Double Flee A

Okay. Now I'm going to repeat some material, because it bears repeating. This is a painting of a guy who never met Stevie Nicks, with Stevie Nicks.
This is another one.
This is a picture of a woman who never met Stevie Nicks, with Stevie Nicks.
I feel kind of like a dick for pointing to something people enjoy and laughing at it, but wow. Are you fucking kidding me?
I guess some people just really like Stevie Nicks! And I guess a wolf and a white dove and a rose and a moon and wolf paw prints just makes Stevie Nicks better! Where does fanatical devotion to a celebrity come from? Is there hypno-code embedded in the TV guide? Are there drugs piped through the Wal-Mart supercenter's ventilation system?
Some folks'll say it's just the kind of guy I am. A person who doesn't believe in anything and lives to tear down others. That's the way liberals are, right? Excited about nothing except ripping on god-fearing country folk. Well, I know plenty of liberals, and that's not how they are. (What's more, we don't call them liberals, just like we don't label people conservatives. We're more likely to call them hyper-nationalistic warmongering cult followers, because of our love of specificity.) But that's how I am. I'm from a small town in Tennessee. No one who wasn't there can possibly undertake to comprehend the shite I had to put up with at the hands of the dismally unprepared public education system. And the people of my little country town I think Norman Mailer unknowingly captures the essence of with his statement: "The expression of sentimentality in religious matters comes forth usually as a sort of saccharine piety which revolts any idea of religious sentiment in those who are sensitive, discriminating, or deep of feeling." Those are the conservative people I grew up around, expecting that I shut my brain off and ride the jesus love train to a magical infinity-land, which fundamentally only differs from the oft-mocked Islamic paradise because of its lack of eternal virgin-screwing. (Which begs the question, whose paradise sounds better to you?) How could I not run as far away as possible from those morbidly mindless, righteous hypno-clones, for whom it is always 72 & jesus at jesus o'clock? To be fair, where is the serious dialogue that I am missing out on as an atheist? I'd rather use what faculties I have on this merry-go-round in asking what spirituality actually offers in terms of solace, how it is possible for a human to create a fantasy world from which it draws comfort, and of course, about the nature of comfort itself.
What comforts me is that I am separate from the jesus freaks and the Stevie Nicks nuts, but I still feel a little bad, because the truth hurts. And an observation, if something makes people mad (when you're not just making shit up), it's more than likely true.

posted by dale @ 10:59 PM