No, I do not mean my husband has turned 50, bought a sports car and taken up redheads as a hobby. Nor have I taken to hiring Chippendale Dancers for my own birthday parties, or proclaiming “I’m SO hot!” every five minutes at parties while dressing in things appropriate only to curvy 22 year olds.
No, I am looking at the world news and wondering what century I have fallen into while I dozed in the arms of Morpheus. Suddenly, there are no modern solutions to many of the world’s issues, it seems.
Crime is not to be tackled by eliminating the causes—drug addiction, poverty, and desperation—no, religion is the cure. If we all would just get Biblical enough, we would KNOW better. Really? Redefining it all as sin is the best fix of the 21st century? And, apropos to nothing but more lunacy, did you know that “fresh air” in the sunshine is superior to “shady” fresh air—being more blessed by the Lord? (Yes, I am going to breath deeply in the shade—there must be some unidentified hallucinogen in that sunshine!)
And people are not falling away from Christian churches for ordinary reasons like, oh, I don’t know—not getting spiritual needs or any other needs filled, or fearing clerical abuses like pedophilia; but because neo-paganism is making unhealthy inroads to the Christian life. Catholic newspapers are making the case for exorcisms of pagans, because it is a sort of spiritually affective mental illness. Wow, I had no idea that my own speculative and skeptical examination of Hellenic or Nordic paganism was destroying Western Civilization! I am pagan, hear me roar!! And Protestant sorts are claiming there is a crying need to purge their religious habits of pagan habits and ideals as well. Honestly, this is all you have got? Your former adherents of monotheistic religion are wandering in a dark night of the soul into strange mental districts and it is because paganism is simultaneously a mental illness AND a form of possession? Have any of you religious leaders so proclaiming actually even taken a Psych 101 course?
And if neo-paganism isn’t a big enough boogie-man, there are calls from disparate enough locales as Oklahoma and Scotland to beware of the “gay conspiracy” that is sneaking up from the rear. Yes, that evil horrid ’soap in the shower’ pun was intentional. Good gravy! To Ms. Kerns who is sure Project Headstart is only to provide the gay conspiracy inroads to “indoctrinating” our children early, and to the Archbishop in Scotland who thinks gays want to destroy Christianity, let me assure you—all that has jack to do with homosexuality. We want Project Headstart and often fall into some anti-Christian rhetoric because we are violently ANTI-STUPID. In other words, folks, Catholic Churches are not bleeding members because of a gay conspiracy, but because parents fear pedophile priests and the Church that covers their pedophile asses. And as for Oklahoma’s Kerns and her tirade? Well, Ms. Dippy, I don’t know how to point out to you how wrong your message was other than to say use the word “Jew” everywhere you said “gay” and see what kind of shit hits your fan. Because that is about where you are….hunting for a new scapegoat to hang your political bent upon.
The title refers to history and not to red cars, redhats, or suitably vapid redheads. I apparently slipped on dropped soap in the shower and kept sliding all the way back into the 11th century or so. And not a gay soap-dropper in sight. I took a weekend sabbatical to switch computers—but holy shit, who switched calendars on me? Wasn’t this century supposed to be about flying cars and Buck Rogers? And why can’t I round up a crew of Stupids and tie them to theater seats to deliver a forced course of Star Trek or something? Cause, damn, Sam….superstition is what we pagan sorts get accused of, but some of the crap on the news tells me someone else is holding the patent! Scotty can beam me up anytime; this planet sucks like a Hoover on steroids some times. Or, let’s page the Fifth Dimension….cause, dudes, where in hell did my “Age of Aquarius ” disappear to while I was waiting?
