Ceci N'est Pas un Potiron

I participated in our annual church pumpkin carving contest this Halloween. Many years ago, at our first ever, my partner and I won with a very scary, monster-headed, jack-o-lantern. It wasn't the typical triangle eyes, circle nose, big grin jack-o-lantern; think a terrifying Minotaur with glowing orange features and flaming eyes.


From the beginning, participants pushed the limits of what a jack-o-lantern could be (should be?). It was great. But as time passed people realized there were certain strings you could pull to easily win. Soon, the winning pumpkins were maudlin Bible scenes, hearts and crosses, and Jesus. Lots and lots of Jesus. The judges were unnatural selection, causing our pumpkins to evolve into a sappy pile of Footprints Mugs crossed with Psalm 23 incubated in Thomas Kinkade's colon.

I just Googled that.

Nothing.

There's a hole in the internets.

I think this video gives you a sense of what I mean though:

They might as well have been unicorns soaring over rainbows.

Anyway, when I participated I would try to break the barriers of pumpkin carving. I was trying to blow minds, man. I transgressed the boundary between viewer and pumpkin. I made people acknowledge their role in creating the idea of jack-o-lantern. I forced us to question the very concept. I pushed the physical boundaries of pumpkin... ness?- blowing one up, shooting flames out of another, leaving one blank pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern pumpkin jack-o-lantern

Needless to say, I wouldn't win. I was doing it all for fun, but it's certainly more fun to win.

So to win, I did this:

Layers upon layers.

Were I truly an artist, I would have raised my pumpkin high over my head, yelled, "To create is to deny!" and thrown it to the ground smashing it to bits. Instead I brought home my first prize- a huge bucket of candy, pumpkin puree, and pumpkin frisbees.

I promise to enjoy it all ironically.

And though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Did You Know There Is a GodTube? I Just Learned That
Narcolepsy- Ben Folds Five
Youth Culture Killed My Dog- TMBG
Radio Song- REM
Sunny Afternoon- The Kinks
Ran Can Can- Tito Puente
Circle- Miles Davis
Robochacha- Kid Koala
The Love Cats- The Cure
We- Descendents
Bone Machine- The Pixies
Bullet In Your Head- Rage Against The Machine
Strange Fruit- Billie Holiday
Yes 'em to Death- The Coup

Do I Even Have A Computer Anymore?

I have become so undisciplined- doing all manner of things besides keeping up with my interwebjournal- or rather, keeping you up with my internetwebjournal. Of course by you, I mean the internets.

There've been a number of things I could've written about. There was the anniversary of the Treaty of Westphalia. That's worth commemorating because it marked the end of religious conflict and perhaps the beginning of Modernity. No one has killed anyone since then so it's a good thing to remember. Still, I never got around to that. I also thought about writing about how hard it is to hate Man U when Tevez and Rooney are playing. I'm sure there was some sort of "love the sinner hate the sin" lesson in that. Complaints about FSC are on my mind. The silliness of our "Forty Churches in Five Years" mantra keeps interrupting happier thoughts. I've been impressed by my Tues/Thurs AM students. I've been wondering if something called THE CHURCH can exist. All kinds of stuff just this past week- yet no posts.

What's wrong with me?

Well if I can't post something on Halloween, I don't deserve all of the candy I will be eating. So here's some creepy for Halloween:


And...
And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll
Woe oh oh oh oh oh

I also promise to write something about tonight's hoe-down and this weekend's Dia de Los Muertos festivities. Maybe I'll even do another live-blogging experiment from AAR.

Abortions for Some, Little American Flags for Everybody Else

How angry of a Simpsons writer do you have to be to end the Treehouse of Horror on that note last night? It was neither one of those subtle moments when you turn to another and knowingly say, "It's true." Nor was it the kind of laugh out loud but socially critical comedy of Citizen Kang. At its best, The Simpsons have been one of the more biting shows. Even as old people like me bemoan what we see as the general decline of the show, the hits of the current 1 hit for every 2 misses era are often as big a hit as ever. And the Halloween episodes have remained especially relevant- not in a youth-pastory, goateed, middle-aged mom in a thong, do I say "sick" or "dope" way- but in that good old "These are our sacred cows; let's eat them," way. But last night's "It's true- we're so lame" ending was a bit... a lot sour. And still, what a hit.
That they could do this without being preachy or heavy-handed is either a testament to the writers or a measure of how preachy and heavy-handed I am. I guess it could be both. But that it's a cartoon, rather or more than TV news, our churches, or the branch of our government purposed with oversight that offered this clearly stated critique is a testament to how pathetic we all are. Isn't that what we want animated comedies to do for us?

Sexy Comes Earlier and Earlier Every Year

I'm not the first to note that Halloween often carries the opportunity/challenge/oppressive requirement that women be a sexy/skanky/slutty whatever. A woman's not just a nurse for Halloween, she's a sexy/skanky/slutty nurse. This just means she's a nurse in a short skirt, push up bra, high heels, and low cut top. If she's a car, ghost, robot, grandma, table, maid, giraffe, amoeba... leaf... bucket... whatever- it's the same thing.

