Recently I have come out of the closet concerning my identity [No, not that closet!]; meaning that I now freely admit to being an extraterrestrial. Never fear, I am peaceful; a mere anthropologist. My pursuit of the combat arts is simply an aspect of my immersive style of field work. If I were a clinician I would have just stayed on my home planet. My specialty is extinction events, and since it is widely theorized that human extinction events [If you don’t believe in human extinction events ask the Tasmanians. Oh, I’m sorry, they’re extinct!] are exclusively the direct or indirect result of human activities, it has fallen upon me to study your toxic ideologies. Toward this end I am composing an Endangered Ideology List. As the dog people at Animal Planet have shown no inclination that they will permit this to be aired as a documentary, I intend to publish my notes here.

I am not a theologian. I have read hundreds of religious tracts and related anthropological texts. I am not however, of a ‘believing’ mindset, but rather an investigative one. Religious thinkers among you have stressed to me the importance of believing what one is reading where their sacred texts are concerned. This I am barred by my nature from doing. I have read the Old Testament twice, the Koran twice, the New Testament three times, and the Psalms and Apocrypha a half dozen times. This I am told makes me a neophyte, barley having dipped my mind into the great well of beliefs that comprise the three extant faiths spawned in the tumultuous Near East. Quotes taken by me from various sacred writings and presented here, though they will be analyzed to the best of my ability, will be put under my own multicultural microscope, not necessarily the worldview shared by those who composed these tracts.

I have no more friends than the normal person. The number of acquaintances I have managed to cultivate over my life is also, I think, normal. What makes me different is the polar differences, and great variety of minds I have contact with. For instance, I am involved with three streams of facebook friends, who do not cross over. Indeed, I do not relish the idea of my various hedonistic, new age and conservative friends mixing it up. It would be too painful for all concerned. I have close friends who are woman haters, and believe females should be nothing more than property. I also have close friends who are feminists. I do not wish for the two to meet in the forum of ideas.

My studies make it useful to have a variety of friends holding diverse opinions. Therefore special friends of a unique and even contradictory nature are most desirable. For instance, I have a friend who is a black, Republican, feminist, NASCAR fan who listens to classical, country and heavy metal music, and watches sappy romances on the Hallmark Channel. Unfortunately most of my friends are rather one-dimensional. So, If you know of an Inuit investment banker who worked her way through college as an auto-magazine cover model, please introduce us.

It is by way of concern for my diverse friends that I post this heads up. Charles, my webmaster, has asked that I not name the religious work that these quotes come from, as he does not want to be firebombed. I will honor that request. Now, to my new-age feminist friends and conservative Republican ones; I say this to you, by way of quoting an eminent practitioner of the faith that I am quoting from, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’

As different as you are, you might want to make common cause where the believers of the following lines are concerned:

‘their abode shall be fire; and wretched shall be the mansion of the evil doers’

‘…man of riches…We will brand him on the nostrils.’

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

‘…And against the mischief of weird women…’

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

‘LET THE hands of ABU LAHAB perish, and let himself perish!

His wealth and his gains shall avail him not.

Burned shall he be at the fiery flame,

And his wife laden with firewood,—

On her neck a rope of palm fiber.’

Obviously Abu Lahab was someone who made money with money, pretty much a sin anywhere in the middle-ages when this wonderful verse was composed. The preceding lines were excerpted for context, just to show that resentment of the rich and suspicion of women are not exclusively the province of modern American liberals and conservatives. Curiously enough, according to the Middle Eastern medieval mindset exemplified above, those two sentiments are not mutually incompatible.

Okay, you rich guys always knew that the world was out to make you pay for your good fortune, and you weird women know who you are. I just thought that the poor misguided feminist that might decide to cohabitate with you in your nice big house might want to know about her guilt by association. I bet that palm fiber rope was really irritating to the soft female neck. But I guess it is all relative, particularly when you are being used as fuel to roast your rich husband alive.

Look out New Age-Conservative-Feminist-Republicans. There cannot be many of you, and I doubt you can take a very big demographic hit before you make it onto the Extinct Ideology List.