X Is For...

X is a pretty boring little letter when you're not Feeling It and you're coming off a spate of Migraines and you're sick of Endless Summer Heat and you can't find a decent tomato to save your life.

And, honestly, you feel like a shit for complaining about stuff when there are people in the world who are putting their autistic child on the bus every day, or trying to navigate elder care, or figuring out how to afford an EpiPen now that some heartless shark has boosted the price over eleventy thousand percent.

Heavy sigh.

But, seriously, the X section of my hardbacked dictionary (Webster's New World College, 2nd ed., 1979) is exactly one and one-half pages long. And despite its being preciously ancient, doubtful there are loads and loads of New X-Words in everyday English that it is lacking, unless you count awful and terrible mashed-up words like Xtreme or Xtra, which, of course, I Don't.

So. Let's take a brief stroll through the Standard X-Words that we usually think of:

Xylophone: Worst toy ever. "Oh, but, Nance! It is creative and fosters an interest in music!" non-parents object. All parents, however, are nodding in fervent agreement with me. Toy xylophones are atonal and noisy and children rarely learn to really play a tune on them. Instead, kids bang on them, drag the mallet or a superhero action figure across them, and use them as a noisemaker, primarily, often to bug a sibling. In-laws often use them as a Passive Aggressive Weapon Gift to get revenge.

X-Ray: I don't object to these as strongly as many people. It's the MRI that bothers the hell out of me. X-Ray, as a term, seems so silly in this day and age, however. Can't we get a more definitive, intelligent term other than X-ray, which means absolutely nothing? It sounds like something out of an old SciFi movie. Especially when you understand that the X in X-Ray is there because the scientist who first discovered them did not know what they were, so he termed them X, like the X in algebra denoting unknowns.

Xmas: Whenever I see this term, I instinctively pronounce it Eks-mus. Some people (read: God Warriors) get very calisthenic about it and start ranting about that old chestnut The War On Christmas. I find the whole kerfuffle silly and pointless. One reason is, of course, that the X in Xmas is from the Greek symbol which represents Christ ; another is that lots of megachurches actually close on Christmas Day when it falls on a regular Sunday, a topic I covered over ten years ago. Finally, isn't it a Given that Christmas/Xmas is already a largely Commercial Holiday? It's inescapable. It is a huge economic determiner in the retail sector. It simply isn't up to Kohl's or Amazon or Target or Whatever MegaStore to Keep Christ In Christmas. That's not their job. If you are a Person Of Faith, and that Faith happens to be Christian, then You Keep Christ In Your Christmas. ANALOGY: I LOVE NUTELLA. IT IS, THEREFORE, MY JOB TO KEEP NUTELLA IN MY PANTRY. I DO NOT EXPECT RANDOM STRANGERS TO REMIND ME TO GET NUTELLA OR KEEP IT IN MY HOUSE. I think I've made my point.  (Note to self:  check supply of Nutella.)

Any X's you want to talk about?  (Not EXES, mind you; let's don't, as they say, Go There.)  Chat about Xylophones, X-Rays, Xmas or others in Comments.

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Roadside Religion

http://www.conggiao.info/

Now that Spring is finally dawdling along to Ohio, Rick and I are weekending at the lake, which is in Ashland County, about a forty-five minute drive for us through small towns and farmland. And, apparently, judging by the yard signs we see, Proud Christians.

I am continually fascinated by this sort of Roadside Religion, this blaring Bible-thumping. My mother, St. Patsy, and I had a chat about it once when she accompanied me.

Nance: These God signs are ridiculous. Who puts a bigass sign full of religion in their yard?
St. Patsy: I know.
Nance: It's pretty lazy evangelizing, if you ask me. What if other people, like doctors, did their jobs like that? What if a doctor merely put up a sign in front of his office that said, "Take two aspirin and lie down" and that was it? What if I, as an English teacher, had simply put up a sign in my yard that said, "Apostrophes don't make plurals and go read the classics"? Those God Warriors are just taking the easy way out.
St. Patsy: (laughs; shakes head) Oh, Nance. Just ignore it.

My mother's stock answer for most things that annoyed me throughout my life has always been to Ignore It, from my siblings' torments to the sometimes hurtful retorts from my children to runs in my pantyhose to the random pimples on my chin. But I think it's pretty hard to ignore this:

And here's the other side of it, shot from the road parallel, the only place I could grab a decent photo:

As you can see, this is one bigass, preachy sign, the wording of which still escapes me. Exactly how does one Believe ON something/someone, anyway?  (St. Patsy assures me that this is Old Timey, Bible wording that she recalls from her Pre-Catholic Days.)  This sign is along a residential driveway, bordered by evergreens, and when I drove into said driveway to get the shot, it was peaceful and parklike, even eerily so. The other side's sentiment, stating that only Grace/Faith saves you, not Works, is a very Puritan sentiment. It goes all the way back to Predestination, that confusing doctrine that said your Final Destination (Heaven or Hell) was already decided at your birth, so no matter what you did, it didn't really matter. I still don't know why any Puritan bothered to behave at all. I'd have sinned myself ragged. (Of course, many did but the social and real costs were high.)

