The power of tripe in the conversion process

So, yesterday I promised to tell you all about how as a child I helped my family convert the Mexicans, and I'm nothing if not a woman of my word, so here it is.

As I mentioned, in many of the small towns across the upper Midwest there is a tradition of making use of what we call "The Migrants" to pick our corn and peas and soybeans and also to put them into cans and those awesome frozen boxes and bags and then ship them across the country to the sad people who can't just go out into their backyard for corn on the cob like civilized folk.

Anyway, for many manies of years, the Migrant people were truly Migrants, in that they came into town mid-summer (sometimes a little earlier if they were going to help with pea pack) and stayed until October at the latest, so all we saw of them was if we went to play on the swings at Green Giant park, or if their kids showed up for the first month of school and talked to no one and sometimes weren't even in class because they were in ESL and then they disappeared again to go pick fruit in California and Texas or to go back to Mexico for the fall, winter and spring.

On the factory property out on the edge of town they had a bunch of trailers that they rented out to the workers, and a picnic area and some other stuff, and all of this was basically off-limits to us town folk. Well, during this time, as I may have mentioned, my mom was the rector of three tiny congregations spread about forty miles in every direction, each of which had about 10 to 20 people attending every Sunday, most over the age of 50. So, she had the idea to get these folks involved in actually reaching out to others, rather than just showing up on a Sunday, and started the Hispanic Migrant Services, which involved two church services spanning the shift change on Sunday afternoons, with a free lunch in between.

The first few years we got all these old Episcopalian ladies and gentlemen together in the ancient church basement and made hundreds of bologna sandwiches, assembly-line style and then delivered them, with potato chips, cookies and lemonade, to the park where we handed them out and then stood in the back of the outdoor church while a Spanish-speaking priest from the Cities led a short church service.

Little by little more people started to show up, and as the Migrant people slowly became Resident people, there were more brown folk helping with the sandwich making and reading the lessons, and we even got a Spanish-language hymnal and I played our Casio in the back with one hand, because man their songs are too fast to try to keep up with both hands.

Anyway, as they got more involved in their own services, the Hispanic folk got interested in maybe having something besides bologna and turkey and cake, and they had the idea to cook ethnic dishes in the kitchen of my parents' house, which was only a few blocks from the factory*. First out of the gate: Menudo. No, not the band, the soup. This is a spicy red soup made from tripe. Go ahead and click on that link. Can you tell what that is? Yeah, it's intestines. Did you know that your intestines are what turn your food into poop? That's what it smells like when they clean a massive pile of tripe in your kitchen and then boil it in giant pots for hours. And that's what it will smell like in your kitchen for days afterward, no matter what your mom says, it still smells like it and it's gross, and no the soup doesn't taste any better, it tastes spicy and slimy and still reminds you of the poop smell in your kitchen.

But, it turns out it works pretty well to bring all the heathens** in to church, and they'll even want to get their babies baptized and themselves married and practice Spanish with you and maybe even make some dishes that don't involve offal.

So, that is the story about how we used tripe to make good Episcopalians out of a gaggle of papists. If only it were always that easy.



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* Yeah, enviable real-estate. It smelled like rotting corn all summer, and I loved it.
** A.k.a., Catholics

http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

You slept with my wife. And then you tried to kill her.

So, there are people out there who think it's really cool and makes them smart to not watch tv. They will tell you about how they really only watch the Daily Show or CNN or something, but that otherwise they don't need television because there is nothing good on. If you have cable, this is just false. In my old life, when I had a job and a condo and direct deposit and a savings account, I could find all kinds of things to watch on television. So much so that I wished I didn't have to work so that I could be home to watch the Burn Notice marathon and catch up on How I Met Your Mother while still having time to rewatch my Veronica Mars dvds and wish that the WB didn't suck eggs* so much so that show would still be on.

Anyway, now that I'm trying to save the little money I have, and instead of paying for cable I went out and bought a digital converter and a new antenna and am relying on broadcast television for my entertainment, I think that these anti-television people are truly lacking in a sense of whimsy. Have you watched soap operas? How about any of the twelve religion channels that I now get? Did you know that The Price Is Right is still on? Not to mention the Spanish channel that seems to involve bikini babes selling cars about 24 hours a day. How can you honestly not see the entertainment?

Right now, I'm watching Judge Karen, who doesn't have a thing on Wapner, but still entertains the crap out of me. "How can you laugh when you're standing here today in a lawsuit against your brother? Mm mm mm. I tell you!"

Don't you wish you were unemployed?




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* When I was in first grade I first heard the phrase "That sucks," and repeated it to my parents, who yelled at me but didn't tell me why. Going back to the older boy who had first said it in my presence, I asked what it meant, and he said "It means it sucks eggs." You can imagine that that didn't really explain anything to me.


http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Haven't you ever heard the word jinx?

