed on NPR. He joked that Gautama Buddha must be laughing in heaven right now -- all this fuss over a pile of rock!

It would do all religious fanatics well to examine his mature perspective. Everything is transient: monuments, books, statues, yes -- even American flags. To desecrate a physical object is not to desecrate the idea behind it. If you think it is, then perhaps you should ask yourself why you invest so much importance in a strip of cloth, or a printed page, or a carved rock. Because that's all they are. They are no more holy than any other object in this world, and certainly much less important than real human compassion and understanding.

And I'm sure that both Jesus and Mohammed would agree with Buddha on this point.

Redux: Travel, Old & New

My DNA kit has been received and its batch has been created. Which I think means that they've catalogued it in Houston but haven't yet mailed it to the University of Arizona for testing and analysis. AND I just found out that I'll be going to Paris and Rome in November with my family! *grinning from ear to ear*

***Searching through all the old shit stored in the overcrowded attic of my hotmail account, I sometimes come across noteworthy emails from my past, like the Saga of the Octopenis. I've decided to throw some of them up here because...well, because they make me feel nostalgic and they make me laugh; which is why I suppose I saved them in the first place. When I do this I preface the blog with the word "redux", and post the original date. ***

What follows is a letter that I sent out to friends and family on Tuesday, June 11, 2002 -- almost three years ago -- right before I moved to London to work on the 007 film. Sorry for the confusion, Tanya!

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POST COITUM OMNE ANIMAL TRISTIS EST

In other words, after an intense and eagerly anticipated moment, we often feel that we have missed something greater that remains just beyond our grasp. After spending a month exploring Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Kyoto, Kamakura, Tokyo, and Phuket, these past seven days in Los Angeles haven't seemed real in comparison. I feel like my senses are dulled. I feel as if I've awoken from a rapidly fading perfect dream; like I came within a stone's throw of enlightenment and then turned around and walked away.

Milan Kundera spoke of the body as a ship and the soul as its crew. Most of the time the soul stays below decks because the vicissitudes of life can be likened to a rough storm. But every once in a while, on a rare clear day, the crew charges up and streams over the decks, shouting and singing in jubilation, and waving at the sky. I feel like my crew has been above decks for the past month.

My perspective has been stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. I learned that I am as insignificant as a speck. I am a parasite within a parasite on the back of a blue-green moth slowly circling a warm light bulb. I saw a goat kneeling on its front legs, its forehead to the ground, outside of Wat Phra Thong; mangy stray dogs biting the fleas on their backs; elephants flicking bamboo poles with their trunks -- all this I saw on the side of the road. I have seen black dolphins rounding off the waves next to my speed boat as it bobbed in the spinach-emerald waters off Khai Nok Island. I saw naked children playing football and teenage girls in school uniforms playing badminton. I saw beautiful people with no money overflowing with joy and smiles. I saw a corpulent French tourist in a tiny speedo get seasick and regurgitate into the cerulean waters off Koh Phi Phi Le. While I rode on the prow of a boat in the sun, I saw flat-bottomed thunderheads rolling through the firmament off to the north, where the sky came down to meet the sea. I have heard imams calling faithful Muslims to prayer while I threw fortune blocks in a Buddhist Wat. I visited the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, where once-wild apes marred by humans can learn how to brachiate and survive in the forest once more. I have received a Thai massage while standing in front of the urinal in the bathroom of a bar in Phuket Town, wondering if this was normal protocol in Thai drinking establishments. I have seen sunsets worthy of Shakespearean sonnets. I helped four Thai men push a gas-drained car up the middle of a busy Phuket roadway at 11 o'clock at night -- or rather, they helped me. I have eaten durian and jackfruit, mangosteen and som tum; I lived on a diet of prawns, curry, tripe, octopus, raw chicken, squid, shark's fin and chicken feet. I caught a cold but ignored it.

I met people that I hope to remain friends with for the rest of my life. I visited places I hope to return to sometime in the near future. For now, I've posted a few photographs of my travels up on my website. Click to peruse Thailand, Japan, or Hong Kong:





In the last few days I've looked at my life here and seen nothing but a mesh of roots that grow too deep. I want to throw out my bed and sleep on the floor. I want to push my couch out the living room window. Its a good thing I'm moving to London in two days. It seems that there was once a golden lustre that surrounded my life in this city; a clear, pure aura pervading the beaches, bars, and hills. I can't see it anymore. Has it really disappeared or am I just suffering from post-vacation nostalgia? Perhaps the corona has moved on to Asia, along with the breathless crew of the ship of my body.