Gothic South

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Southern gothic has a certain appeal even to northerners.  Casting about for a weekend movie included in one of our streaming services, A House on the Bayou suggested itself.  I hadn’t heard of it before, but it bore the Blumhouse brand, so I gave it a try.  In this age of digital production, it is the equivalent of a “straight to video” release.  The story is a bit confusing but the atmosphere is creepy and most of the acting is good.  Spoilers may arise from this point on.  John is having an affair with a younger woman and Jessica has found out.  She insists that if John wants to save their marriage he has to agree to a vacation with her and their daughter Anna.  Down on the bayou.  Once they get there both Jessica and John’s passive aggression towards each other is on show.

A couple of locals, eighteen-year-old Isaac and his Grandpappy, stop over.  It’s pretty obvious from the beginning that there’s something off about the pair.  Isaac clearly has supernatural powers and soon begins to threaten the family.  It turns out that John, knowing Jessica would insist on coming to this house, had pre-hired Isaac and Grandpappy to kill Jessica and make it look like a robbery.  Thing is, Isaac and Grandpappy have moral fibre.  They lock John in a hidden room with a demonic coyote that eats him.  And they burn his lover to death.  Jessica and Anna, who still love John, want to save him and after Jessica kills Grandpappy and Isaac, goes to the police.  It turns out that there is no house on the bayou and they all know about Isaac and Grandpappy, who are still alive, because they’re beings who kill evil-doers.

While not a great movie, this is one that’s heavily invested in religion and horror.  Morality is defined, according to Isaac and Grandpappy, by the Bible.  There is some confusion in the plot, however, when Grandpappy denies Isaac is his grandson and the locals seem to say he is.  Isaac implies that he’s the son of the Devil.  Grandpappy says Isaac never ages, but he tells John he’s 21 and has been in the Army (he tells Anna he’s 18).  Although he protects morality, Isaac attempts to abduct Anna to “marry” her, although she’s only 14.  There’s a good attempt to integrate religion into this horror, but as often happens, the religion is inconsistent with what it claims to be.  I’m not sure how many viewers pay attention to such things, but some of us do write books about it.  Overall, it is passable southern gothic for a rainy afternoon.

Sun Shines

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The world is a much stranger place than we are taught in school.  Even as a kid I was drawn to the weird and uncanny.  Yes, I was teased by others.  The mocking response is one that is intended to bring outsiders to conformity.  Nobody likes being shunned.  A friend, knowing my continued interest in the unusual, sent me a piece that mentioned, among other things, the Marian apparitions at Conyers, Georgia.  On October 13, 1998, while I was ensconced at Nashotah House, an event took place of which I’d never heard.  It was similar to the “miracle of the sun,” known worldwide as part of the phenomenon witnessed by between 50,000 and 70,000 people at Fátima, Portugal.  Both events included several solar anomalies.  The Catholic Church, always reticent toward modern miracles, didn’t claim Fatima as an official one.  In 1998, on the farm of Nancy Fowler in Conyers, the phenomenon was repeated in front of 100,000 witnesses.  Interestingly, the Wikipedia page on the apparitions doesn’t mention this.

News reels and Polaroid photographs (which can’t be tampered with) show something clearly unusual happening with the sun.  There are videos on YouTube that present these.  I’m always a bit skeptical of any modern videos, however, since so much can be faked.  There is no source whence the curious might go to find a rational, but not debunking, description.  Mainstream science dismisses such things out of hand—they can’t happen, so they don’t.  Faith-based treatments are also suspect.  The fascinating thing, to me, is that I was at a religious, quasi-Catholic institution at the time and heard nothing of it.  Television reception at the seminary was notoriously poor, and although the internet existed, the seminary had not yet jumped on the bandwagon.  At least not to the point of say, getting news online.