Did I say "Worst Road Trip Ever?" Right before leaving for a road trip? Did I really do that? How stupid am I?

Let's start last Friday night. When, as I may have mentioned, there was a storm in Chicago that knocked down a tree, which landed on my car. Or, to be more accurate, landed on a light pole, which landed on a power line, all of which then landed on my car. The city of Chicago decided that a live wire warranted a traffic cone and a grumpy police officer, who, when we asked if we could go look at the damage said "Sure. If you want to die." So, about 24 hours later, they finally shut off the power and rolled up the live wire. 24 hours after that they cut up the tree and the light pole and got it off our car. We looked at it, and seeing as how it wasn't smashed into little bits we were like "Eh. Could be worse." We took it to a mechanic who said "Shit, dudes. This really sucks. Like, a lot." Anyway, we have to have two doors, a side panel, a roof panel and the windshield replaced. Guess we're not driving that car to Maine.

Luckily, the insurance pays for a rental, and it's unlimited mileage in the United States. Go us. So, we load all our shit into a rental, including the first load of stuff for our new apartment in Nashville, since last stop on this trip is to be picking up keys to the new apartment and setting up bookshelves and then leaving.

Anyway, we're all loaded up, only running about an hour behind schedule on Wednesday morning, when we get a call from the president of our condo board. They're doing work on our air conditioning. We need to be around to sign something saying that the work went all right. This will be between 7am and 10am on Tuesday morning. If we're not there, we need to get a friend or neighbor to do it. If we can't do that, here's a piece of paper to sign saying that the work went fine. That's right, the work they haven't done yet. All right, whatever. We need to leave right now because we have a 10 hour drive ahead of us and there is no way we're getting a hold of any friends or neighbors at this moment, so we just have to hope that this doesn't mondo screw us. Bye now.

Drive drive drivey drive. Some 8 hours later, we get a call from the woman checking in on our cats. "Hey," she says, "I checked in on the cats, and they seem good and all, but the electricity was off and the air conditioning seemed to be off. Any idea what's up with that?" Turns out, they blew our electricity while working on the air conditioning. So now, we have to drive this 20 hour drive to Maine, spend two days there for a wedding, and drive 20 hours back in order to be there at 7 am on Tuesday so that we won't have signed off on saying they didn't screw anything up. Oh, but they did fix the electicity, so the cats are not currently boiling in the 95 degree heat.

Ok, so we spent the night in a hotel somewhere random, and drive drive drivey drive the next day. Get a call from our soon-to-be landlord in Nashville. Before he can say anything, I have to tell him that we won't be out there to pick up the keys on July 1st after all, because the whole road trip has been cut short. To keep things simple I just tell him it's because a tree fell on my car. "Oh, well that's all right," he says, "Because there have been storms here too, and the electricity has been in and out, plus there was a flood and the pipes burst in your building, so we had to replace all the pipes, which were lead anyway." At this point, I'm not really even taking in new levels of information. I just kind of say "Uh huh. Well that's good."

But, literally, while I'm talking to him the tarp on the truck in front of us comes loose, flies up, and a load of rocks flies off of it and all over the front of our rental car. So, right after "That's good," I yell "OH MY GOD!!!" and he's saying something about fixing up the apartment and I have to say "Uh huh. Uh huh. Sounds good. I have to go because a bunch of gravel just fell on me. Bye now."

We pull over, check out the damage, and it's just scratches, but we are fucking glad we're the anal people who bought that rental insurance crap because I'm pretty sure that God hates me at this point. We're in Vermont, about 2 hours from our destination, and all I wanted to do was turn around and go home. So, I call my dad, tell him that we're arriving at the hotel early, but I will not be speaking to anyone.

Arrive at this rural Maine ski chalet, which has hot showers, down mattresses and a really nice creamy pasta thingy for dinner and this morning I felt like a human being again.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

The Tubing on the Apple River Story

So, back when I was being Jesucated myself, instead of Jesucating others, I (as you may have heard) was living in a really super duper small town and went to a really super duper small church. Small meaning there were about 10 people on a Sunday, and 80% of them were over 60*. The "Confirmation Class" was me, my sister and my friend Barb talkin' 'bout Jesus with my mom and my piano teacher.

It was also the three of us joining up with other Jesus folk to go tubing on the Apple River. Occasionally I find out that things that I thought were totally normal are not normal, so I'm going to go ahead and explain what that means. That means you get in an inner tube (like the tube inside a tire, only much, much bigger) and float down a river. In this case, a river that runs through the suburbs of the Twin Cities. It's mostly about getting a tan and drinking beer. Except we were 12 and 14 years old, so there was no beer. Except for the chaperones. Who had coolers and coolers of beer.

