Road Report: Magic Electricity
14 October 2007 by Naomi
Dateline: Butte, Montana
Fall is late this year, even in Big Sky Country. Only the cottonwood trees have changed; just a yellow that is most uninteresting. The boxelders are still green. No sign of quaking aspens (a birch-like tree common to the Rockies), which turn an eerie light-yellow that shimmers in the smallest breeze. My brother-in-law tells me that Tennessee’s fall is also late and that he expects that the leaves will turn brown and fall, robbing one of the beautiful “color” we’ve come to expect. Or depend on, as the Northeast does, with their “color tours” that attract people from all over the world. A month ago, we were in Nashua, New Hampshire and were amazed that there was no sign of fall — not even a single dark-red sumac. Sad, isn’t it?
We just saw a billboard a few miles back; it made us both angry. Picture this: a young male, wearing a wife-beater tank-top, pointing a revolver (gripped with both hands; huge opening aimed at anyone reading it). The legend? “If God doesn’t matter to him, why would you?” The default message: belief in gord is good, atheism is bad.
A most strange thing is religion. Montana is very libertarian but I think their default is xian, thanks to Pascal’s Wager. Which is weird — they don’t like “government is Boss” but allow for “Gord is Boss”.
The other night I was treated to yet another California aroma: it’s grape season just now and I was smelling something I couldn’t immediately identify…until I passed the Delicato winery. ‘Tis the season of grape-crushing, a pagan festival that takes many forms. And one form is a grape-crushing exhibition by VIPs and politicos held in San Francisco. The rules are simple: no throwing the mashed pulp. That rule was respected…for almost four minutes, and the adult version of “frat-food-fight” was on. Too funny!
I did mention electricity, didn’t I? And it may be a reach but electricity is what runs the body, including the sense of smell and how odors are stored in the brain, thus making the nose possibly more complex than the all-wonderful eye that the fundies use to prove gord’s hand in our “creation”, since a sense of smell is needed for the sense of taste. The miracle of smelling something that can yank you back to a past time, and dredge other accompanying memories with it, is a phenomenon that is still poorly understood. I can smell aftershave on a man and go time-traveling. A perfume may remind me of a teacher. I can just think of library paste and crayons and remember the smell. And the taste! The indelibility of some smells is mysterious; cops say that once you smell decomposing flesh, you’ll always “know” well before you find the body…
BTW, two other aromas from California: in April, one year, I asked what that overpowering smell was (it was almost suffocating!). It turned out to be real orange blossoms — not mock. And I once woke up when John got to the shipper in Gilroy. The smell was claustrophobic; it was familiar but so potent, I was stumped. FWI, Gilroy is the World Capital of Garlic growing and production. And it was the week following harvest and production was going on. It’s said that the smell never leaves the clothes and homes of Gilroy… You must really, REALLY love garlic, if you plan to move there.
And on a frustrating note, I wore a Brights Tshirt for two days and no one challenged me! What’s with that? I thought for sure a fundie would at least “accidentally” elbow me or shove me. Maybe that social equivalent of “keying” is best done when no one can see. Cowards.
Finally, I read that President Godsend is going to defy China and honor the Dalai Lama, the least offensive of the worlds’ religious leaders (to my mind). When I told John about it (and how Bush had created a furor in Rome when he treated the Poop with his casual manner), my husband said, “I wonder if the Dalai Lama is aware that he has Oil?”
14 October 2007, on 3:47 pm
Hey Naomi! Thanks for popping in! I, for one, miss your posts around here!
“If God doesn’t matter to him, why would you?”
This kind of propaganda pisses me off, too. Just look at how many god-fearing ministers cheat on their wives and then their god-fearing wives go get a gun and blow the cheating god-believing bastard’s head off!
Look at all the god-botherers who support invading other countries, killing thousands and thousands of innocent men, women and children because “god told them to”.
14 October 2007, on 4:34 pm
What do you expect if this imaginary friend is a reflection of the people who follow it?
