Effort Is for Suckers: A Slacker’s Guide to Salvation

Hey it’s me Mark!

Effort or allowance? To get to where we want, do we need to push or sit back and allow ourselves to be pulled? This question, this mindset, can be a powerful way to open up new vistas for us creatively and spiritually.

Follow Your Curiosity

It can be tempting for artists to claim that their work comes from within them. We’re humans. We’re proud. If something wonderful and beautiful comes out of you, who wouldn’t consider nonchalantly passing it off as their own?

But, what I’m asking you to do is resist this urge.

5 Ways You’re Unknowingly Destroying Your Ungendered Spouse and Killing Your Marriage

Hey it’s me Mark!

Like most people, I have some liberal friends and some conservative friends. Sometimes, when an article goes around the internet, I get to see both sides’ reaction to things. It’s fun but sometimes a little confusing. Like with this recent article about how wives destroy their husbands. I thought it was a little silly, but definitely not offensive. But some of my friends found it really offensive. The term they used was “misogynistic.”

I still think some of the points make sense though. So here are the points mentioned without gender so nobody can feel personally hurt by the implication that they aren’t good.

1. Living Outside of What You Can Afford

A wise old person was sitting on a bench at the bus stop. As I walked by, they shouted, “Don’t be a jerk and spend so much money that it puts stress on your marriage!” I quickly walked away, but their words stayed with me.

Show how much you appreciate your ungendered spouse by not spending all the family’s money on lavish items you might want like new spoons, really comfortable chairs, dice, oregano, a car stereo, or ornamental shutters.

Also, in addition to not spending too much, don’t complain all the time about not having money.

So that is kind of two points: don’t drive your family into debt and don’t complain about not being able to drive your family into debt.

2. Constant Negativity

This touches on what we just talked about. You hate the Dallas Cowboys, the smell of black licorice, grammar errors, frogs, A Tribe Called Quest, furniture that squeaks, and the Horse-Head nebula. Whenever you talk to your ungendered spouse, you only talk about the things you hate.

Well guess what your ungendered spouse is going to end up hating? You.

Don’t be a terrible negative drain on the whole world. Also, don’t be one on your ungendered spouse. Basically (and I feel like I’m explaining this to a child), don’t be a terrible person. Got it?

3. Putting Everything Else First

I actually thought this point from the other article was a pretty good one. In fact, if the whole article had just been this one point, I would have been happy.

Put your ungendered spouse ahead of everything else.

Don’t put everything else (or even anything else [except God {whew, covered my bases}]) ahead of your ungendered spouse.

4. Withholding Physical Affection

When you’re married, you should have sex with your ungendered spouse. They like it. You might not be in the mood, but guess what? It’s not all about you. Marriage is about serving your ungendered spouse.

Sometimes, you might be in the mood, but you’re ungendered spouse isn’t. In those cases, you might choose to serve them by putting their needs ahead of your own and decide not to have sex. Because, sex is amazing, but it’s also a tool we have for showing our ungendered spouses how much we love them and if they aren’t in the mood, or if they’re tired, or if they have two severe compound leg fractures and just want to go to the hospital, you should let them off the hook for sex and just play a board game instead.

Other times, neither of you are in the mood. During these times you MUST have sex. Otherwise, everyone will doubt the solidity of your marriage. Prove those people wrong and go at it.

And at even other times, maybe you should just talk to your ungendered spouse about your feelings and stuff. Tell them what you want, how you’re feeling, whether you’d like to have sex or not, and all that kind of thing. Then, after you two talk it over a bit, you can figure out whether to sex it on up or not.

But here’s the nice thing: sometimes you are in the mood at the same time that your ungendered spouse is! Pretty cool stuff.

5. Not Speaking Their Language

Your ungendered spouse is a different person than you. Other people are different. So you need to remember that when you try to communicate with them. Pretty much this whole article could be replaced by the words “try to communicate clearly with your ungendered spouse.” That’s what we should try to do. Just talk to the people we are married to and explain how we feel. Then we should listen to them explain how they feel. In the end, the goal to understand how the other person feels. After that, you should be kind to them.

Have we reached a point where people need basic concepts of relationships explained to them? Weird.

Image: Unsplash

Now this here’s a story…

Hey it’s me Mark!

So the Gospel at mass this last Sunday was from the beginning of Mark’s gospel:

Hey, it’s me the gospel writer Mark!

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

People think the Bible is boring. They think it’s this old dead book. Dry. Stodgy. But it’s not! I mean, read this passage! Mark is basically a screenwriter!