Dec 26
You can choose your friends
I don’t mean for every log entry I post to be loaded with bile, I just find it easier to write when I’m pissed. So let me describe the source of my frustration. Picture, if you will, a room full of right-wing Republican Christians. Now picture me, also sitting in the room.
(If you want to make it funny, picture the ‘Bull in a china shop’ bit from Family Guy.)
That’s what it’s like spending the day with my family. I walk around on eggshells the whole time, not wanting to say anything or expose myself in any way for fear that I’ll be outed as the black sheep that I am. For as depressing as spending the whole day with my family is, the more depressing fact is that my family is really all I’ve got left.
As if the reasons for my constant vigilance while visiting my family don’t become immediately obvious to you, let me describe the scenario that happened today. Maybe then you’ll understand.
I’m sitting on the couch reading, because the only thing I really have to do while I’m at my grandparents’ house is read or work on my laptop. I’m reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, because I finished Odd Thomas earlier in the afternoon and HP #5 was the ’safety book’ I brought.
For those of you who don’t know, Harry Potter is a big no-no in Xtian circles. It has to do with the fact that magic is strictly verboten in the Bible, I don’t know where it comes from per se but I know it’s in there. I know this to be a fact because my mom, the ultimate Christian, made magic a big no-no when I was growing up. So much so that I never got to trick-or-treat on Halloween or do anything else that had anything to do with witches, vampires, monsters, etc.
So, I’m sitting there reading Phoenix and trying to make like a hole in the world, when one of my cousins pipes up and says, with his usual subtlety, “What’cha reading there, War and Peace?” I shoot back “It’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
By the time I’d gotten to “Order,” all eyes on the room were fixed on me.
I then got a 20 minute lecture about how Harry Potter was eeeeeeeevil and that reading those books was bad. My dad, ironically, was the only one that really seemed unshaken by the fact that I admitted to reading HP. Once again, this proves that at some point, my dad was a cool guy. I don’t know whether it was age or extreme exposure to Christianity ruined the poor guy, but I really wish I could have met him 30 years ago. I bet he was interesting.
So anyway, after about 20 minutes of my smiling and nodding, the aforementioned cousin asks me “So what do you think, you know, about all those wizards and spells and stuff?”
I respond with my trademark subtlety. “What do I think? IT’S A BOOK! It bears no resemblence to reality whatsoever. It’s a story, and a damn good one, and I really enjoy reading it.”
Then I tried to go back to makin’ like a hole, but I was too pissed. So I just sat there until my mom finally announced that it was time to leave.
So, the lesson here that we can all learn is as follows:
Art is. It isn’t good, it isn’t bad, it’s art. Since the value of art is basically entirely in its interpretation, if you think a piece of art is evil you owe it to yourself to look inside you and ask you why your first conclusion was that it was evil.
And if your conclusion was largely based on the fact that another piece of art told you it was bad, you need to do some serious soul-searching.
That is all.