HOLY Umm...Something!

There is perhaps no greater validation of one's creative efforts than when someone who should find the work offensive or discomforting instead finds it insightful and useful. Such was the case for Christopher's Moore's brilliant "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" when he let a friend who was also a Catholic priest read the novel prior to publication. And now, or more accurately two years ago, such is the case with my short story, "Ultimate Messiah Smackdown" which made its second and more prominent appearance in the "Alternative Theologies" anthology published in 2018.

The collection has received mostly positive reviews and even engendered a bizarre controversy where some zealot decided to steal all copies of the book from the publisher when he left his table unattended at a convention. If that doesn't make you want to read it, you are probably not my kind of person.

I don't know if it made one specific reviewer want to read it or not, but I happened upon her review on Goodreads and was quite simply blown away. The reviewer in this instance is a Christian pastor named Mindi Welton-Mitchell. As I wrote earlier, based on stereotyping and presumptiveness, two things at which we Amuricans excel, she should have found my story of Corporate Jesus vs. Actual Jesus offensive. This becomes even more of a supposed certainty when one looks her up and discovers she is a pastor at a *GASP* Baptist church!

Well, this may come as a surprise to many of you, but my grandmother was a member of the Baptist church for approximately seventy of her one-hundred years, Republican Jesus bless her soul. She taught Sunday school for decades and I often attended those classes, hence my apparently unusual; knowledge of the workings of American Protestantism. Many Evangelicals have tried to school me on the Bible, having been taught that "unbelievers" don't know anything about the faith. It hasn't gone well for them. My grandmother taught me too well. Reverend Welton-Mitchell most likely falls into the category where one would have found my grandmother. Devout, sincere, able to laugh at herself within reason, and more interested in growing than in remaining in place.

(I'm kidding about the Republican Jesus part, of course. My grandmother would have severed her own limbs before she voted Republican. She was proof that faith-based individuals are not all Right Wing.)

At least, that's what I got from her review of the anthology and my story in particular. Below is the portion regarding "Ultimate Messiah Smackdown":

Perhaps my favorite entry was Ultimate Messiah Smackdown. Which Jesus do we really follow, the smiling white guy in a suit who preaches the prosperity gospel and the religion of nationalism, or the man who challenges us to think and act differently (and might smell bad)? Or which Buddha, for that matter? I’m already planning on using this story as a sermon illustration.

It would have been enough for her to offer a positive, thoughtful review as a Christian minister, but for her to also mention using my story as part of a sermon is nothing short of  astounding. I am honored and a little humbled and a little thirsty, but I think that last thing is solvable with water. I have no idea if the intended sermon took place, but I am going to ask her because sometimes, rarely but sometimes, a review can touch an author as much as our stories touch the reviewers.


Read the entire review here.

Hobby Lobby lets Employees go Without Pay and Defies Orders to Stay Closed

In a move that was surely designed to display Hobby Lobby CEO David Green's obvious belief that God appreciates pure evil, a mentality in direct contradiction to all accepted views on Christian theology, the arts and craft superstore has both fired people without benefits due to the Covid-19 pandemic and reopened stores in defiance of it.

Green and his non-essential business have been a study in contradictions since anyone can remember, but this pandemic has really thrown a blacklight on just what a lowlife he is and how his company reflects that. Initially, Hobby Lobby chose to stand firm on not closing no matter what. Why did they do that? Simple. Green's "prayer warrior" wife had a vision from God that arrived in a convenient, three-word catch-phrase that sounded suspiciously like a sales seminar. This inspired Green to send off a memo telling everybody who worked for him that they weren't closing.

Then reality set in and he changed his tune...temporarily. The resultant backlash to Hobby Lobby's decision to resist CDC and WHO guidelines left Green unfazed. In Oklahoma, for example, the company simply redefined "essential" by claiming their corporate office fell under the "cyber security and infrastructure agency" category, which at least one employee annonymously said they do not. 

As far as the stores were concerned, emails such as the one pictured below tell a rather bleak story:

\The language used here is almost fascinating: "This layoff is permanent," stands out in particular. The final sentence is also telling, as it essentially closes the door to the possibility of bringing the person back while wishing them all the best. Thankfully, the entire thing is peppered with standard issue "this hurts me more than it does you" rhetoric to make the (former) employee feel that wondrous combination of dejection and despair.

Yet the story doesn't end there. Being the true-to-life Bentley Little novel that it is, Hobby Lobby, in its serpent-like way, slithered out of the light of reason and compassion to reopen stores in at least two states. Talking points have been given to the managers for when law officers arrive questioning just what the hell they think they're doing and one store was actually boarded up by police in Wisconsin after reopening two on March 30th.

And still the passive-aggressive defiance continues. In Indiana, police forced a store to close after it reopened. The information employees say they're receiving from on high is contradictory, first agreeing that Hobby Lobby is not essential and later saying they are essential as a pretext for reopening. They're also cutting hours, meaning the necessary sanitizing is not getting done. 

One employee put it best when they said:

"There is absolutely nothing in Hobby Lobby worth spreading this illness. I'm honestly appalled at this company and the way it doesn't care for its employees and only about making their money."

Lowlives such as David Green are what American society tells us to admire. Why we should admire someone who couldn't care less about human beings who might  die horribly is as baffling as his claims that a kind and loving god would want people to keep being exposed to a deadly virus in order to sell arts and crafts. 