The article my friend sent was making the point that when large crowds of credible witnesses see something we should pay attention.  With events that don’t regularly repeat—the problem of occasional phenomena—setting up scientific observation doesn’t work.  For instance, ghosts tend not to show up when actual scientists (not those who play them on television) set up equipment.  One conclusion is “that’s because ghosts don’t exist.”  Another, however, is that they don’t act on cue.  And scientific experiments take both time and money and aren’t wasted on things that have a high probability of not showing up.  Our world is full of weird things like this.  All of us have had something we’ve brushed off as “just one of those things.”  But when 100,000 people see something, I’m curious as to what it was.

Scary Scripture

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The question’s not as simple as whether chocolate and peanut butter go together.  What is it with horror and the Bible?  A number of us have explored that question in book form, but probably the most prolific is Brandon R. Grafius.  His Scared by the Bible is a mapping through terrain that will feel foreign to some: if you live for the beach in summer, why would you fly to Antarctica to visit the South Pole instead?  Part of the reason is clearly that the Bible isn’t the rainbow-and-unicorn book that it’s often made out to be.  Some parts—not a few—are pretty scary.  That’s Grafius’ entry point into how horror and the Bible are surprisingly compatible.  Interestingly, we had similar starts down this path.  A Bible given to us by a grandmother when we were a child, and the determination to read it.  My world was a bit more hellfire and brimstone than Grafius’ but we’ve ended up near the same place.

Often I thought, as I was reading it, “Are people going to get both these references?” (i.e., both the biblical story and the horror movie being cited).  After all, many Christian denominations still teach that horror is not helpful at best, and satanic at worst.  I just wonder how many of us there are who never found watching horror a spiritual problem.  I grew up thinking about death a lot.  Part of this was because Evangelical children’s literature raised the question of where would you spend eternity if you died today.  Seriously, some of the stories I read, along with Dick and Jane, still scare me today.  Religion often uses fear for its own purposes.  So does the Bible.  Grafius comes down to this at the end, asking if it’s intentional on the Bible’s part.

It seems to me that this is an important question to explore.  Religion has been weaponized through fear since at least the Reagan years.  More recently it has been aimed specifically at us “evil” liberals and our “culture of death” even as conservatives rain bombs on Iran.  We desperately need to understand religion’s now very intentional use of fear to retain power.  People are afraid.  They have reason to be.  Generally it’s not the emotional issues politicians hand-pick to garner votes.  Yes, the Bible is a source of fear.  Horror films are often also a source of scary thoughts.  They do have a lot in common.  We just need someone to come along with an open jar of peanut butter to run into someone eating a chocolate bar.

Whose Bible?

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“What the Bible really says.”  That’s a phrase you find in many places.  In academic books and on the lips of “true believers.”  Nevertheless, it’s a problematic formulation, no matter who uses it.  Biblical scholars often like to “correct” public assumptions about the Bible, but since the association of most people with the Bible is emotional, chances of changing any opinions remain slim.  There seem to be two troublesome words in the phrase: “Bible” and “really.”  Let’s take them in turn.  The Bible doesn’t exist.  Well, it does, but it’s an intellectual formulation, not a book.  This can be asserted with a great deal of certainty.  Why?  Because the boundaries of the Bible are porous and nobody, but nobody, has the authority to close them.  Just a quick example: the books of the Apocrypha—Bible or not?  Most Protestants fall on the “not” side of that question, although the King James Bible included some of the Apocrypha.

The question gets more vexed when we start asking about books like Jubilees and 1 Enoch.  There are ancient Christian churches that include them.  Since they are African, however, Europeans/North Americans have privileged the western canon, and have excluded them.  They are, however, part of “the Bible” for millions of people.  The book of Jude quotes Enoch as Scripture, just saying.  Things get even dicier when you include scholarly opinion.  Many biblical scholars believe The Gospel of Thomas has just as much credibility as (if not more than) the canonical four.  Since biblical scholars can’t add or remove books, however, it’s a moot point, although they are the best informed. 

