Weirdness

The Beneficiary, after tolerating another of my free-form, word-association, rabbit-trail expeditions into dark humor over some otherwise unremarkable event or bit of information, which rabbit-trail at least resulted in a thin but quickly hidden smile (she tries to not encourage me in the small hope it will quickly damp out and normalcy will re-assert itself), has informed me yet again that I'm one of the weirdest people she knows.

It's no surprise that this has come up before, and in fact it would have been truly weird if it hadn't come up in the near-hemi-century we've been together. Or would it be demi-century? Probably ought to just stick with half-hemidemisemimillenium, which is slightly more descriptive if slightly less accurate, or even better a hemidecimillenium, which is spot on accurate and easier to spell. 

Where was I?

Right, got it. We've been together a long fucking time, is what we're going for here, more than enough for it to have been desperately weird if such flagrantly apparent weirdness had not come up at some point, and repeatedly.

Now, I don't recall what it was that set me off this time around, but she used it to pivot into the idea that I need to start writing this stuff down. I strongly suspect she mostly wants me to stop annoying her with it.

I'm not sure that writing it will be a good substitute as she's pretty much required to be an (occasionally terrible) audience, while y'all are here voluntarily, and I think we can all see what the problem with THAT will be. She's stuck, at least up till the point that she punches me in the arm and tells me to shut the fuck up, she's trying to watch the news, which I find chock-full of commentable stuff. The news, not the arm punch. Y'all, on the other hand, can shag on off to a more reputable part of the Internet and leave me here mumbling in the dark by myself.

"What the hell," I thought with a mental shrug, "No guts, no Air Medal, as we used to say back in the day."

(I never got an Air Medal, so I've stopped saying it.)

(Except, apparently, for now.)

So I started flipping back through my notebook trying to find something that would trigger a post's worth of text.

I immediately ran across notes I took during Sunday churching a couple of weeks back, for which I even stole the Pastor's sermon title, "Leaving Jerusalem". No, seriously, that's a great title.

He preached about how it was that Jesus got cross-threaded with some Big Deal Jews as well as the Romans (who were widely known for what you may call "vigorous" criminal justice and foreign policy responses) was unsurprisingly nailed up, died, and was buried.

Then, to everyone's consternation (not least his own followers) he arose. 

Now, this whole "arose" business seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people, and as evidence that it actually occurred the Pastor took it upon himself to work through the TON o' 2000-year-old post-dead Jesus sightings recited in the Bible. These purported miracles supported his main thesis y'see, i.e., that Jesus really is still alive, which must be true because a buttload of people saw him.

Now, it's safe to say I remained unconvinced, not least because I don't know any of these people, all of whom could charitably be called "unreliable witnesses". But that wasn't why I'd started taking notes. No, it was this:

According to The Book, Jesus appeared to women at the tomb, appeared to individual disciples, appeared to meetings of followers, appeared to people on the road, appeared in disguise all over the place, always revealing himself in time to make some moral point or another — in fact, I wasn't aware of it, but he was apparently appearing all over Israel (although mostly in the Jerusalem area) for a LONG time after the Romans had pitched him headlong off this mortal coil. Kim Kardashian in her prime doesn't make appearances as often, and she's not even dead.

About half-way into the recitation of re-appearances, my notebook contains a scrawled sub-title for the preacher's original clever title: "How Can We Miss You If You Won't Go Away?" and below that I'd sketched in a bunch of notes having to do with a Deity that continues to be inconveniently present ALL THE DAMNED TIME, like that annoying, geeky kid at the office who is always sticking his nose in and showing up uninvited at gatherings and saying "Hi, guys, whatcha'll doin'?"

What if the True Believers finally got fed up with it, smacked him with a large brick and quietly rolled him into the Sea of Galilee so that they could get on with having a religion? (Probably a lesson there about how to assume a place you've been training for for YEARS that Prince Charles could take to heart — amirite, Chuck? Call me. We need to talk.)

Anyhow, all the names would have to be changed of course, and there's the sticking point about how it is that the entire Roman Empire couldn't kill him, but some crusty goat-herders and fishermen did him with a chunk of cured mud, but other than that the story practically writes itself. Or is already written, depending on how strongly you define Biblical plagiarism.

Which, now that I see it on a screen, actually makes a pretty good story. So I'm gonna go write that now, OK? I'll finish up my original thought (which, as I vaguely recall, has to do with weirdness and rabbit-trails) another time.

In Our Next Episode:   How I retain my astonishing focus.