This is what happens when vulture capitalism and religious fantacism encounter tragedy.

Dispatches from the Coronavirus Days #10- Personal Edition

There aren't going to be any attempts at clever sub-headlines this time around. I'm rapidly burning out anyway and besides, my observational instincts are waning under the strain of this pandemic. As of right now, all I have are my own thoughts, feelings and reactions. Apologies in advance if this Dispatch doesn't bring comfort on, at the very least, the "we're all in this together" level.

Residing in the Covid-19 epicenter of Michigan is a sobering experience. Any hope, any faith in humanity I might have somehow stored up over the years of disappointment and revulsion have evaporated like a water stain on the concrete in summer. Even I, cynic that I am, never realized just how stupid, how arrogant, and how self-destructive most people are until I watched them ignore something as simple as social distancing on a daily basis.

From my vantage point, I can see two grocery stores, both of which are packed from the moment they open until they close two hours earlier than normal. How much panic buying can people do? More importantly, what the hell did they do with all the food and supplies they bought previously? Are we such a consumer culture that people can't conceive of actually holding onto the thigs  they buy instead of consuming and going back for more? If you're wondering whether or not these simpletons are gloved and masked, while I don't have an actual scientific study to show you, my own observation is that maybe one out of four is masked and nobody is gloved. That means these panic shoppers are potentially shedding virus on a regular basis.

I guess that explains why, as of this writing, Michigan now has over 5,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

I have not stepped foot inside a building in over a week and have been home for over two weeks. When I went, I had no choice but to go because my wife's prescriptions needed to be picked up. This was at Walmart, where literally no one was social distancing, forcing me to jump, dodge and backwards run like an olympic athlete. Because of that brief excursion into virus hell, I am now in week two of hoping no symptoms manifest.

Let's not lay all of the blame on the customers, however. The stores should also be doing their part. They should agressively limit the duplicate items people can purchase as well as the amount of people who can enter the store at any given time. Time limits on shopping should also be imposed. Instead, I watch clumps of people at a store with a security guard enter and exit all the live-long day, often pausing to stand right next to one another.

So, I am lucky enough to have a grocery store right across from my house during an emergency but because of idiots shopping there and the greedy corporation running it, I can't step foot inside. Additionally, my attempts at ordering online for delivery have been stymied by an over-abundance of people using it and a possible workers strike based on complaints of the company not providing appropriate protections. An order I placed at a different store four days ago will hopefully arrive two days hence, while the order I placed with the store that is literally across the street cannot give me a delivery date. Under normal circumstances, this would be absurd, considering the delivery driver could literally walk across the street.

Clearly we're living in an insane time, a fact compounded by the way people are reacting. Americans are like children in so many ways. I've always said we're the adolescents of the international community, a young nation still trying to assert its uniqueness and not let the old farts tell us how to live our lives. To borrow an expression I detest, Americans are constantly saying, "Okay, boomer" to the rest of the planet.

What about Canada, you say? They're even younger. True. Canada is the mature, old-soul younger sibling who sees what the obnoxious know-it-all sibling does and goes the opposite way. It's why their prime minister delivers his virus updates alone and our president sits in a room full of sychophants, almost daring the virus to fuck with him. He's not alone either.

People on my Facebook page are posting images and videos of themselves visiting relatives...not just once, but often. I see children in my neighborhood playing with their neighbors. I hear and see morons comparing this pandemic to auto accidents and drawing false parrallels to the flu's death rate as if one can compare a brand new, incurable illness to one our bodies can actually fight. I've been called "melodramatic" by someone who knows better for writing that irresponsible memes claiming the things listed above will lead to deaths, because it will inspire the unintelligent to ignore safety protocols. And if that sounds like hysteria, take a look at the churches that have defied the "stay and shelter" rules and get back to me.

By the way, that isn't me calling churchgoers unintelligent. Millions of intelligent churchgoers are keeping their asses at home as they should. But it only takes a few people to spread a virus:

 

I don't know what's going to happen at this point. I know I haven't felt this level of anxiety since the threat of nuclear war loomed on the horizon before Gorbachev saved us all from that. Back then, we only had to worry about the idiots in government and a handful of jingoistic lunatics on both sides. Now, thanks to thirty-plus years of disinformation and a culture based damn near exclusively on consumption instead of production and invention, we have to worry about everybody doing exactly the wrong thing.

Dispatch Over~

Read previous Disptach here.

Religious Fanatic Takes "Steal this Book!" to Heart but it's the Wrong Book.

Apparently an anthology I am in offended the delicate sensibilities of at least one self-appointed soldier for the Lord. At least, that's how the anthology's publisher is interpreting it.

It makes sense, based on how the petty crime took place. You can get the whole story here but here's a pull quote in case your clickin' finger is sore:

"...other books were left alone, as was a tablet and some cash..."

B Cubed Press Bob Brown's response to the thief is pretty entertaining because, ultimately, the fact that fiction can still cause this reaction in people means it still has the power to transform and to make people think. That is worth more to me than any financial reward my story gained.

The funny thing is, the only reason I even know about this is because I happened to be on my Amazon Author page where a newer reader review of the anthology mentioned the theft.  You can read that review here and even though the reader doesn't mention my story (how dare they?) it's a glowingly positive one that might not have happened if some jackass hadn't tried to censor what you're able to read.

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