“Really” is really problematic.  Who has the authority to determine what the Bible “really” says?  Doesn’t this actually mean, “the correct interpretation”?  Who is qualified to make such a statement?  A preacher?  Did God tell them personally?  Did they think to record it?  Or should it be the experts—biblical scholars who spend their lives and careers learning everything possible about the Good Book?  Again, no person, or body of people, has the right and authority to make that decision.  What does the Bible really mean?  I wouldn’t leave that up to any of the many, many clergy I know.  It requires a bit more training than they have.  And I’m still really bothered by the “really” part.  It’s always going to be a matter of interpretation.  Yes, I know hermeneutics always spoil a good time.  Until, however, we can all agree on what “the Bible” is, nobody can say what it “really” says.

Things Seen

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I disagree with the critics on this one.  Things Heard & Seen is a remarkable horror film.  That’s not to say it’s without its flaws, but it is quite engrossing for the right kind of viewer.  It has elements of dark academia, as well as ghosts and a respectful treatment of Swedenborg.  And it takes place in the Hudson Valley (the headless horseman is even mentioned once).  The Bible appears both visually and is quoted.  In short, it encapsulates many of my personal interests.  And it’s not badly made.  There will be spoilers here, but it’s difficult to discuss religion and horror without them.  George Claire married Catherine because he got her pregnant.  He has, however, finished his doctorate and been offered a post at Saginaw College, in the Hudson Valley.  It quickly becomes clear that George is an entitled, self-centered liar (sounds familiar).

As the story unfolds, both Catherine and their daughter Franny see ghosts.  George dismisses them but even at the college the head of his department is a Swedenborgian and tells him not to dismiss the spiritual world.  George’s true character starts showing through.  He cheats on his wife.  He forged his letter of support from his Columbia doctoral advisor because his work was substandard.  When a fellow faculty member finds out, he runs her off the road, putting her into a coma.  He drowns his department head while boating on the Hudson because he also learned the truth.  He even claims to have painted pictures done by his brother.  In other words, he’s a real piece of work.  The ghosts aren’t able to save his wife when he murders her, but his colleague comes out of her coma and spills the beans.

In the end, George sails away into a Thomas Cole painting where a Swendenborgian ending overtakes him.  The use of Swedenborg adds an etherial element to the film, figuring thoughtfulness to what otherwise might be just another story about an unhinged academic.  The department head’s advice about seeing death in a Swedenborgian way was also strangely affecting.  In other words, this is thoughtful horror.  And once again it demonstrates that religion can be crucial to understanding what we really fear.  I suppose some critics dislike the unambiguous use of ghosts and the supernatural breaking into “reality,” but that seems to be precisely the point.  I only learned of this movie because Netflix recommended it, but they hit on several major themes in my work over the past several years.  I would watch this one again.

Old Passion

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Something I find inherently fascinating revolves around used books.  I buy used books and I always examine the overlooked scraps of paper that get left between the pages.  Mostly it’s random ephemera, but it is the window into a stranger’s life.  They had this bit of paper lying around to mark their place.  Had I the time I’d piece together the puzzle.  Recently, while preparing to donate some books to the local AAUW book sale, I found a scrap of paper in one of my own books.  This was from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, based on the date in my wife’s handwriting: 3-19-04.  It’s an Associated Press story from Statesboro, Georgia, involving a dust-up between a married couple after watching The Passion of the Christ.  That makes it interesting in its own right, but what’s especially striking is the couple battled, including a pair of scissors, over whether “God the Father in the Holy Trinity was human or symbolic.”  Things got out of hand.

For context, I was still teaching at Nashotah House at the time.  Theological debates, sometimes heated, took place there on a regular basis.  People get very fired up over what they believe.  This may set our species apart from other thinking animals, or perhaps it’s part of the price we pay for abstract thought.  You almost want to step between the warring spouses and say, “let us handle this, we’re professionals.”  Of course, the species of specialist that has studied theology is dying out.  Universities are cutting religious studies departments.  Churches are losing members.  Better hide the scissors.