Lest you think that sign is the only one, let me present Exhibit B:

And its reverse:

This sign is much more subtle, of course, but is again in a rather nice and tranquil setting (the dead Easter plants notwithstanding). Across the street (where I parked to get out and get the shot) is a junky used car lot, and nearby is a railroad track. It is about two miles away from the bigass sign. And yes, that comma is killing me there.

This enormous and rather scary sign appeared over Easter. The bloody red paint presents a rather interesting and ironic contrast to its message:

Unfortunately, you cannot clearly see the small, also hand-lettered sign next to the bigass one. It reads "Do Not Come To The House." (Something the newspaper delivery person clearly took to heart, as you can tell by the newspaper lying in the grass.) This presents a wonderful paradox for me. JESUS LOVES YOU, but DO NOT COME TO THE HOUSE. Hey, they are into Jesus, but not so much what He was into.

The lakehouse is smack-dab in the middle of a large Amish enclave.  Right at the entrance to the lake community is an Amish farmhouse, and across the road is another one.  Several more are down the street.  They are easy to spot; they have no electric lines running to their homes, and their buggies and horses are often in view.  Once a week, their familiar black and deep blue clothing flutters on clotheslines next to white aprons and caps.

But the one thing you never see is overt signs of their devotion to their God.  They are quietly devout, silently living their Christian ideology. Their farmstands are shuttered on Sundays.

I'm a recovering Catholic; I am not religious, so I don't understand evangelical religions.  One thing I do understand, however, is that I don't like being preached to about pretty much anything, especially passive-aggressively.

A long time ago, someone passed this along about religion--I forget who--but I think it's a great analogy, however crude:  Religion is like a penis. It’s fine to have one, it’s fine to be proud of it, but please don’t whip it out in public and start waving it around...and don’t try to shove it down my throat.

True Religion

When my mother decided to marry my father, she scandalized her entire family of Lutherans by secretly taking classes to convert to Roman Catholicism.  They already didn't care for her choice of husband:  he was older than her by four years, the son of immigrants, lived in Lorain, and had incited some pretty rebellious behavior from St. Patsy.  When her wedding day came, she had already been informed that her father would not be there to escort her down the aisle of a Catholic church.  She walked herself down the aisle.

Every time my mother tells that story, I have a hard time accepting it.  I think of my grandpa, a gentle, taciturn man whose voice I had never in my life heard raised.  He was an avid putterer, slow-moving, hands always busy, constantly mending, repairing, painting, trimming, fabricating doodads to make something work again like new.  He liked to tease gently, wink a lot, and get Grandma's goat.  The idea that he would purposely make anyone unhappy is alien to me.

And for what?  Religion?  My grandmother, who loved God and studied her Bible every single day, would be in attendance for her daughter.  She was devout.  She was the most religious person I knew.  For her, it was all about God's Word.  The interpreter was secondary.  She lived The Word.

My mother sacrificed a great deal to marry my father, and she continued a life of sacrifice in many ways.  As irony would have it, she became a far better Catholic than my father, whose church attendance was spotty at best and disinterested at worst.  All four of us kids were raised Roman Catholic and received the sacraments, although I'm the only one who was married in the Catholic church.

All of which leads us to today's question:

Do you still practice the same religion you grew up with, or a different religion, or none at all?

The short answer is none.  I became disillusioned with Catholicism a long, long time ago.  And I became even more wary of and disillusioned by Organized Religion in general.  And as the Christian churches became more and more of a political force, I got downright disgusted.  The things people do in the name of their god and their dogma make me sick.  It's nothing new, this war because of religion.  It's as old as the Crusades and...never mind.  You don't need a history lesson.

Instead of following a Religion, I follow a four-word rule.  It's pretty much President Lincoln's quote, pictured above, but compressed.  It is Kindness Is My Default.  In every situation, I try to default to Kindness first.  It doesn't cost me anything (like I used to think it did), and it often helps tremendously.  Think what an average day would be like if everyone had this rule.

I do understand the value of Religion to a great many people.  I do understand the Mystery Of Faith.  No one has to prove the existence of his or her God to me.  Religion is a deeply personal possession, a treasured comfort, a joy and satisfaction to its owner's soul.  It is an essential part of his or her identity.  I respect that.

But, by the same token, please respect my right to follow my own essence of Religion, a sort of self-rectitude, a kind of social benevolence by which I try, as Gandhi purportedly said, to be the change I wish to see in the world.

