Book Club

It was book club night last night.  We met at a quiet little coffee shop where there were several young college types working on laptops.  We tried not to be too loud and disrupting and to act as mature as we look, but it didn't last long.  We dutifully discussed the book and picked a new book and then things kind of fell apart.  One of the ladies told us that she was going to Pampered Chef-like party, but instead of selling kitchen utensils, they sell sex toys.  Some of the ladies said they would be too embarrassed to actually buy anything and one of the ladies said that she went to one of those parties long ago and bought some strawberry-flavored edible body gel, but never used it and forgot about it until she was cleaning one day and found it.  She opened it and it had apparently gone bad.  She said it smelled like Robitussin.  She didn't want to just throw it away (that shit's expensive!) so she thought she could still make some use of it and kept it in case her husband was ever feeling amorous but also had a bit of a cough. Two birds, you know?

Then someone noticed a nearby table of three young women who looked like they were in the midst of a Bible study.  They all had Bibles, anyway.  We know they were Bibles because one of the ladies craned her neck to look and then turned back and whispered, "They aren't dictionaries, I'm pretty sure they are Bibles." because if it's not a Bible study, its probably a dictionary study, right?  Always a master of segue and conversation, I said (quietly), "Speaking of Bible study and sex toys, have any of you ever seen the Baby Jesus Butt Plug?

which the second after I said it I thought might be a show-stopper and would cause the our book-club meeting to be abbreviated, but it wasn't!  I love these ladies!  Unfortunately it did lead to a (quiet) discussion about butt plugs and how they could possibly be sex toys.  We don't see the appeal.  Hear that, kinky men out there?  No matter what your enthusiastic lady-friend says, nobody likes butt plugs.

I learn a lot at book club.

666

You want to hear something weird?  When I opened the "new post" window to write this post which is going to be about the rapture happening on Saturday, I saw that this is my 666th post!  SPOOOOOOOOOKKKKYYYYYY!!!!! 

Anyhoo, if you haven't heard, the rapture is happening on May 21, Saturday; and the end of the world is happening on October 21.  On Saturday all of Jesus's bffs will be stripped naked and sucked up to heaven, and all of the rest of us will remain down here to endure what sounds like a really shitty five months, this according to Harold Camping and Family Radio.  I have been following a blog about this, and yesterday they were advertising t-shirts that say "rapture ready" and they are on sale "for a very limited time."  HA HA HA!  (get it?  the world is ending?  limited time?)  They are charging 18 dollars for them.  Why not just give them away?  Who needs the 18 bucks before Saturday? 

I heard about this story originally on NPR, of all places, and some people really really believe this is going to happen and they have quit jobs, given away all their money etc. etc.  Yikes.  I was thinking that these people are going to feel so stupid on May 22, but then they interviewed one man who said, "If I wake up on May 22, I will be in hell," so no matter what happens, if May 22 dawns beautiful and peaceful and bright, if he doesn't get sucked up to heaven on May 21, he will be living in hell.  Poor guy. 

I'm 99.9999 percent sure that the rapture will not happen on Saturday (or ever), but just in case, I'm going to put my diet on hiatus until Sunday. 

One time when I was the director of an alternative school that was a program of a larger high school, we got a new high school principal who was technically my boss, but I hated him and he hated me.  He hated me because I was a female in her 20s and didn't fawn over him, and I hated him because he was an incompetent douche.  He didn't like the idea of providing an alternative to traditional high school, even though it had proven to be wildly successful, so he tried sabotaging our program.  One of the ways he did this was by giving me a science teacher who was a born-again Christian and was very preachy, didn't believe in science, and whose main theme of his Earth Science class was that the earth was only 6000 years old.  The kids, bless their little hearts, politely challenged him by asking about dinosaur bones, and carbon dating, and he countered by telling them that the fossils were planted by God to fool us and test to see who really had faith. 

THIS WAS MY SCIENCE TEACHER. 

He taught them all about Adam and Eve (not Adam and Steve, thankyouverymuch), coelacanths and how they proved that scientists were sinful idiots and evolution was a joke, and he briefly broached the science of archaeology by having a series of lectures about the remains of Noah's ark on some mountain somewhere.  I couldn't really do much about him except tell the principal (who knew exactly what was going on,) and tell the kids that their science teacher was full of shit, and remind the science teacher of his job and of state curriculum guidelines etc. etc.  The guy wouldn't budge from his preaching because he was a true believer and needed to spread the word.  He really was sincere in his beliefs, and I find myself thinking about him this week.  I wonder what he is doing to get ready for the rapture and I wonder if he would give me his car or his 401k to make the impending 5 months of apocalypse a little easier for me to endure.  I would give him his keys and money back on May 22, but I wouldn't do it without a Nelson-like HA HA!

Poor Jesus

I saw a picture the other day of a statue of Jesus and he was standing next to a cross, sort of resting his hand on it casually and gazing off into the middle distance like he and the cross were watching their kid's soccer game or something.  Is that not just a tad creepy?  Two thousand years after this man was brutally murdered, we honor him and his memory by using the very device used to torture and kill him as his personal symbol. If he's real (another post altogether) and is watching us from heaven, I bet that totally freaks him out. I bet he'd much rather we associated him with the fish (props to all the Jesus-fish people out there, but why only on the cars?). Or how about the wine into water?  That would make a cute necklace charm; Jesus standing between a pitcher of water and bottle of wine saying "TA DA!"  Much more pleasant.  Or I'm sure a jeweler could fashion an image of Jesus walking on water.  (That's just cool.)

When he's looking down at some little Catholic girl getting her first crucifix necklace as a confirmation gift, I bet he looks at it and thinks, "Yeah...I remember that day, that was literally the worst day of my life," and sighs, sad.  The Catholics make him so sad because of the ridiculous detail that they put into every crucifix hanging on millions of living room walls (and guest rooms of the not-quite-as-pious Catholics) complete with the blood from the lance-poke, lest anyone forget that after he died his excruciating death, he was stabbed in the side, just to add insult to injury.

Ouch, thanks for reminding me - Jesus

The Protestants don't make him quite as sad as the Catholics because they don't show him gorily hanging on the cross every chance they get, but boy do they have some huge crosses in front of their churches!  I think we can all agree that an unoccupied cross is an ominous cross (especially for Jesus).  I bet if Jesus was driving around a small town in his hybrid car, he would come around a corner of a progressive church built in the 70's and he wouldn't know it was a church because it doesn't look like a church, and then all of a sudden he would see the enormous red cross in the entrance and get startled and say, "Jesus..." and keep on driving. I bet if it was instead the water/wine image, he might stop in to say hi.  Of course, then he'd see the communion ritual and he'd ask someone what they were all doing and we'd hear him say, (a little too loudly for church) "They're eating WHAT?"

And if that's not bad enough, what about this?

Morning, Jesus!  Hungry?

Hot Cross buns? Sick!  Making the torture device of the savior into a delicious pastry?!  If poor Jesus was executed in the 21st century instead of the first, people 2000 years from now would probably be eating Hot Gas Chamber buns, or Hot Electric Chair buns, or Hot Noose buns (If Jesus lived in Washington or Delaware).  Hot Noose buns would probably be the easiest to make.  Not as easy as Hot Cross buns though.  That's easy for the baker and terrifying for Jesus! Win, win huh, Christians?!  Every Hot Cross bun is a veiled threat from the little blue-haired Lutheran ladies in the church kitchen after Easter services:  "Keep saving our souls, Jesus..... or else."

If the worst day of your life was immortalized in an image, what would it be and wouldn't you get tired of seeing it everywhere?   How about that time you puked on your desk in seventh grade?  That was pretty bad.  How would you like to see billions of people wearing that image around their necks?

Think about it.

My guess is that 600 and some years after Jesus's death, the prophet Mohammed saw the gory crucifixes and ominous crosses everywhere and said, "You know what guys, when I fly this magical winged horse of fire up to heaven;  no pictures.  In fact, no images at all, ever."  (He hated having his picture taken, just like my mom does.)  Then he said, "Hey, step away from the horse.... What do you mean, 'he doesn't have wings,' sure he does.  They're just tucked in right now.  You can't see them when they're tucked in.... Well, he's not on fire RIGHT NOW, he doesn't do that until it's go time, and obviously, it's not go time yet.  Just get away from the horse."

In retrospect, Jesus thinks that whole scene was a good move on Mohammed's part and wishes he did the same thing, if only to save himself 2000 years of the heebie jeebies.

JEESUS!!!

Last night Mitch came to bed several hours after I went to bed. He quietly crawled in, admiring how beautiful his wife is while she sleeps (Mitch, you were), snuggled up behind me to spoon and settled in for some sleep. Just as he was dozing he says he heard the loudest, most disgusting fart in the world, apparently from me although I'm pretty sure people can't fart in their sleep so he probably dreamed it. What strikes me so funny is the dialogue that went along with this experience. Here it is:

(quiet lady-like sleep/dream fart)

Mitch: (jerking awake and almost hitting the ceiling) JESUS!!!!

Me: JESUS! WHAT? WHAT'S WRONG?

Mitch: You just ripped a HUGE one in your sleep! GEEZ!

Me: No I didn't, I think I'd know. You're dreaming, go to sleep. Geez Louise!

Mitch: I did not dream it, and it stinks! Now I'm wide awake! JEEsus!

Me: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

Mitch: ..... Jesus Christ.

Snow art, Texas, the Holy Virgin and vaginas

Kira was outside working very busily on something yesterday and then she came in the house to get the camera and take a picture of her creation which was this:

A giant paw print. You can't really tell in the picture, but it has terrifying claws. I think her plan is to make a bunch of them in the yard and scare any planes that happen to fly over and look down.

I also had to take a picture of this water stain on my stove today before I wiped it up.


Doesn't it look like Texas? I think it looks incredibly like Texas. It looks way more like Texas than any Virgin Mary stains look like the Virgin Mary. Too bad it couldn't be a Virgin Mary stain. If it was I might get a little attention for it, but I doubt anyone will care about my Texas stain.

I looked up Virgin Mary stain on google images and found a bunch. My favorite was this one:



The Virgin on grilled cheese. Or is it Jesus. I can't really tell because IT'S GRILLED CHEESE. I love that the woman is proudly displaying her sandwich in a plastic box surrounded by cotton balls.

When I googled "Virgin Mary Stain" I found quite a few water stains like this one:


And when I look at them I honestly can't see the Virgin Mary. If it looks like anything to me, it looks like a gigantic vagina. So then I googled "gigantic vagina" to see if what people think look like gigantic vaginas also look like the Virgin Mary. First of all let me tell you: DO NOT GOOGLE "GIGANTIC VAGINA." You will be sorry. There are many many artistic representations of vaginas and most of them are gross. This is the nicest one I found:

It could be a flower, it could be a vagina. The only question I have is why is this lady crawling into it? Then I thought, would I go into it? And the answer was, of course I would.

This is the worst one I found. Brace yourself before scrolling down....



It's a vagina bike taxi. Do you think it looks like the Virgin Mary?