“Passion” is the operative word here.  We get quite attached to our views.  So much so that no amount of logic or rational discourse can dislodge them.  We see this with the utter devotion to political leaders and on-screen personalities as well as to religious beliefs.  Some of us were curious enough to study where these ideas came from and how we know that they’re “true.”  This is not for the faint of heart.  Testing your core assumptions can lead you into some very unfamiliar, unmapped territories.  And since religion deals with ultimate concerns, the stakes couldn’t be higher.  Our couple felt silly after the police had been called and the bail paid.  Passion is very much what drives our species, and perhaps others as well.  We feel we need what we believe to be true, and we’re willing to fight for it.  Even if it means, as the chief sheriff’s deputy remarked, they seem to have missed the point of religion in the first place.

Thorough

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It was a warm summer’s day, sometime in the mid-eighties.  I was living in Boston and some friends asked if I’d like to go to Walden Pond, outside Concord.  I’d read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, so yes, please.  I knew Thoreau was an early Massachusetts Transcendentalist, mystic, and nature lover.  That particular day we were the only ones at the site where his cabin in the woods once stood.  I suspect that, being there with friends, it wasn’t as contemplative a trip as it would’ve been had I made it alone.  Still, here we were, nearing a century-and-a-half after his death, remembering him.  My wife and I recently watched the PBS three-part documentary on Thoreau, and I learned a lot about him.  He was admirable in a way that few public figures are today.  What’s more, it’s clear that he’s widely appreciated as a visionary and believer in freedom.

Image credit: Benjamin D. Maxham, public domain (via Wikimedia Commons)

Writing in the nineteenth century, it seems, got you noticed much more than it does now.  Thoreau had profound things to say.  He had strong convictions about abolition and being shuffled into an existence of work, forced from being free.  He was able to live the way he did largely because he didn’t need many things.  He also had famous friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson, for one, who gave him a place to stay when he had none of his own.  The documentary makes the point that, despite being a hero to many, we’ve gone ahead and built the world Thoreau most feared.  Few, or at least a few of us, find that work doesn’t define us.  Writing, it seems, still helps with that.  Those of us born to write do so, and long days “in the office” must be endured to come to life when writing is again possible.

If you think deeply about it you start to realize that we’ve allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked by economics.  If you have a mortgage you know this to be true.  Or if you have a medical condition—you can’t afford not to have a job without insurance.  Thoreau, it seems, lived with the tuberculosis that ultimately killed him pretty much all of his life.  And he died too young, we feel, because he had so much to say.  So much to say that was worth listening to.  Such writers are rare today because, like everything else, writing has become a business and some readers even prefer things “written” by AI.  And yet I remember that warm summer’s day and think of a placid time still earlier when one might’ve met Henry David Thoreau in the woods.

Simple Gifts

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During my many years of studying religion I learned about the Shakers.  It was many years ago and my knowledge isn’t extensive.  I was caught off guard when my wife suggested we see The Testament of Ann Lee.  I hadn’t heard of it and knew nothing about it, but she had me at “Shakers.”  This is a most unusual and engaging movie.  I didn’t realize it was a musical until after it was over.  (It had been a long day and I did, a time or two, think, “hey, this is like a musical, the way characters break into song.”)  The thing is the songs are all diegetic; they fit into the plot and the Shakers were known for their music as well as for their furniture.  The movie follows, in broad outlines, the life of Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the sect.  It made me curious to learn more.  

