I knew something was up* when not one, but three women armed with literature approached me as I went for a grocery carriage. Maybe it was the identical, pastel pedal pushers that tipped me off, but within twenty seconds I knew it was a cult-they might as well have handed me a flower. Actually, the Krishna folks seem a lot less vacant in comparison. I always had a soft spot for Harres and Moonies and the like-I didn't want to join them, but I have to admire their persistence.
Within a couple of minutes I really became creeped-out. I'm not kidding about the vacant thing-I've met people doped to the hilt on anti-depressants and tranquilisers that were more animated than that trio was. It was like someone physically went into their brains and removed their personalities. I realise it is difficult to describe if you haven't encountered it, but it is extremely unsettling when you do.
I looked at their website briefly when I got home and though it isn't immediately obvious that it is anything more than a mother's group, it only took a few clicks of the mouse to confirm my suspicions. I'm not naming the group because I don't want a bunch of them here via web searches.
I really have to wonder how they presented their organisation to Hy-Vee? Would they be permitted to stand in the vestibule handing out literature and engaging shoppers in conversation if they were recruiting for say, The Omaha Branch of Secular Humanist Marxist Theorist Formula-Feeding-Mothers With Small Children Club? (How awesome would THAT be? I'd totally join). I sort of think not. Call me old fashioned, but I like disclosure when it comes to cult recruiting. You know, the old "If you don't have anything to hide..." They could at least hand out flowers or something.
*I really knew something was wrong the minute they approached me because mothers almost never approach me. In the past year, I've developed weakness on one side of my body. It isn't a big deal, but I kind of lean a bit to the left (yeah, yeah, go ahead and make a political joke) and sometimes I stumble a bit. Add in the dropping stuff, my voice becoming softer, and the miserable red rash across my cheeks and nose from Lupus and at first glance, sometimes I look drunk. I actually thought about marketing t-shirts on the internet to the effect of "I don't have slowly progressing degeneration( and you could personalise it for whatever disease you have) ...I'm Drunk!" but most people don't share my sense of humour and the way people are so freaking literal around here, they'd probably think I was serious. More than once I've been on the playground with Danny and some mother has swooped-in to pull her child away from us. Anyway, I KNEW that I wasn't being approached to join their mommy group because I looked like I'd fit in. I'm far too dark for that anyway. At least they didn't tell me to "Go back where you came from", which was nice. Cults tend to be all over the multiculturalism thing. They're very inclusive.
So heads up on the Kool Aid mummies and their recruitment campaign.
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Regarding the vacant automaton countenance of culties and not recognizing it unless you've seen it: one thing I absolutely loved about the opera "Faust" in San Fran about 15 years ago (besides the great and devilishly charming Samuel Ramey as the devil) was one moment toward the end when these devout christians stand up to the devil: they are all in a line, dressed similarly in white and look pale and are unmoving (looking vacant and as if programmed) and chanting. Well let me tell you, in the audience *I* cowered and shivered at them as much as Mephitsopheles. I really felt a fondness for whomever directed that production for presenting the devout robots in that way.
Oh, and yeah: that's the thing that probably bothers me most about Sacto: people here just don't "get it." Yes, here too most people are just so literal and don't get wry references or irony or sardonic humor. They think you're just being rude or weird or retarded. But in fact, they just come across as empty as the culties in the Nebraska Hy-Vee parking lot.
Speaking of Faust...
L. had this brilliant idea for a comedy website that would parody "DealHack.com"
Instead, it would "Deal With The Devil Hack.com" where everything is always a really good bargain, but you never get what you thought you were buying.
I think it has potential.
Funny, we were just saying how much we would love to move away, but after a week in someplace like San Francisco, I would probably want to kill people because they would be even more irritating.I mean, you remember Margaret. I couldn't live in a town full of Margarets, you know? I'll take the humourless Nebraskans any day.
a friend of mine in San Fran back in the day, from NY orig'ly, was astounded at the ubiquity of moral indignation as a means of stating the PC agenda. He found it in social interactions and in art and it irritated the hell out of him. "Good art is not simply expressing moral indignation." But that's how it is in San Fran. Buncha whiners who support each other when any of them whines, by activism or art, about something "incorrect." Such whining is also a way to get yourself considered "intelligent."
Or Cambridge.
Yeah, I should just pack up my shit and move to Canada. Maybe Jenn will let me live in her yard.
I've had that in mind lately too. Let's all go! (Or Holland, just becuz.)
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