The origin of the story, The Frog and the Scorpion, might go back to the ancient Sanskrit traditions collected in the Panchatantra, but I first heard the tale while watching a bootleg copy of the 1955 Orson Welles film, Mr. Arkadin forty years ago.

A frog and a scorpion meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” And the scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will drown too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out. Half way across, the frog felt a terrible pain - the scorpion had stung him.

“Why did you sting me?” gasps the frog. “Now we’ll both die”

“I know,” replied the scorpion, “but I cannot help myself - it is my nature.”

A scorpion’s job, other than to make baby scorpions, is to sting, kill, and eat its prey. If there had been another frog down by the stream bank it might have asked the well intentioned, trusting frog, “What part of sting, kill, and eat didn’t you understand?” But it was just the two of them … the frog and the scorpion down by the stream. And the frog agreed with the scorpion’s irrefutable logic. Why would it cause its own demise? Believing the words of a scorpion, but ignoring the nature of a scorpion, they set off to their mutual doom.

Just to set the record straight … I am not a tolerant person. If you believe, follow, and make decisions based upon any of the big deal world religions … I think there’s something wrong with you. I think you’re suffering a low-grade psychotic break with reality. So right off the bat I find it pretty hard to get along with 59% of the world's population. But then again 80% of the countries in the world are capitalist nations. I have a problem with them too as they are equally delusional and arguably more dangerous. And if you’re a religious capitalist … you’re the beast of both worlds.

A friend of mine told me years ago that religion is for people who lack spirituality. I’d add that religion is for people who lack imagination. They need other people to make up stuff for them. “Stuff” of course being the euphemism for what bulls regularly manufacture steaming piles of.

Now we’ve got that out of the way … In honor of the Passover/Easter Season, and since I’m not Redeemed by the Blood of the Walking Undead, I decided to sit back in my comfy chair in front of our Big-Ass-HDTV and watch eight hours of Judeo-Christian Gibberish.