The Shakers emerged during that period of intense religious foment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  They settled in upstate New York where numerous other sects came into the world, such as the Mormons and the Millerites.  The Shakers had their origins among the Quakers, but it is unclear if Ann Lee’s family were members of the latter denomination.  In the movie an encounter with George Whitefield awakens Lee’s spiritual curiosity.  Historically, Whitefield was one of the first trans-Atlantic superstars, drawing rock-concert-sized crowds to hear his outdoor preaching.  In my head much of this was muddled during the film—it had been a long and disappointing day and I was totally unprepared for it.  I’m glad to have watched it, however; it rekindled my interest in American sects.

I have on my shelf an unread history of the Shakers.  It has consequently been moved to my “to read” pile.  I read, a few years ago, a history of the Oneida community in Upstate, and also a biography of William Miller.  The Oneida community practiced open marriage and eventually became known as the producers of flatware—Oneida silverware is still easily found.  Shakers, on the other hand, believed in celibacy, meaning that they could only grow through conversion.  The many Shaker communities founded by Mother Ann Lee dwindled and now appear to be down to three members.  The movie, which is quite good, is unlikely to lead to a resurgence of celibacy and revival of the Shakers.  They did have an outsized influence, not only for their furniture (think Oneida) but also for their music.  Add to that now, a musical.

Million Air

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Life is strange.  While I was in Boston for the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting in November, something unusual happened.  For a few days back then this blog was getting a lot of traffic.  I mean, a lot.  For me.  In fact, I posted about when I finally shot past a million hits.  I couldn’t figure out why.  Well, things have settled back to their usual trickle and I figured it was just “one of those things.”  Pleased but not obsessed, I went back to my usual blend of observations about life, dark academia, and horror movies.  Then, and I can’t recollect exactly how I saw it, I noticed that my old blogging buddy Dan McClellan had, about that time given me a shoutout on his social media.  Then I remembered that I’d run into Dan at the conference and we’d had a brief chat.

The pieces began to fit together.  (Thanks, Dan!)  I’ve known a few fairly well-known people over the years.  Most of them are academics, and a few of them clergy.  Occasionally an author who has made a name for him or herself.  Some of them sometimes give me shoutouts but I’d never seen the numbers tick up like they had after this particular one.  I can’t figure out blog stats.  During the early years of this blog I had quite a bit of traffic.  I remember that in 2015 my views plummeted precipitously.  They’ve stayed at that low level ever since.  Until last year.  Now they’re headed back to normal, post 2015-levels.  I’ve tried some other platforms such as YouTube, but they take a lot more time and lead to limited hits.  Some influencers suggest I should try podcasting again.

I do have plans to bring the podcast back.  It takes several hours to make such an entry into internetdom.  I started podcasting when I began this blog (well, actually the blog was started by one of my nieces when a family member suggested I should podcast).  What happened?  I lost my job at Gorgias Press and I had to spend the next five years trying to find full-time employment in a stable environment.  By the time stability returned I figured podcasts were dead because everybody was watching videos.  I may have done a Mark Twain there.  Podcasts are still popular.  When I can get a chunk of time, and a nip of courage, I may rush back into the fray again.  At this point, I had my maybe fifteen days of fame in someone else’s shadow.  Life is strange.

Spring Halloween

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Being a lifelong fan of Halloween, it’s only dawning on me now that Walpurgis is almost precisely half-a-year from its October sibling.  This occurred to me this year for a couple of reasons.  Someone from Sweden emailed me on April 30, noting that Walpurgis was still celebrated there.  (In an amazing, almost superhuman, show of restraint I did not mention Midsommar).  I tucked that away.  Then one of the very few Facebook groups I follow (Halloween Madness) had lots of posts over the next day or so noting that Halloween is only half-a-year away.  The penny finally dropped.  Walpurgis is Halloween in April.  Well, not exactly, but it could be.  The idea of the autumn being a spooky time of year may trace its roots back to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” as I point out elsewhere.  Traditionally, the scary season was around the winter solstice, now known as Christmastime.

