It’s time to make an official announcement.
After fourteen years of posts, the Caleb Coy Blog is now coming to an end.
It’s been a long journey, with its ups and downs and…welll… I have to say…
Happy April Fool’s!
Category Archives: Uncategorized
To Hell With Your Crusade
In 1096 the first Christian crusade was a mission to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims.
The first thing the crusaders did before leaving home was murder 2,000-5,000 Jews.
After 40 years of that forever war, the crusaders reached Jerusalem. They liberated the city by killing Muslims. And Jews. Literally a city founded by Jews, and the Christians killed them there to erect a “Christian” city. Because the Pope told them to.
And if 40 years sounds like a forever war, guess what. There were three more crusades over the course of 200 years. Many Jews, Christians, and Muslims died, and during none of that time did Jesus come back.
850 years after the first crusade, Germany would exterminate even more Jews, after boldly claiming that they were the third iteration of the great empire that started the crusades. And they couldn’t have done it without recruiting masses of Christians invested in their country’s GDP. And they executed Christians who spoke against them.
Proponents of any “Holy War” from Western Christians against the Middle-East today who believe that violence must be done in order for Jesus to come back—damn your religion to hell. It is not that of Christ. You don’t care about Jews, and you don’t get to pretend that you care about Jews. You welcome the slaughter of anyone, even your own kind, in order to force Christ to come back. People like you are the anti-Christ.
Curse your rhetoric and your trash calls for patriotism and faith, you who pretend to care about Israel, but provoke wars that will slaughter Israelis, as well as Gazans, Iranians, and others. People in far lands are not tools for your dreams of cheaper gas, climbing portfolios, and fast-returning you-shaped saviors.
Oh, and those “Christian” crusaders. Yeah, they also killed fellow Christians. In Europe. Constantly. For political reasons. They attacked Constantinople for political reasons. They no interest in Gospel. Faith was just a tool to accomplish violence for kings.
The meek shall inherit the earth. It’s best go move out of their way while you still have a chance to become them.
It Was Never “The” Ukraine—A Poem
It Was Never The Ukraine
I
The first I’d heard of it was a report
of a missionary we’d funded in 1993
to the Ukraine, one of those
lands between Europe and Russia—
are they still Soviet?
We referred to it as Russia but not quite, Russia
sort of, like ghosts invaded a thicker
land. Pale people, as in the photographs,
like us but not, decades behind, unibrows
and windbreakers and woven attachments
on their blouses—is there a cow that won’t
milk at all? kind of place. We lent a missionary
to the region, the subregion, that
portion, a satellite of some swelling realer place.
II
I saw the missionary on a newspaper in 2005.
Only it was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
taped to a bulletin board with a note:
“Is our missionary a terrorist?”
as a joke, perhaps. The missionary laughed.
He looked like a photograph of Ahmadinejad.
III
I never forgot the missionary’s face resembling
Iran’s president, and now cannot unsee the face
of Ukraine’s president. We sent no man
from the America, he did not look like
the chief executive of the Iran.
But why, after having gone and returned,
did he never tell us not to say the Ukraine?
And I know the heart and the face of the man who
taped the clipping, and can see him shrug
at Putin’s prerogative, at what we call what don’t care to see being.
It was never right, but it was the right. The hatred. The ignorance.
I am tired of every the that there is.
American Primeval Is Far More Accurate Than The Book Of Mormon
Yes, the Mormonites seem to have some misgivings about the portrayal of their religion and its leader in the hit Netflix series, American Primeval. Continue reading
Bad Reasons To Vote For Someone
Your family always votes for this person.
Your family always votes for their opponent’s party, and you want to spite them.
Your spiritual advisor told you and a bunch of other people it was your duty or calling to vote for this person.
A celebrity you really like endorsed this person.
A celebrity you really don’t like endorsed their opponent. Continue reading
An Opportunity To Fund a Twelve-Year Blog
Readers, I want to thank you for reading this blog for over a decade. I started this blog in 2012. Originally it was a blog about being a father, but I realized the platform could be useful, and so I kept at it for twelve years.
I’ve covered topics from religion, to politics, to parenting, to literature, to the different ways to describe Tom Waits’s Voice.
In all this time, the blog, of course, has been free. And I intend it to stay that way.
And while I believe in free resources and I don’t like asking for money, I’d like to give readers an opportunity to support the work of this blog. Writing takes work. And when it comes to doing research, that work can sometimes take hours.
Not to mention that I’ve had work published outside this blog, and believe it or not, some journals don’t pay their contributors. But I try to provide links to them anyway.