14 October 2007, on 11:24 pm
Yes…Naomi, your Post is a very nice surprise; and I like your bringing up the topic of …
“Magic Electricity” phenomena.
Pardon a bit of momentary…but possibly tangential…wandering(?).
Isn’t it strange that such a ‘loving’ “Gord” never explained it in ‘his’ (supposed) “Official Earthling Guidebook(s)”
[erm...the Babble & Ko'crawl''...I mean...Ko'walk'?...I mean...Ko'ran'.]
Well…no, actually!
Nothing of any scientific, let alone biological value (ala…flat earth &…insects have 4 legs?), is given in those bloviated, nasty, blame the victim, slave manuals.
Such a vicious Meany; leaving everybody in the dark for thousands of years…with only candles & oil lamps. Uneducated and ignorant as they were; groping around, with no spectacles or reading glasses. Imagine growing up and getting old without any spectacles available! YIKES!
The ‘blindness’ mentioned in certain sacred texts was probably, in most cases, just run of the mill…near sightedness etc.
Yeah…(zama, zama)
It took all those brave, immediately anathematized, persecuted and burned at the stake, early scientists (evil secularists!) to finally crack the various codes related to all those previously considered…”magical” mysteries; leading finally to all the, often taken for granted, wonders of today…
Like the Internet; and Homes away from Home, like GifS!
(Humor me a bit longer?)
I can’t help but notice how many of today’s younger people, and historical revisionists, are quite oblivious to just how recent modern science really is. The typical Fundies still want to give all the credit, of course to their “S&M” Sky Daddy for finally, and “miraculously”, allowing all those hard working scientists to stumble on their discoveries.
As to eyeglasses (or spectacles):
“While the exact date and inventor may be forever disputed, it is almost certainly clear that spectacles were invented between 1280 and 1300 in Italy.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacles#Precursors
Returning to Naomi’s jumping off point:…ELECTRICITY being SO important to this little self absorbed foray into “magical awareness”; See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity#History_of_electricity
And what! No aspirin until 1899?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Modern_development
WHEW! I think I just might be getting a bit of a headache reminding myself how ignorant…and “in the dark”, religions managed to keep the world…FOR EONS!
[Sorry, if any of you, who read this far, are getting one too.]
What a different…possibly significantly better…world this MIGHT have been if there had never been any delusional religions.
As has been said:
“Without religion; ‘Columbus’ might have landed on the Moon”! (?)
Safe driving, Naomi. After yesterday’s awful L.A. Tunnel story…
WOW…be careful out there!
15 October 2007, on 5:23 am
I have to disagree about the Dalia Lama. I find him to be extremely offensive, and hypocritical.
Not to say that Chinese rule is better, but when the monks ruled Tibet, they exploited the mass of the people for their benefit in a harsh feudalistic system. They never showed much humanism or humanitarianism towards the population and never did anything to improve their lot.
The Dalai Lama also has some serious hangups about sex, as John Safran shows,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igIBSeaJ9YI
He is as weird as the Pope or many other religious gurus. One wonders why any of these people think their gawd made special rules about sexual behavior. Why would gawd care?
15 October 2007, on 8:08 am
Miss Naomi, good to hear from you. We’re a little late on fall ourselves. Our reenactment group had a soup sale a couple weekends ago and it was almost ninety here in central pencil tuckey. And our ladies were cooking over an open fire. Last year we were making people get AWAY from the fire so the ladies could fix the meals. There was a constant; this street fair also has a greyhound adoption group that comes with their hounds, last year they borrowed some of our blankets to keep their dogs warm. This year they borrowed them so the dogs wouldn’t get to hot from the sidewalk.
A band I played in a while ago travelled up north for a gig. A person with us wondered if I had practiced witchcraft. Seriously! Some equipment was damaged, and I was trying to fix it. The screw driver I was using wasn’t magnetic, and I needed one, so I went to our power cord which was on a reel, plugged it in, made an induction coil, and magnetized the screw driver.