Walpurgis Night in Sweden; image credit: David Castor, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Now, I enjoy Christmas a lot.  It is family time.  It is time off work.  It is hunkering down cozy time.  I read a lot and watch movies without having to interrupt everything to stare at the computer for eight or more hours every day.  I also take a bit of horror with my holiday.  There are Christmas ghost stories from before when Christmas became a capitalistic enterprise, giving the warm glow of childhood memories of gifts and such.  I try to keep that tradition alive, without spoiling things for my family.  But things can also be spooky in the spring.

My strange schedule of awaking around 3 a.m. to do my writing means that I always wake up in the dark.  I jog when it is just light enough to see.  Yes, it can be spooky in April.  And the weather, which is still far from certain—the Germans have a saying, “April does what it wants”—can be downright scary.  And there is an extant tradition of a scary spring holiday.  Walpurgis Night (Walpurga was actually a saint) was the commemoration not only of Walpurga, but the driving out of pestilence, various diseases, and witchcraft.  Its spooky potential was realized by Disney in its first Fantasia, but it hasn’t really taken off here in the States as the second Halloween.  It is celebrated in some European countries and it seems to me that it could make a useful addition to paid holidays where Christmas is fueled by the lucre we labor to give to others all year.  If I can remember, I will try to post more about Walpurgis Night in a more timely way next year.

Eh Aye Jesus

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Have you ever wondered just how bizarre it can get?  At work I’ve been receiving push notifications for AI Jesus.  This is a software platform for exploring “the Bible,” “life questions,” and “guided reflection or therapy.”  No Jesus required.  Apparently tech has evolved to the point of addressing spiritual questions.  This is ironic since one thing AI simply doesn’t, and can’t, understand is religion.  Religion is not exactly a rational response to the world.  Often emotion is deeply, deeply involved.  Emotion is something AI knows nothing about.  I recently sat through a webinar promoting AI with the presenter listing problem after serious problem that AI poses.  The presenter optimistically saw no problem with continuing to use a flawed tool.  I would never advise crowdsourcing spiritual guidance.  Those of us who’ve spent lifetimes exploring it hesitate to put ourselves out there as experts.

The problem with AI is that we’re no longer being given a choice about it.  If you buy a new device, AI is there waiting for you.  If you do a web search, AI will offer the first answer, even if it’s often wrong.  Some of us with very human jobs are being told that we should be exploring how to use AI for efficiencies.  As if none of us were really doing a good job before.  I’m personally insulted.  What can AI know about how Jesus thought?  We have four gospels with sometimes contradictory sayings.  And it seems likely that the Gospel of Thomas has legitimate sayings as well.  Even so, that’s not enough data for an LLM (large language model, which is what generative AI tends to be).  They need massive amounts of information.

The human mind conjures its own image of Jesus.  Some think of a mild and meek shepherd of souls while others see a political firebrand with hopes of breaking the Roman hold on Judea.  Some think of Trump.  And everything in-between.   And how we think of Jesus informs the way that we interpret the sayings attributed to him.  I studied Bible in college for just this reason.  In seminary, aware of what textual criticism could do, I focused on the Hebrew Bible instead.  I grew up with the Doobie Brothers telling me that “Jesus is just alright with me.”  I’ve lived long enough to see a sitting president present himself as the parousia (look it up).  And now I’m being told that AI can subvert the carpenter from Galilee.  Just how strange can it get?

The tempter urges Jesus to use AI; image credit: Ary Scheffer, The Temptation of Christ (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

First, Kings

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Recently I sat down to read 1 Kings.  Of course, I used to teach Hebrew Bible so I have more than a passing familiarity with it.  This time, though, I was reading it through the lens of Game of Thrones.  I wonder how much George R. R. Martin drew inspiration from the biblical book.  Indeed, a movie could be made from it—sex, conspiracy, battles, deception, it’s all there.  Perhaps someone should novelize it.  If you read it without knowing that it’s holy writ, you might be surprised to learn that it is.  Of course, having been edited by the Deuteronomists (so it’s supposed), it’s a bit preachy, but the action is pretty much the same.  In fact, Game of Thrones has quite a few biblical tropes in it.  And 1 Kings, if excised from the Bible, with its chapter and verse format, is pretty gripping itself.

