Return

I have had a couple of requests to revive this effort, initially abandoned for several reasons. For one, moving from zero mechanical knowledge to professional bicycle mechanic absorbed most of my free brain this past year. Also, it’s been a pretty wild year, and I haven’t had much free brain at all.

So, no promises, but out of respect to the requests, I’ll give it a shot.

God Loves Turkeys

I have not generally made a habit of obsessing about church signs. Kitschy, thoughtless, trite—as a genre they do not deserve as much attention as I have been paying them on this blog.

However, the sign on the Colonial Heights Pentecostal church in southern Virginia proclaiming that “God Loves Turkeys” does.

What message is the church trying to convey? It seems precariously close to no message at all, but then why bother to put the letters up on a busy suburban road?

Did the church mean to express general approval of Thanksgiving feasts?

Or to suggest that God would put off his white robe and halo, don a sweater vest and tie, and float down to consume turkey, mashed potatoes, and yam pie with the congregants? Then push off his shoes, unbutton his trousers, and watch the football game with a frosty Bud in one hand?

Or is God a vegetarian, regarding turkeys with a perfect and non-sacrificial love: because God adores turkeys, the congregants should not kill and eat them?

Or was the pastor a horrible punner, pointing out that God loves even the failing, flawed, idiotic—the “turkey”—in all of us, and thinking this was a funny way to kill two birds with one stone (please pardon my pun): 1) obligatory reference to Thanksgiving and 2) sermon on God’s love.

Ha Ha.

Now that is the sort of clever insight that would make me want to go to the church

Advertising

My word-dork self occasionally is overcome by advertisement.

No word’s meaning is ever stationary, and I love to trace how meaning gathers and morphs around a particular word. Advertising inverts this—exploiting the meanings that surround words and phrases to invoke associations, related to the product or not, that could create a desire you might act on.

A couple days ago, someone had left an Herbal Essences conditioner in the yoga showers. It was one of those conditioners that’s supposed to keep your hair from splitting. It used the word “break” three times on the front (and verbage really was pretty sparse—it’s a conditioner bottle after all, not a PSA).

1. “Break’s Over”. This apparently is the name of the conditioner. What does this call up? End of lunch break, getting back to work, standing back up after resting, cigarette breaks, chop chop, Labor Day, union negotiations
2. “with an anti-breakage potion and a fusion of coco mango & pearls”. What? Other than not knowing that pearls could be mixed with fruit and “infused” into a bottle with water and oil, what can this possibly mean? But it does sound vaguely romantic, moonlit, and luxurious.
3. “a love potion for bad hair break-ups”. Note the repetition of “potion”. How do we get from “break’s over” to “break-ups” in just 4 inches of violet-blue bottle? What do girlfriend-boyfriend sagas, heartbreak, unaware teenagers, love hocus-pocus, fighting, and relationship drama, broadly defined, have to do with getting back to work, pearls, or hair products?

Does it matter that these three phrases are unequally insane? That the unrelated free associations these phrases are designed to elicit have nothing to do with hair? That the premise of the persuasion is not argument but successful manipulation of our average mental drivel?

Probably not, and certainly Herbal Essences conditioner isn’t the place to start a war on the perversion of advertising. Other propaganda is more harmful.

Fruitcakes

I have adored Jimmy Buffet’s ludicrous Fruitcakes ever since I first heard it a couple years ago.

Just for the sheer joy of it, I have to share two fruitcakes whom I met in the past couple days.

Fruitcake #1: One of those people that you pray you never have to sit next to on a Greyhound. As near as I can remember, this is a rendering of the 100 yards of sidewalk I shared with her:

God it is a glorious day. Isn’t it a glorious day? These are the kind of days you just live for, you just want to live for them the whole day. Oh your hair is just the color of that tree. It is so beautiful. How did you get hair that color? Oh, it’s yours? Oh my god, that is amazing. Your hair is soaking wet. Why is your hair soaking wet? Oh you do yoga. I have always wanted to do yoga. I used to be a runner and can’t run any more so I thought that maybe I try yoga. My gym that I belong to has yoga classes and I have thought that one day I would take a class there you know. It seems so calming and soulful. What type of yoga do you do? Oh hot yoga. I am not sure that I could do hot yoga. I’m at the stage in my life when I have having hot flashes, you know, and I am hot enough all by myself. I’m just my own little sunball half the time, and if I had an episode in hot yoga I just do not know what I would do. Oh this is your office? I used to work in an office. Well, I guess I’ll be going then. It was so nice talking to you. Just so nice.

Fruitcake #2: An older gentleman, in his mid sixties, riding a bike to work in the rain. He had a full rainsuit; rode an expensive Dutch commuter bike; and wore a helmet, waterproof gloves, and a large messenger bag. His large, blanched feet—completely bare—were pedaling viciously.

The problem with fruitcakes is you don’t have their stories, but they beg you to write them. I’m sure Fruitcake #2 had a good reason for cycling barefoot in chilly rain—perhaps he had an important meeting to go to and didn’t want his new shoes ruined with damp. Perhaps he had given his shoes to a homeless man. Perhaps he was one of those barefoot distance runners and was translating it to biking.