Anyway, we were told before takeoff that there would be two sets of rapids, a little one and then a big one. We could get off after the little one if we were big pussies and just wanted to get to the hot dog cookout. We were not big pussies, we were tough rural kids and definitely wanted all the suburbanites around to know it.

Oh, also, that year there had been a lot of snow and then a lot of rain during the spring. No big deal. That will just come in later.

Anyway, so me and my sister and my friend Barb and my other friend Lisa, who I invited along to get Jesufied via a tan and some muddy water, all strapped our inner tubes together and hopped into the river. We floated on down, feeling good, but not as good as the chaperones, who were stinking drunk by the time we reached the rapids, which were boring as shit, and we let everyone know it. "Boooooo!" We said. "These little rapids are BORING!" Then we saw just about everyone get out after them and we LAUGHED. "Suburbanites!" We cried, "What pussies!"

We continued on to the second set of rapids. "Oh dear," we whispered to each other, "These are a bit much. Lisa, grab that low hanging tree branch, we'll bail out and go back to the hot dog cookout." So, Lisa grabs the branch, rips a layer of skin off her arms and winds up hanging over the river as the rest of us float downstream without her. Oops. With much effort, we're able to get her back to the inner tube raft, but now we're too far in the rapids to go back and there's too much underbrush to walk around them, especially since I managed to lose my shoes, so we decide to just keep going to the second check point.

Which we figured will be coming up any moment now.

Aaaaaaaaaany moment now.

Yup. Just around this curve. Or that one. See, the thing is that the river must double back on itself. Or maybe that big field up there is where everyone is waiting. Hm. Those signs with the big red danger symbols on them can't be good.

About three hours later, we finally see a house over looking the river. Atop a 50 foot cliff. So, we scramble up the cliff and knock on the glass doors of the dreaded suburbanite who doesn't even ask us if we're on drugs before calling the organizers of the field trip, who inform my father that we totally ditched on purpose because we are evil bad children to the core and not even Jesus can save us**.

I proceed to dream about bear attacks and hot dog cookouts for about a week.

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*Smart people may notice that the math there doesn't make sense, unless either me, my sister or my friend Barb were also over 60. Well screw you and your math. God is not about math.

** Which may or may not be true, but the actual problem was that spring flooding obscured the first rapids and made the second set seem "small" to us bad asses. Also, the drunken adults didn't help.

http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

I am going to hell

Can I bitch for just a minute about Church Folk?  Don't get me wrong, they're great Folk.  Some of the greatest Folk, in fact.  At least My Church Folk are.  They make a good brownie and they've even improved their coffee-making since they got into the whole Fair Trade thing.  They're very warm and cuddly and want to make sure everyone's included all the damn time, which gets on my nerves in ways I won't go into right now.  

The issue is their children.  Their children are Very Special.  They need a lot of Attention.  They think a great deal about the Education of their children, and convene committees on how to make sure even their Jesucation is as high quality as all their other enriching activities.  I volunteer to take part in this Jesucation because I grew up in a tiny town with a tinier church community, where if the priest's daughter didn't do it, didn't nobody do it, and besides which they were just happy that a teenager would help out, so happy in fact that they gave me Christmas presents and end-of-the-year presents and I made out pretty well for a 16 year old.  

Anyway, I feel guilty if I don't volunteer for things because I sympathize with the plight of the working priest, not to mention I like kids.  Other people's kids, not my own, because every time I see my own there's this whole uncomfortable situation where I have to pretend I don't know them, and they have to pretend they don't remember me pinning their names to their shirts and leaving them at the YMCA.

Right.  So, I've volunteered to Jesucate the Children for about four years now at this very inclusive and educated and intelligent congregation, and I'm about to leave to Jesucate the folks of the South, and they have on the schedule "Celebration" during the "Children's Formation Hour" for Sunday, and I figure I'm getting some kind of plaque with my head in bronze on it or something, but instead they ask me to "pick my favorite lesson to teach" and at the end I'll get a cupcake.

I love me some cupcakes.

But that ain't no celebration.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Jesus Cured My Hangover

So, Houseboy being all finished with his life-changing world-altering calm-shattering exams, we're attempting to re-enter the world of a social life, or at least as much of a social life as two thirty year old shut-ins have ever had.  What that means is that we spent Friday night and most of Saturday watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on dvd and eating chips and other fried things.  