You Can Dress Me Up & Take Me Out, But That Doesn't Mean I'll Be Happy About It (With A Random Emily Dickinson Reference To Class It Up)

A few days ago, one of my students told me that I was turning into a modern-day Emily Dickinson, and I fear that he was right. I have developed such an aversion to The Public that I cannot go Out There without being cataclysmically...affected.

Let's just say that, shall we?

Rick and I went to The Great Big Home & Garden Expo! (formerly known as The Home and Garden Show but so much more of a bigass deal now that it deserves more adjectives and an ampersand), primarily because we had free tickets, but also because we were lured by the prospect of escaping the eleventy inches of snow on the ground and the idea of seeing actual flowers and trees in bloom. Sadly, all of NE Ohio had the exact same idea, and we were shocked to see people actually standing in long snaky lines of more than a hundred just to walk through a pretend house.

I was similarly stunned to see that "Great Big Home and Garden" also meant several identical booths of meat jerky, fake pashminas, and powdered dip mixes. As we wandered through this incredible bazaar of the bizarre, I started to feel more and more as if I were on some alien planet. Come with me:

It started on our way in. I saw a woman in a bouffant hairdo clutching a sign of plasticized cardboard. It was about 18"X18" and had metal prongs on it so that it could stick in her yard. She looked positively enraptured. It was clear that this sign was a Major Score for her. On it, in bold, black capital letters were two words, one atop the other: KING JESUS.I was immediately befuddled. What would be the purpose of this sign? If it were in the imperative, a command, how could someone do that? That would take a mighty big checker, number one, and number two, with Jesus being the Almighty and all, isn't He pretty darn capable of kinging Himself? If it were merely declarative, well, then, okay... Now what? If she puts it in her yard, then is she saying that He lives at her house, or what? It's not very interactive like, say, "HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS." And the odds of her having a Jesus statue with Him wearing a crown and her saying, "Damn, I really need a sign that indicates who the hell this is" just seem remote, don't they? I just don't get it. I mean, kudos for minimalism and all, but really, what's the deal? And honestly, let's say you're driving down the highway and see a house with that sign in the yard; what's your reaction? See what I mean? Later, Rick and I saw the booth in the Expo where the sign was being sold. It was a tiny booth with a bunch of "inspirational" signs, all on the same material, all black letters, all meant to be used outside. I still don't get it.

One booth made me do a double-take and made my stomach do a backflip. I have no idea what the guy was selling, but in front of him on a counter were feet, human feet--all cross-sectioned to look like they had been dissected. Suddenly, the man took a huge forkful from behind them and put it into his mouth and started chewing. My eyes flew open wider and I almost gagged. As we hurried past, I had to turn around and look more closely. The feet were plastic models, thank goodness, and he was eating a taco salad that he had placed behind the row of them. But still, it wasn't until we reached the Patio Enclosures booth that I realized that I had been holding my breath for more than a minute.

Almost equally disturbing were the Booths Of Vibrating Devices. It is important to note that both times I passed these booths, the Devices were being...sampled by men. One of the Devices was a sort of vibrating balancing board. The men on them were standing wide-legged and simply vibrating. A LOT. With an intense look on their faces that could best be described as...(send the children away) pre-orgasmic. The same could be said for the men on the chairlike Device which actually had a sort of...codpiece thingy that, well, let me just say that it looked like a carseat for grownups but it vibrated. A LOT. Again, the expression on the faces of the men was...heavily engaged. Rick offered to take photos/video with his cellphone for this post, but my gentle breeding (and my concern that there was no sign forbidding firearms in the Expo) forbid it.

Sometimes, the names of businesses are worthy of discussion. Rick pointed out Chip Painters. My favorite was Master Deck Builders, but they are not capitalizing on their name. I wanted desperately to give them a makeover. I envisioned them all wearing black, for starters. Then, I wanted them all to wear menacing black hobnail boots like these. Better yet, how about the boots that Gene Simmons from Kiss wears? Okay, maybe too much. Anyway, then, I think they should have a whip coiled up and hanging from a big, studded, black leather belt. Now those would be some Master Deck Builders!

When we had walked the entire Expo and had seen quite enough--of everything--Rick and I decided to go. I had worked titanically hard at behaving myself and it had taken a toll: I was exhausted. Not once had I remarked (loudly enough to be heard) regarding awful/clever spelling (Custom Decks by Klassic--Proffesional Builders!), nor had I said Word One about the number of people who behaved as if pushing a stroller made them immune to the Rules Of Common Courtesy.

That's what I have the Dept. for.

I Was On The Road Again, But Didn't See Willie Nelson, Just Some Other Puzzling Stuff We Can Chat About

Had a bit of a Hiatus there; contrary to Some Popular Belief, I am not nearly as Indestructably Valiant as I might appear. Quite simply, I ran away for a few days. Had to...re-centre. And now, to paraphrase Gloria Gaynor, I'm back from "outer space," and am ready to press on.

