Friday, August 17, 2001

Good news for slashers everywhere...

angel n. Pillow biter; passive male homosexual

From Roger's Profanisaurus.

Yes, this is a very Mommily day. I had lunch with my son at the School That Fears Harry Potter. (Technically, the School Whose Students Fear Harry Potter. It's not really the teacher's fault.)

Both of my children's teachers wanted to know if another language than English was spoken in the home. I contemplated my husband's and my vocabularies and past fluencies, then said "No, just Yankee." (My husband says the correct answer would have been "Only Latin, backwards.") Daughter's schoolmates think she's Russian. Son's teacher says he reads very fluently, but with an odd accent.

Both of them are missing their "R"s, which is probably what's being talked about. But foreign?!?!?!

In unrelated, but icky, news, Son relayed what they are supposed to do if they ever see an adult without an ID badge in the halls. Very quietly, go into a classroom, crouch down, don't make any noise, and stay still. Because it might be a burglar with a gun.

Can I have a visa to another space-time continuum?

God "R" Us



Batten down the hatches. I'm afraid there's going to be a wee sma' rant.

I live in a culture where you are either for God or against Him. And by "God", I don't mean the Deity that I piecewise worship. I mean the guy who wrote the King James Bible (accept no other translations), wears a golf shirt to church on Wednesday and Sunday, votes Republican, and approves of bumper stickers, lawn signs, dry-cleaning ads, used-car dealerships, and karate classes announcing the superiority of one sect of Christianity to all others.

Because what other God would disapprove of all mention of the supernatural unless it was a direct Biblical reference? What other God would fear children's dressing up and celebrating Hallowe'en? What other God would ratify not only faith, good works, and holiness, but every single detail of a middle-class Southern lifestyle? What other God would damn Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and indeed everybody but the members of Calvary Christian Church to Hell?

My son asked plaintively yesterday, "If they [his classmates] are Christians, why aren't they going to a Christian school?" And I had to explain that Christianity wasn't incompatible with living in the world, and that furthermore many Christians had nothing against Harry Potter.

I don't want him growing up believing in this God. I don't want to live with people who believe in this God. Because they think I'm damned. And I think they're nuts.

Thursday, August 16, 2001

Dear God In Heaven.

My 3rd-grade son was supposed to bring "his favorite book" to school and read a chapter. He brought Harry Potter 4. He wasn't allowed to read it because most of his classmates' parents had forbidden their children to read Harry Potter.

Get me out of the Fundamentalist South. Before I moon somebody with my "Dedicated To Satan" tattoo. Which I will have gotten for the occasion.

Mathoms


Oh, dear, oh dear. Just got back from lunch with husband. On a whim, we decided to hit a local antique/junk store because it's fun. Knowing full well that we had more than enough clutter and more-than-Bill-Gates-needs furniture. And were contemplating a cross-country move to a much smaller house. So we wouldn't buy anything, just look.

I am now the proud (very!) possessor of a 35" x 22" hammered oval brass tray, plus the collapsible wooden base that turns it into an end table. I just needed it. The way I needed the 2' gilt-plaster statuette of a cherub holding up a platter, and the exquisite small Victorian Orientalist oil of a man in a turban, standing in a tiled archway, holding a tiger on a leash. (You really have to see this one. It screams "Nothing exceeds like excess.")

I am going to become one of those little old ladies whose every dwelling inch is covered with Stuff. Actually, I'm one of those now. It's just that most of the Stuff is paper-oriented, and not decorative as such. If I stretch a point, I can claim that the piles of embroidery clutter are sorta-decorative.

When you find me dead in a Turkish corner piled with velvet pillows and antimacassars, don't be surprised. I can only hope that there will be a tasty steel stiletto in my heart, and that the butler will prove to have done it.

Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Aha! Jack Chick explains why ONLY the 1655 KJV is infallible.

If [1 John 5:7] is messed up in the book you call The Bible, then you know you're looking at a translation that came from Satan's mutilated Alexandrian manuscripts. Also beware of Bible footnotes. They often favor the Alexandrian texts.

Sometimes waking from dreams is a disappointment.

Early this morning, I dreamed that I'd been given another turn-of-the-century* artifact. It was a flattened brass medallion that had had a personal message engraved on it; obviously a love-token. It had been cut into two halves and hollowed out so that you could keep secret things in it. I was using it as a pillbox.

I want that box. And it exists (and can exist) only in my mind. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I will lust after embroidery stilettos on Ebay.

* What ARE we going to call the fin-de-siécle now that we've turned another century?

Monday, August 13, 2001

So, my kids and I were doing their bedtime reading, which at the moment is dramatic performances of Buffy scripts. (No, this was NOT my idea. Daughter was in our bedroom, spotted my script book, asked to borrow it, and then asked to perform it a couple of nights later. Is it MY fault that the children of two obsessive nerds are following in the family footsteps? Uh, yes.)

We finished the night's act and started herding children off to bed.

Son (8): "Is Buffy allowed to protect vampires from other vampires?"
Me: "Only if they're Angel."
Daughter(10): "No, only if they're good."
Son: "So she can protect one... and a half vampires?"
Me: "A half?"
Son: "Spike."

Snippets from Saturday's paper

"Lancaster, SC -- Members of a quilting group meeting at a Catholic church were shocked last week when they opened a pizza delivery bag from a local franchise: Inside the bag were pamphlets saying the Roman Catholic Church was controlled by Satan. ... Gay's[the pizza-delivery man] employers have forbidden him from passing out more pamphlets. He says he'll comply but stresses his intentions were good. "I'm a member of God's family, and we're supposed to love one another. Jesus is coming back one day, and I don't want to see nobody go to hell," said Gay, 64. "There was no malicious intent." "

[My comments: The flyer was a Jack Chick special. "Are Roman Catholics Christians?" or possibly The Death Cookie. It links the church to pagan rituals and says Satan created the Catholic Mass. ]

Snippet 2, from an obituary notice:

"She was a member of Shamrock Baptist Church ... but deteriorating health over the last two years prevented her from attending on a regular basis. Her absence was only in presence, as her heart remained extremely active .... "

Snippet 3, from a regular columnist:

"Lynn, the idea in MyCity is to be as much like everybody else as possible. You do not want to stick out. That's why I have a BMW. ... It's like what church you belong to. If you belong to most mainline churches, people aren't going to characterize you as being out of the norm. Those churches are safe. Like driving a Honda. But if you go to Seigle Avenue Presbyterian, or Calvary Church, people are going to make some generalizations about you. Same with a Lexus. (Note to newcomers: You must belong to a church in MyCity, just like you must own a car. There is NO alternative.)"