Last weekend, when I had my usual dim sum breakfast at
Ranch 99, I noticed that the denomination of the church adjacent to its strip
mall was Methodist (whose rituals are familiar to me from my upbringing).
With sinful, carnal intent in my heart I thought it could be a possible
venue for successful "cruising". Today I attended the early service, but
more for spiritual relief from my Gary-grieving. Alas, the scene made me feel worse, until
afterwards when my hunger pangs were assuaged next door, but I did learn
something interesting - there's an ongoing crisis with the United Methodists
(second only to the Southern Baptists in American Protestant numbers). Whole
congregations are leaving the flock because of a lack of homosexual intolerance,
or what's termed "sub-Christian" practices by the larger body. The tolerance
advocated in the sermon warmed my heart. When they passed the collection plate
I had a moment of embarrassment - an inventory of my pocket's contents revealed
just two $20s and a dime. My attempt to deposit the dime discretely failed - rather
than land softly in the pile of bills and envelopes, it slid to the side and hit the
brass edge with an audible and cheap-sounding clink! Everyone nearby could
tell mine was a sub-Christian donation.
Y2K Spotlight
Received a spamish email today pertaining to the potential disasters of the year
2000 rollover. It starts out rationally-hysterical but then goes off the deep end, blaming everything on the
vengeance of the wrathful God of the uptight Christian factions. How they'd quiver with sanctimonious
indignation at the all-too-real possibility, in my perception, that the AIDS epidemic is actually their
rapture, in slow motion. Sure seems to me that certain people I've known, most deserving of heavenly paradise,
have been called to their reward prematurely.
Hung out at Barnes & Noble for hours this afternoon, reading the entire contents of
two of Lynn Johnston's "For Better Or Worse" comic strip anthologies. (Catching
up on the story of her Patterson family of Toronto, since I only sporadically
read the daily paper, especially its "funnies".) This activity brought my mood
out of the black. Saw a small poster in the store for "Godzilla", with the
monster standing next to and taller than the Flatiron Building in New York
City, which made me flash on one of our early 80s trips up there. Riding
a city bus with D, I identified it as we rolled past, by name and as the
first skyscraper, and D said "That's not the Flatiron Building!" and an
elderly voice in the seat behind us corrected her, validating me.
Heard a tasty new tune on the radio: "La Di Da" by the Murmurs. They wanted too much at Tower
for the CD (titled "Blender"). I'll get the single when it appears soon, or buy the CD elsewhere. A
huge central display was erected pushing videotapes of "The Black Cauldron", which I though Disney
had suppressed forever since many consider it their worst-ever feature-length cartoon, the last made
pre-Eisner before the resurrection of their animation group (whose first new feature was "The Little
Mermaid"). When my family "did" Alaska in 1985, my brother N and I had a lot of chuckles with elements
from the Cauldron, particularly this line: