Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we encourage free-thinking! Make up your own mind about things. Don't wait for the dude next door to tell you what to think. Unless he sees termite tubes headed into your foundation. Then maybe you should trust him.
I've been reading a little book called Deliver Us from Evil, by Cindy Jacobs, that I bought at a Christian bookstore while visiting my sister. And I've been giving my opinion about it, which is my opinion, and you are free to agree or disagree as you like. Just don't stain my doggone furniture.
Mrs. Cindy Jacobs takes aim at the occult in a manner most dramatic, and I'll have a lot more to say about her and her book next week. But tonight, duty calls. My daughter The Spare is having six of her friends over. That's seven 13-year-olds in my living room.
I have a small house. And I'm distinctly fearful for my upholstery!
This morning The Spare was tootling around very early, cleaning house for her guests. (Yeah, go figure.) I got up, and I saw her flicking through the channels on the t.v. She went right past Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The aforementioned Buffy is a target of Mrs. Cindy Jacobs's ire. I couldn't remember ever seeing The Spare watching the show.
So I asked: "Do you ever watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"
She answered: "Ew, no."
I said, "Why don't you like it?"
She said: "Well, it's really gory and nasty, and the girl dresses like a slut."
So, Mrs. Jacobs, if you're looking for someone turned into a Pagan by watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you'll have to look elsewhere.
So sorry. I was trying to be helpful.
10 comments:
Yellowdog Grannie told me you were a fun blog. She was right.
It always comes home to me that people who target TV shows, movies, music, etc. totally defeat their purpose. All they do is give publicity and arouse curiosity where none had existed.
hey?...would I lie...?...ha...
i asked the granddaughters once when some weird outfits were in style why they didn't wear them too..they said the same thing...i don't dress like a slut...
i don't dress like a slut...
That actually depresses me quite a bit. Then again, I'm enough of a radical feminist I don't think there should be any such thing as "a slut," let alone dressing like one.
It's really sad to see young women, who really ought to know better, embracing the same tired patriarchal standards of patrolling rigid gender norms as expressed through fashion. "I don't wear 'weird outfits' because I don't dress like a slut." Which is, of course, a great way to perpetuate patriarchal standards of dress and behaviour without even having to put men on the line as the enforcers...
What a sad reminder of how far the backlash has progressed -- you'd think this kind of crap would have been at least on the wane by now.
Interrobang, I am so with you on that.
Anne, you just crack me up! One interesting thing to do is to look at the original language of holy books. (the original phrasing in the ten commandments is "Thou shalt not murder." and other things like that show up. It's always best to use an irrational persons own words against them. LOVE it!
Muin
It's really sad to see young women, who really ought to know better, embracing the same tired patriarchal standards of patrolling rigid gender norms as expressed through fashion.
At the same time, it's quite empowering to witness young women say, "Here's how everyone around me is dressing/acting/emulating, but I choose to follow my own path/instincts/fashion sense."
Hello Anne! Yellowdog Granny is my cousin and she recommended your blog highly, and I can see why.
Regarding the book you're reading, people like Cindy Jacobs are fascists at heart, and fascists always need some scapegoat to rail against, whether it's black people, or Jewish people, or Mexicans, or some other marginalized group. Of course, racism doesn't sell like it used to, so now they've been forced to come back to good old reliable religious prejudice. And pagans, as well as nonbelievers (I'm an agnostic), are small enough in numbers and disorganized enough politically that we aren't able to push back yet. The reason that people like Cindy Jacobs have such a problem with stuff like Harry Potter and Pokemon is that it's interfering with their attempts to program the kiddies, because when you've read a good book or seen an entertaining anime show, the bible seems so tedious and boring in comparison.
What's really funny is that if it weren't for the so-called "occult," much of what we currently call Christianity wouldn't even exist, because so much of the Judeo-Christian tradition has been appropriated from other religions: Easter, Christmas, Halloween, the virgin birth, the whole death-and-resurrection thing, Noah's Ark, and so on. Maybe someone should write a book called "Deliver Us From Jesus." Better yet: "Deliver Us from Jesus' followers."
The reason people like Cindy Jacobs blame television shows and novels for their god's loss of worshippers is that their own faith does not spring from ecstatic experience, but rather from indoctrination. Their faith is solely informed by third-party writings, so they think that everyone selects their religion based on this.
I'm always amused by the stupefied expressions on some evangelical faces when I mention that in fact, my Gods provided direct 'conversion' experiences for me (starting with a startling forest encounter with the Horned God when I was 8.) and that I didn't pick up my faith from Harry Potter (well, ok, at my age, it would have been 'Lord of the Rings' - though in all fairness, I still find the prayer to Elbereth to be inspirational.)
Passed this way via Yellowdog Granny, I will definitely be passing this way again.
There are 341,000 Anne Johnsons in the United States and you are the only one who’s blog I have read.
YDG sent me here too. I will have to read some past posts. There are really that many Anne Johnsons? that is crazy.
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