I was told it was possibly “diabolical”, certainly “unnatural”. She refused to believe that wherever she looked she could see the same application. Oh, well.
15 October 2007, on 9:31 am
Naomi, I’m guessing the reason your Bright shirt went unchallenged was that the fundies weren’t bright enough to know what it was. Something about ridiculing those to stupid to know it that, while hugely entertaining, eventually comes to resemble shooting fish in a barrel. Speaking of “fundies”, shouldn’t the most special of them be “fundaroos”, just like the most special of undies? And couldn’t atheism be, like, the metaphysical version of going “commando”?
Our fall, in all but temperature, began in mid-August thanks to the summer long drought. The leaves went from green to brown and dropped rather unceremoniously and I can picture this year’s growth rings as virtually nonexistent.
Safe travels!
15 October 2007, on 9:55 am
Not to mention why would a so-called perfect being need glasses?
15 October 2007, on 11:16 am
Our fall was also early, but not because of drought, lol. Rained a lot here, a little early, but it was largely very cool, temps during the day in Sep with in the 50s.
15 October 2007, on 12:35 pm
Well the billboard seems to say “believe or else” or perhaps “be afraid and obey or else”. How can they even pretend that it’s about religion with that kind of imagery? Whatever it is the “or else” is all I’m hearing.
If you’d like to see some colors and have the opportunity to travel right now then Nova Scotia is where you want to be. The trees are changing rapidly but it’s really beautiful this year.
One of my favorite things about living in Tennessee was the smell of freshly cut grass. Chives grew naturally all over the place so when people in our neighborhood would cut their grass it smelled like summer and fresh salad!
16 October 2007, on 12:35 pm
Sarge – you evil magnetic bastard.
RDZ – good analogy. I got to pretend to be Hulk and Superman with my under-roos, they just get to pretend to be Jebus. I’ll take Hulk any day.
The Aspens look magnificent as usual here in Colorado (Go Rockies). Sometimes it is a treat to live here.
The Deli Llama is just as much of an ass as the rest of the religious leaders. He proclaims to be superior to all other people because of his foolish belief system and birth. True, his faith seems less dangerous then many of the others but that is like saying a pistol is less dangerous then a assault rifle. They both kill, but the latter has the potential to kill even more people.
17 October 2007, on 7:56 am
Well, color here in Pencil Tuckey isn’t all that much right now. Just going through the motions, you see a dull orange or rouge, and everything is just drying out.
A visitor from California expressed his disappointment to me last week, all I could do was shrug and refer him to the Rosecrucians. They were in charge of the seasons this year, and they weren’t doing their job. The Masons had given us a tolerable fall last year, the best in a lustrum had been hosted ny K of C, but the Rosecrucians…well, we’d all expected better. I shook my head in rueful disgust.
He said, “are you serious?” His wife said, “Ya THINK!!??”
Life can really be fun.
17 October 2007, on 9:03 pm
Naomi;
I didn’t know that God was sponsering billboards these days. And He has us heathens pegged so well–we’re all homicidal, gun-totting white trash (conveniently ignore that a large number of NRA members are Jebusites). See, that’s just proof that God exists!
Do you suppose Viacom gives God a discount? After all, He could destroy Carson Daley (is he still on MTV?) with a simple class 5 hurricane. Seems only sensible that they would give Him the “Vengeful Diety Discount” for all his billboard propaganda needs.
23 October 2007, on 8:03 pm
All hail Sarge, the magical magnetic Merlin!
Howdy again, Naomi!
I love fall, but here in South Miami we really don’t get one.
As for the billboard, you’re right on, Star.
23 October 2007, on 10:19 pm
Hey, Eve…when you going to come by and do another Killer Queen posts?
24 October 2007, on 4:52 pm
^ A request, just what I needed to get inspired, Star! Current events have been so foremost in my mind lately that I haven’t been back to that well of creativity recently.
Believers in earth goddesses might interpret the fires in southern California and Greece as signs of their anger, so giving a furious female her due in a profile seems apropos, right?