Another thing that occurred to me is how little politics has changed over the millennia.  Powerful families want to retain power and privilege.  They aren’t too concerned with religious niceties but they rely on the backing of religious authorities.  (The priesthood and monarchy were always a tag team for keeping power in “the proper place.”)  And a number of the characters are quite colorful, even if you wouldn’t want them in the Oval Office.  Outside that context they can be quite loved, or at least people love to hate them.  Immature boy kings, seductive queens, and armed conflict at the slightest provocation are parts of the story across the ages.  The truth of power in powerful families plays out even in democracies.  Consider father and son presidents from the Adams and Bush families, husband and wife (nearly), in the Clintons, and countless powerful families represented in the senate or in the house.

Politics never change. Image: Saul threatening David, by José Leonardo, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Biblical tales are often more earthy than they might be supposed.  Viewed through the lens of faith, we’re willing to excuse behavior that wasn’t even condoned in that day: David’s adultery, (ahem) or literal political assassination (ahem).  Alas, poor Uriah.  The problem arises when these earthy texts are taken for something magical.  People still believe in magic.  Widely so.  This belief drives much of politics in two related nations far apart but bound together by a book.  Reading 1 Kings is a useful spiritual, and practical exercise.  We can learn much about how people behave.  The Good Book isn’t shy about the motivations either.  Sex, power, and fame drove leaders of antiquity even as they continue to do so today.  The Bible tells me so. 

Shopping News

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It’s one of the perils of the online age.  You order something online and the company (which has more money than a mere individual) asks you to pay for their mistake when the send the wrong thing.  This has happened to me a few times.  Once I ordered a used book.  The vendor got the author right but sent the wrong title.  When I explained this they still wanted me to pay to ship their mistake back to them.  I explained the illogic of the situation to them: You said you would send me a certain book and you did not.  In order to refund me I have to pay for the shipping, which sets me back a few bucks without having the right book at all, which I will have to reorder.  They were not happy, claiming it was my responsibility to get the book back to them.  I asked them to pay for the shipping.  They refused.  Eventually they said “Just keep it.  But this time only!”  I do not order from them now.

More recently Amazon, which, for all its issues, is pretty good about getting the right item to you, sent me a defective book.  I noticed as soon as I unpacked it that the cover wasn’t printed correctly.  Words were cut off on the right-hand side, and the spine was printed on the front.  I would’ve accepted it as a fluke, but opening it up I saw that the interior was for a completely different book.  Likely the printer hadn’t properly cleared out the covers from the last printing job before starting the new project.  Amazon didn’t fuss about replacing it.  They did, however, require me to return the defective one.  They’ll pay for the shipping, but I have to pay for the gas and time to drive to one of their preferred vendors.  It’s the same problem on a smaller scale.  Amazon made the mistake (actually the printer did but nobody checked) and I had to pay something to make it right.  This seems off to me.

I worked in retail for a few years and one of the messages management always emphasized is “the customer is always right.”  Sometimes they weren’t, but most of the time we had to resolve any disagreements as if they were.  Online ordering takes the face-to-face out of it.  The person who receives something other than what they ordered, for which they’ve paid the agreed price, has been wronged.  It’s a mistake unlikely to happen in an actual bookstore.  There’s a price to be paid for the convenience of ordering online.  And that price is paid by the customer.