So...onward.

Musings from the Road Trip:

Passed a few Fireworks Places, and am once again struck by the signage for these retail outlets. So very...eclectic. FIREWORKS! they blare on the first line. Then, in rapid succession: KARATE SUPPLIES, SWORDS, KNIVES, STUN GUNS, PEPPER SPRAY! What the hell is going on at these places, anyway? I can just imagine the dialog going on inside: "Hey, uh, can I git me a box of them Roman candles and a pair-a those there nunchucks? And I'd like mebbe that taser, but I ain't sure about it." The counter guy says, "Why, go on out back with it, then! I think my nephew or his Rottweiler is out thar somewhars--jes' try it on one-a them!" Sigh.

Saw this thought-provoking sign on a church--can't recall the denomination--and I can't stop pondering it. It said: What you do is not as important as who you are. How do you feel about that? The odd thing is that I've seen the exact opposite sentiment (Who you are is not as important as what you do) on church signs as well. So I'm thinking and thinking about that sign. It kind of irks me. It really does. It gives all these Fake Christians carte blanche, as far as I'm concerned. You know what I mean, right? These holier-than-thou people who say that they're Christians, but then discriminate against gay people, kill doctors, and picket the funerals of soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq to further their gaybashing agendas. Yikes.

Finally, on a lighter--much--note, upon returning home and finally sleeping soundly in our own bed, Rick forgot (again, it must be noted), to turn off the now-unnecessary alarm. We were rudely and annoyingly awakened by its cacophany. The following scene ensued:

Nance: Oh my God. Is that THE ALARM?

Rick: (turning to shut it off. Finally.) Yeah. Sorry.

Nance: Why the heck is it going off?

Rick: I thought I shut it off.

Nance: Well, apparently, you didn't.

Rick: I said I was sorry. You could have checked and shut it off, too, you know.

Nance: That's not my job.

Rick: I see. And nagging and hollering at me is?

Nance: Yes.

Rick: You're fired.

Isn't It Ironic? Won't He Think?

Just can't let this one go...

Is it only me, or is this more than ironic? We've been beaten about the head with pat Christian slogans by crabby God Warriors: "He's the reason for the season" and "Don't take Christ out of Christmas!". They start a national flapdoodle by boycotting their darling Wal*Mart for saying "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas". They even have scores of de rigeur rubber wristbands made up for their cause (see my 12.11 post). Yet, the mega-evangelical churches are closed on Christmas! Oh, but it's true!

You'd think that this year would be the Bible-belters dream! Jesus's birthday on a Sunday! They sure could show the rest of the heathens how a real Christian Christmas is done! They could gather in their churches, sing some hymns real loud, wave their hands in the air, exalt and all that--really get their merry on. They could really bask in the glow of the reason for the season. They would definitely have Christ right there, smack dab in the middle of Christmas, for sure. But no. Instead, they are closing so that members can be at home, like the rest of the pagans, celebrating with their families.

Boy, that sure sounds like the way most of the rest of the non-evangelical Christian world will be celebrating Christmas, doesn't it? Kind of a letdown, I think.

Boy, those evangelicals. They sure made a big deal out of nothin'. Merry Xmas to them.

DoN Extends Seasonal Wishes to the Majority

For being in the majority and having yourselves amply represented in the White House, you Christians sure are getting to be a big bunch of crabasses. Yeah, you heard me. CRAB-ASSES.

Every time I turn around, the Christians are griping about something. Some guy ripped up his Christmas card from the White House because it said "Happy Holidays" on it, not "Merry Christmas." This, despite the fact that right inside it quotes a psalm. A Catholic guy from some right-wing organization said it was a disappointment that the Angel of Death (Bush) was kowtowing to political correctness rather than stand up for his faith and acknowledge the base that put him into office.

Not very Merry.

And now, you spleen-venters can put it right out there and show everyone just how pissed off you really are. All you God Warriors can order a wristband to put the rest of the heathens in their place! How dare anyone offer the inclusive "Happy Holidays!" to a grocery shopper? The hell with that! Let that customer celebrate his or her so-called "festival of lights" in their own country; this is the United States of America, and here, we celebrate Christmas, by God. And don't get us started on those made-up holidays like Kwaanzaa or whatever.

Not very Christian.

To all of you so-called Christians who have such an attitude, I say this: it's time to take the Christ out of Christian for people like you. From now on, you are to be known as Xians. Because people like you, who exclude homosexuals; who exclude other people from a warm and kind greeting regardless of what they celebrate; who bomb and protest clinics rather than take care of unwanted babies who are already here; who exclude anyone and are intolerant and smug and act distinctly unlike Christ, are not Christians in any sense of His word.

So, to all you Xians: MERRY XMAS !!