My own appearance at that same intersection also had its irrationality. In a rainsuit, on a bike, with a helmet and messenger bag, I was wearing only one waterproof glove; my right hand was covered in a Richmond Times Dispatch newspaper bag.

The explanation: I had lost my right waterproof glove last week. My grandmother’s good friend, knowing that we have a dog to pick up after and will soon be charged for plastic bags in DC, collects and sends us, via my parents, all her plastic bags. She gets the Richmond Times Dispatch delivered daily, so we have a ton of thin yellow newspaper bags. A newspaper bag fits snuggly over a biker’s hand, impeding brake access only minimally. It was a perfect.

Isolated Justice

It should not go unnoted on this blog, a dominant theme of which is the DC government’s inability to and disinterestedness in ensuring cyclists’ safety, that yesterday was an aberration.

On my way to work, a DC School Crossing Guard looked me directly in the eyes, decided that a cyclist was immaterial, and called roughly 20 commuters to cross against the light, directly in front of me.

My first thought was to veer and hit the Crossing Guard, but I had no time. My second thought was to run into as many of the commuters as possible, but it wasn’t their fault: ipods in, cell phones on, coffee in hand—these folks were safeguarded from observing anything. I squeezed my brake levers and skidded to a stop, partially into the crosswalk. While the pedestrians passed, my light turned red.

I requested that the Crossing Guard explain his behavior. He replied that he’d “get” me the next time I sped through a red light—an illogical and factually incorrect non sequitur:

1. I stop at red lights. I didn’t use to, but after a painful soul search, I decided that I could not object to cars breaking the law if I did also—even though cyclists generally disobey laws for safety reasons. I now break the law only when it is not safe not to.
2. Even if I were to cross an intersection on a red light, I would not do so when cars would hit me—which is equivalent to what the Crossing Guard did to me.
3. Was he really arguing that two wrongs made a right?

I explained these three points in detail to the Crossing Guard, but he was unimpressed. My light turned green and I rode off in a huff.

When I got to work, I emailed four people within the DC government who were various community liaisons or responsible for programs related to the Crossing Guards.

50% of the people I emailed responded, and supplied me with the correct name of the person who supervises the guard.

The supervisor himself called me, asked some questions to verify my story, and said he would speak to the guard.

My cynicism, bitterness, and cavernous rage were, for the moment, eased.

Writing Prompt

I saw this sign in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. I have been basking in imaging the sheer range of possible causes for such a public manifesto ever since.

What happened?

Did a deacon embezzle money from the offering plate in order to start a travel agency in an abandoned store on Main Street—a pseudo business which in truth was a front for counterfeiting documents for illegal immigrants?

Did a casual attendant, the editor of the local paper, interpret a sermon as being aimed directly at his personal sins and blast the congregation for narrow-mindedness and bigotry in an op-ed?

Did the pastor sleep with his daughter’s first grade teacher?

Did a group of malcontents, angry at the Education Committee’s selection of Bible School material over the summer, escalate that disagreement into a full-fledged war over Sunday School materials for the fall. Were certain things said that could not be taken back? Did this group depart from the church in a huff, with their families and allies, and join the “other” Methodist church?

Did the church choir fail to bring dishes to a community chorale potluck, thus embarrassing the Methodists in front of the Baptists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, and Church of the Living Fire?

Did pictures surface on the internet of a prominent member of the congregation drunk and half clothed in a gay bar in Pittsburgh (are there gay bars in Pittsburgh?)?

Did the Methodist youth group graffiti public property?

Does the pastor disapprove, with staunch Methodist fundamentalism, of some of his flock’s theological inclinations, and chose this method of informing them they had strayed? It certainly is calmer way of communicating fire and brimstone.

But that is precisely what pleased me so much about this sign: this church has guts. I would attend it. Somebody in the church obviously has something to say, and doesn’t mind saying it on main street. In small, close-knit towns, that is real courage.

It’s for sure better than the drivel that normally goes on church signs—horribly executed plays on words and bad rhymes that invite you, oh so cutely, to tuck religion into a convenient spot in your well-arranged life.

Public/private

The AT and C&O are the only extended public corridors I know that offer their travelers free, unregulated lodging.

On the C&O, lodging means a cleared space with a fire ring, picnic table, and a portajohn; on the AT, it means an open shelter, a fire ring, and a walless pit toilet. Rudimentary, but with absolute permission to make this public, federal space your own for a night—or as long as you care to stay.

In the rest of our lives, making a home means you either have to procure (rent/buy) private space or break rules and make space home at your own risk, as the homeless do. The uncontrolled invitation to camp for free is an anachronism in an over-owned country.

The invitation also is complete: when staying in that campsite or shelter, it does become home. Fully public and open—by the main road, available to all who chose to stop at that mileage that night—the spot becomes more confidently yours as the night goes on: your campfire, your tent, your food on your picnic table. Sometimes by morning, it is disquieting to see the early users of the trail speed by while you still are dressing or cooking breakfast, in what you feel has become privacy.

I have accumulated a similar sense of ownership over other public property—most notably parking meters or street signs that have become my regular locking posts. I have even been offended when other cyclists have locked to the street signs in front of my boyfriend's various apartments that I considered my private posts.