Accidentally Backward

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I watched Regression by accident.  “How is that possible?” you might ask.  Well, I don’t read up about movies before watching them.  These days I try to save money by streaming on services I pay for anyway, such as Amazon Prime.  I had identified The Tractate Middoth as a movie that I could see without knowing anything beyond that it was based on an M. R. James story and that it was only about half an hour long.  I clicked on it.  It struck me as strange that it began with a “based on true events” intertitle, but people will do anything to sell a movie, including saying fiction is fact.  Then I noticed that the production values were pretty substantial.  I began to wonder if there were two movies by that title.   About forty minutes later, I’m needing to take a restroom break and I’m thinking, this movie should be done by now but it feels like we’re in the middle of things.

After I flushed and clicked back in, the title “Regression” flashed across the top of the screen.  Well, that explained a lot.  I didn’t recall having read any M. R. James stories like what I was seeing.  Clearly my initial click had been off and I’d hit the movie next to, or above or below, the one I wanted to see.  With that level of investment, I figured I might as well watch the rest.  It wasn’t bad but it took me a while to reassess my expectations.  Regression is about how the Satanic ritual abuse scares of the 1990s were fueled by, well, regression therapy.  A girl in Minnesota is identified as having been ritually abused.  Her story convinces police, who use a therapist to do hypno-regression to uncover what “really happened.”  Soon even the cop in charge is seeing Satanists coming after him in his own house.

The movie isn’t great, but it’s not bad either.  It has enough Bible in it to have made the cut for Holy Horror (or Holy Sequel).  And it is religion-based horror.  It wasn’t what I was expecting to see, of course, but that can’t be blamed on the movie.  The Satanic panic was real and unfortunate.  The movie is probably more of a thriller than horror, and yes, I can accept that it was based on real incidents because the panic is well documented.  There is no Devil here.  There are also no Satanists.  The real culprit, the film implies, is the fundamentalist minister who first suspected the abuse.  It is something to think about, but it was no Tractate Middoth.

Second Friday the 13th

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It’s a measure of how regimented my life has become.  The 9-2-5 workday is ruled by the calendar in a way teaching wasn’t.  But on this, the second Friday the 13th of 2026 I figured I’d reveal something that only repetitive calendar watching taught me.  It’s so simple many children probably know it, but it is something that being a drone taught me.  Ready?  Unless it’s a leap year, the dates in March are the same as they are in February.  Mathematically (and I don’t think that way) this makes perfect sense.  February’s 28 days are evenly divisible by seven, something that isn’t true of either 30 or 31.  That means in three years out of four, March begins on the same day of the month that February does.  So if February has a Friday the 13th, so does March.  

Photo credit: Andreas F. Borchert, Wikicommons

I’ve confessed to being interested in holidays and significant dates.  Last month we had Friday the 13th before St. Valentine’s Day on the 14th, and the following Monday, the 16th, was Presidents Day.  A special long weekend.  This kind of syzygy always catches my attention.  I knew even then, however, that Friday the 13th would recur in March.  The only extenuation, in this case, is that St. Patrick’s Day is on Tuesday.  Now, I have some Irish ancestry and Tuesday always vexes me a bit.  Well, the coming Tuesday, I mean.  Green isn’t really my color.  I have a green sweater that doesn’t really fit anymore, but I try to wear it just about every year.  (I’ve had it since high school.  I can still fit into my college clothes—those that I still have, but alas, nothing green.)  I keep clothes until they literally wear out.  I can’t donate them because they’re rags by the time I’m done wearing them.  I grew up poor and that shows.

So here I am on Friday the 13th wondering if I should buy something green to wear on Tuesday.  You see, I take holidays seriously.  One of my unpublished books was about holidays.  I ended up using some of it in The Wicker Man, but May Day is still a ways off at this point.  Friday the 13th isn’t really a holiday, except for horror fans.  I’ve only seen the first two movies in the franchise—slashers have never been my favorites.  So this is just another Friday at work for me.  It feels sort of like the movie Groundhog Day.  The calendar just keeps telling me it’s a work day.  But at least on Tuesday I’ll be wearing green.  And if I decide to act on my impulse, contrary to my usual practice, and spend money on a sweater instead of books, maybe it’ll even be something new.