Howdy, foax

I guess I'm the new guy around here. I've got to say that it's an honor to be among some of the funniest bloggers on the internets.

Anyway, now that I'm done sucking up, I'd like to tell you a true story about crazy people.

For several years, I lived in the hive of scum and villainy known as Berkeley, California. I had a good excuse, though. I was going to school there. Well, actually, I was drinking and doing recreational drugs there, and occasionally attending classes, but you get the idea.

Now, there's an area of campus there at the University known as Sproul Plaza. You've probably seen it in old footage of protests from the sixties. Heck, they still have protests there, Berkeley being Berkeley. But most of the time, it's just a place where you can sit and people-watch, which is what I was doing with some friends one warm Spring day.

Sproul Plaza also attracts its fair share of nutters who like to wander around yelling about this or that cause or preaching about various questionable religious ideas. We happened to be watching a sort of argument between two of the regular preachers, an old black guy in an Oakland A's cap known as Eddie and a crazy white-haired guy known as Y'shua. Now, I don't know if that was really his name, but that's what everyone called him, since he was convinced that Jesus's real name was Y'shua and that Jesus was a perversion of Zeus, or some such nutty thing.

Eddie, who was a nice, not too crazy guy, didn't think this was true, and he argued the case for Jesus being, well, just plain Jesus. Y'shua disagreed, saying that people who didn't pray to Y'shua (not him, but the one who lived and died some 2,000 years ago) were sinners and would have all sorts of problems in life and would eventually go to hell.

Well, Eddie said something like, "I've been calling on Jesus for sixty years, and I've lead a blessed spiritual life," and smiled beatifically.

Y'shua wasn't impressed. He said, "Oh, sure he's called on Jesus all his life, but you know what his problem is? He can't stop masturbating." Then, he turned and looked directly at my friends and me, and said, in a low, accusatory voice, "Just like you."

We were all stunned, but one of my friends had the presence of mind to reply, "Hey, I only masturbate socially. I can quit any time!" That broke the tension, and we all had a good laugh. I don't remember what we did after that, but it probably involved beer and/or marijuana.

That's probably why I don't remember.