Saturday night though we really tore it up and had Hedgehog over to drink beer and eat fried things on our couch with us.  Because, as I may have mentioned, I am an elderly person, I had about 5 beers and ended up all kinds of hungover on Sunday morning, which happened to be my morning to teach all the little childrens about Jesus.  There were sheep and a sheepfold and a good shepherd involved, I think.  There was a significant amount of staring silently at the sheep.  Maybe some stroking of their backs.  There was also a photographer there to capture the magic of our multicultural classroom at work and post the photos on the wall.  So, next year, when I'm long gone to Nashville and quite possibly sober enough to put in contacts, there will be pictures all over my former church of me in a ratty t-shirt and bloodshot eyes stroking some wooden sheep with a distracted look on my face.  I hope that really sells the program to the parents.

...

http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Jesus Came to Earth Covered in a Chocolate Shell

So, I'm religious and all, and some might even call me Pretty Religious, since I go to church every Sunday and I even teach the little ones about our Lord and Savior as a Sunday School teacher.  This being Lent, I'm extra serious about Episcopalianism, and we're coming up on Holy Week, when I'll get even more for serious, and attend church a lot even on weekdays.  As a matter of fact, I'm so Episcopalian that Holy Week is my favorite time of year, even over Christmas, because it's so dark and ominous and I get my feet washed, which is ticklish and uncomfortable, and your religion should make you uncomfortable at least once a year, in my opinion.

Anyway, all that is to say that Easter is fairly important to my Belief System, and the raising of The Son of God from the Dead matters a lot to me, but fuck if I'm not going to just become an atheist if I can't find a Cadbury Creme Egg pretty damn soon.  

I'm aware that they are just chocolate filled with icing.  But that icing is white on the outside and yellow in the center, just like a real egg!  And they come wrapped in foil which sometimes sticks to the egg because some of the icing leaks and you have to suck on the foil to get all the sugar and then it touches your "tin soldier" fillings and makes your whole head feel a little funny, like you're communicating with aliens.  

And besides which, Jesus likes them.  I'm just saying.

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Rain is Like Jesus' Tears

Why is Jesus crying, you might ask? Well, Jesus is crying because the weather is ugly out there. And also because you're still not reading. Do we need to ease you into it a bit? Try a book of short stories, like so:

Yes, I know it says "Novels," but if you'll just pick up the book you'll see that it can't possibly be more than one novel. It's barely big enough for ONE novel! What's that? You can't feel the heft of a virtual book? Well, get a damn imagination. You really do need to read more.

I'll help you out. This is a collection of ten short stories doing the old "send up" of literary conventions and genres, such as the detective story ("Maddened by Mystery, or The Defective Detective") and the ghost story ("Q. A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural"). And those are only the first two stories! Now, you might have some trouble with this one, since it presupposes a certain familiarity with common works of fiction, and you've obviously been raised on a diet of pure Perez Hilton, who was raised on a diet of lead-based paint. If it helps you at all, you could try reading one short Sherlock Holmes mystery first, or maybe google "Science Fiction" to get some idea what that is all about.

To give you a little inroad into what you'll be up against, here is a representative section from the story "Gertrude the Governess, or Simple Seventeen":

"Yet Gertrude cherished the memory of her parents. On her breast the girl wore a locket in which was enshrined a miniature of her mother, while down her neck inside at the back hung a daguerreotype of her father. She carried a portrait of her grandmother up her sleeve and had pictures of her cousins tucked inside her boot, while beneath her--but enough, quite enough."

If you get where that is going, then you'll like this book. But you don't have to take my word for it.... assuming you have bookstores or the internet in your area.

Darn it all to Heck

So, the Saturday before last I spent the whole morning at a "Safe Church Training," otherwise referred to in our household as "How to Not Rape Kids." It's a great training, and I would never say a foul word against the laudable pursuit of protecting kids. Because rape and molestation are bad. In case you ever wondered. But, I had to do this same training two years ago and found out at the end of this 2 hour meeting that they recommend congregations do it every 5 years, and if I'd known that I would have insisted that I still remembered all the finer points. Among these points is making sure that kids' parents or guardians pick them up after Sunday School, a rule I find annoying because kids' parents or guardians are all busy in the parish hall eating cookies and church coffee and chitchatting about Jesus and I'm left wandering around the church with their spawn looking for them. But I do it, because I am against child molestation, even in church. Anyway, I got to watch the awesome video where they interview former victims and perpetrators of abuse and play the "Is this an ok touch in church?" game and there was some tasty fancy tea and doughnuts, so among Saturdays it's not the WORST I ever had.

Immediately the next day of course I'm in the Sunday School room and being extra special careful to not let kids go to the bathroom alone or have the second graders sit on anyone's lap, and I get up to walk across the room, trip over a kid coloring a liturgical calendar and land hand-first on her ass. Darn it all to heck, I'm going to be in that training again next year, I can just see it.