Other people have written Feminist critiques of this or just made the funny observation that it's the women who don't buy into the caricature of woman that don't do this.

Whatever.

I wanted there to be a caricature of hyper-masculinity that I could be for Halloween but anything I thought of seemed too Pride Parade. Plus, there isn't much that might be hyper-masculine that I can pull off. Unless it's hairy. I can do that.

I can also pull off sexy Vikram Ray. So I did.

The World's A Mess; It's In My Kiss

So thinking about my awesome Jack-o-Lantern, I thought something like this:
"... a symbol of generalized angst that accompanies the historical conditions of globalization can't beat a classical representation of the real horrors of starving Irish immigrants and their barely disguised pagan worship..."

And it made me think this:
"... Ha- another way Mexicans and Irish are similar- they hang on to their 'old ways' pretty tightly."

And then writing notes and looking up some images for class this week I thought:
"...the mining through tradition and the reformulation we do to make sense of who we are is wild- culture is a bit of an illusion."

There is no real "they," no Irish, no Mexican, except for the Irish and Mexican we create.

Of course there is a place called Ireland, a place called Mexico and people there and not there who identify themselves as Irish or Mexican. (Though even those labels suggest a continuity or stability of identity that is not real- ask if someone is Tarascan or Purepecha, Mexica, or Mexican- and they might say, "Yes"). So Halloween is an Irish holiday that would make no sense if it were transported, as we practice it here, back to Eire for their Samhain, but without that there would be no Halloween as we have it here. This isn't just to say that we (should) understand ourselves via inherited traditions or live in a particular context. That's just being alive- go ahead, try being outside of history and see what happens. The point is, we pick and choose and labor to craft an identity based on who we think we are or what we should be- and just as intensely labor to create an identity for those who are not us. It's good to understand that, in fact, it's a problem, a horrible problem when we don't. When we think that a culture can be a closed and stable body of phenomena that determine behavior, that is as dumb as saying "Ohh... Gemini and Virgo are ruled by Mercury, don't buy that house this year."

Irish aren't one way, Arabs another, Mexicans yet another and on. That is, there is no thing that is Irish, Arab, Mexican, French, German, Chinese because it is Irish, Arab, Mexican, French, German, Chinese. We can say that in particular historical conditions there are traditions and behaviors that are possible and observable, but it is neither a genuine appreciation of diversity nor a true understanding of what we are as human to say, "You're ___ because you're Irish."

There are at least three reasons why this matters to me (besides obliquely addressing it in class this week): Reason the 1st- I am part of a community/culture that wants to transform its identity into something that is neither consistent with its assumed tradition nor the understanding we have of what it means to be in Christ. It doesn't help to say, "That's not who we are," because very quickly it's who we could be. But that's a bad we to be. Calling ourselves EFCSW instead of a Yearly Meeting, Annual Conference instead of the same, murmurs that we may discard our Fervent Convictions, being so cozy with Biola, inviting Master's Seminarians to speak to our congregations all mean something- something bad.

These aren't just random happenings, but events in the ongoing formation of our community character and identity- none of which are appropriate to who we think we are as disciples, people who have been called to be transformed from slaves to friends of Christ. If they're a deliberate rejection of Quakerism, that's sad. If they are thoughtless or based on church growth-marketing strategies (same thing as thoughtless I guess) that's more than sad... sadder I guess.

Reason B. Many things in the air these days suggest we don't understand culture this way. There seems to be this talk of a conflict of civilizations, of essential attributes of culture being behind this so called defining war of the 21st century. Oh the conflict is really there, but the reasons attributed to it, the categories for thinking about it, and what we imagine can be done are facile and, well... wrong. The corollary aspects of this syndrome have us believing there is something unified and bound called "American" that is sustained by becoming more and more like our enemies but is somehow justified by some magical substance that is "America."

Nothing above suggests that differences and conflict aren't real. But, this reduction of conflict to an issue of culture or civilization justifies and exacerbates it.

Reason #3- I am thinking about Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos and how much fear there is surrounding these celebrations. I am wondering if this fear is of death, remembering we are spiritual, of some pagan "other," of Papists, or good old Christian in-fighting.

At least, in their refusing to give up their "pre-Christian" practices, autumn is made that much better for us... whoever that might be.

That's all- no big deal.

Who's Been Telling Lies?
So What- Miles Davis
Aquarius- The 5th Dimension
La Vie En Rose- Edith Piaf
Slow Country- Gorillaz
Join Together- The Who
Happiness is a Warm Gun- The Beatles
World's A Mess; It's In My Kiss- X

Jack-O-Editorials

I must be very tedious company; even our Jack-o-lanterns are politicized? See how we've incorporated the themes of the season into our creations- brilliant isn't it? 9/11 and sheer terror- what more could you ask for?

Here's what more I could ask for: in any pumpkin carving contest, blatantly maudlin entries should be tossed from our roof and onto our compost pile, judges should be thoroughly vetted, found familiar with classical jack-o-lantern forms, and be able to distinguish between generalized anxiety and real fear.