So if you have found this blog enjoyable, useful, or even tolerable throughout the years—or maybe you just feel the urge to support another “starving artist” in this world— today you have the opportunity to give a little something to help support that work. At your discretion.
So if you feel so inclined, here are three venue options through which you can support a hard-working writer.
Paypal
@CGuard
Venmo
@Caleb-Guard
Cashapp
$CCGuard
God bless you all. And God bless Robin Hood!
When Jews Say Stop Arming Israel
During the Nixon administration, much ado was made to paint anti-war protests as anti-troop or anti-America. The idea was that dissent itself was anti-America. A pernicious myth was replicated that college hippie protesters were calling soldiers “baby-killers” and spitting on them, despite there being no documented evidence of this, and most evidence pointing to compassion between protesters and soldiers returning home. Scores of noncombatants and veterans shared anger at government leaders for putting us in that mess.
I passed by a peaceful protest in support for the people of Gaza yesterday. I am aware that in some locations a select few protesters hurled some anti-semitic rhetoric (and rocks, apparently) at fellow students, and that is wrong. But to confuse a protest for Palestinian rights with a protest in the name of Hamas is to fail to learn from history. The protest movement happening across campuses currently is not anti-semitic any more than standing up for the rights of Jews in Germany would have been anti-Germanic.
If the protests are anti-Jew, why are Jews joining in? Jews rallied outside Schumer’s home in protest against giving aid to…Israel. It’s about stopping war and carnage. And in this instance, people of various identities, including Jews, are wanting to stop Jewish aggression against Gaza’s. Maybe they know something a lot of Americans don’t. Or don’t want to admit. Maybe these Jews know that the government of Israel has acted against Gaza (which, some of you probably don’t know, is not Hamas).
So while Fox news plays over and over again one clip of one Arab American hurling insults at one Jewish American—(and MSNBC is wasting everyone’s time showing shocking footage of *gasp* Trump’s limo pulling up to the courthouse)—look for when Jews, Arabs, Americans, Ukrainians, Russians, and people the world over are joining hands to call out world leaders. What exactly are all these people anti of? One another? Not when they do this. Not when they call for ceasing the violence brought on by those that failed in leadership.
Horrible leaders are trying to protect themselves. They want people at one another’s throats. It’s how they get votes. From Putin to Netanyahu to Haniyeh to Biden to Trump.
Protest them. Peacefully. You’ll get maligned. Keep going.
“This is the Passover that we take our exodus from Zionism. Not in our name. Let Gaza live.”
It’s Been a Notable Year For Writing
Even more than last year. I’ve been really at it in the satire field. Meanwhile, some fiction, poetry, and non-fiction continues to appear. I appreciate all the reader support during this time.
What Came Out in August? Publications
This month I have a new short story appearing in Mystery Tribune online:
Click here to read “Cherokee Knives”
And this month’s satires:
It’s Me, First Watch: Stop Referring To Me as the Instagrammer’s Cracker Barrel in Greener Pastures
I, Herman Melville, Ask That You Please Stop Teaching My Bloated Whale Encyclopedia to High Schoolers in Jane Austen’s Wastebasket
Album Names For Your Dad’s Bluegrass Cover Band in Weekly Humorist
New Essay Out! And Other Updates
It’s a new month, and summer has been productive. Here’s an update on the writing that’s been coming out from Caleb Coy Industries—a thing that I just made up.
My latest personal essay out in Change Seven. “Neighbors Now” Take a look!
My first publication in a sci-fi journal, 365 Tomorrows. A flash fiction piece called “A Thousand Tiny Steps” Take a look!
A short article, “What Kurt Vonnegut Taught Me About Writing For a Living” in Writing101
And here are some of the recent satires:
“Help Me: I Am Vehicle Illiterate” in MuddyUm
“I, Male Director of This Film, am Excited to Flesh Out This Female Character, Who is On Screen For Three Minutes” in Greener Pastures
“A Sitcom In Which Putin and Trump Share a Prison Cell, Starring Only Actual Things They’ve Said”
in Doctor Funny
“German Words For Complex Emotions You Didn’t Know About” in Slackjaw
“T.S. Eliot Reviews The Little Mermaid” in MuddyUm
“National “Weed Your Garden Day” Is Now National “Weed Garden” Day” in The Haven
“Diaries of a Dying Jellyfish That Has Just Been Discovered By Two Third Grade Boys”
in MuddyUm
“We’ve Run Out Of Ways To Make a Message Self-Destruct” in MuddyUm
“Other Things To Try In a Small Town: A Tourism Guide” in The Haven
CALEB COY 