💙Charles 🇺🇸 H❤ @celesteh@lgbt.io

Back in 1999-ish, I worked at a search engine and the week's top search term was "Blair Witch Project" and I noticed it in a film listing, so I went to see without having bother to type it into the search engine myself - so knowing absolutely nothing about it, possibly on the opening weekend.

Oh my god, it was terrifying.

Me, trying to start an ice breaker: What's a thing you consider worse than a smack in the face with a wet fish?

Nothing sucks like a Vax.

It seems perverse to be british and dislike the rain. Like being Californian and disliking the sunshine.

Being middle aged is like - my youth has a rosy glow, but also I was a total dickhead.

Where do britons order things like 555 timer chips, opamps and transistor assortments now that maplins is kaput?

Jodomy

Are we done with sodomy now? Or?

Good old Fred Phelps never said, "the gay agenda." He said, "the sodomite agenda" and I think that's beautiful.

What if god were hung like us?

jender

So, some right wing catholics have been disrupting mass by prostrated themselves in aisles and becoming tripping hazards during communion. Because they really want everyone to know they really feel like they're in the presence of Jesus.

But, like, if people actually believed all of this, adoration of the sacrament would be really an every day thing and everyone would act like this. It's fucking Jesus! Right there! In the same place as you! Physically manifest!

People talk like they think Jesus is really there and abortion actually kills children or whatever's on their slogans this week, but then they politely queue up and cast a ballot for a terrible reactionary once a while and that's it. At least the extremists act like they believe what they say they believe.

(Yeah, this is some teen bullshit I'm posting, but I also think it's actually not good for people to lie to themselves or others about what they believe.)

Europeans practised cannibalistic medicine right up until the 20th century. According to the Smithsonian, what sets western cannibalism apart from other cultural practices of it is that it was completely depersonalised. The relationship between the consumer and the deceased was anonymised through the mechanisms of capitalism and the pharmacy.

But what if this was partly enabled and mediated by the celebration of the eucarist?

The origins of transubstantiation are murky. This interpretation of the bible verse and practice of the mass originates some time during the middle ages. As people became more literal minded about it, this had an effect on how catholics view relics.

Every church has at least one piece of a dead saint in it. This breaking up of human corpses for ritual purposes is also very old and I don't know when it started, but as we got the idea that this bread literally was Jesus, it meant:
1. The wafer is the holiest thing in the church and outranks the dead saint part.
2. Maybe dead saints are also edible?

A bishop I forget the name of was reprimanded for eating one of the toes of a displayed saint. Obviously it's in the church's interest to protect their very valuable relics from peckish believers! But there's a definite connection to holiness and magical healing and consuming someone you've never actually met in a mass act.

Anyway, this is how the whole adoration of the eucarist started.

Transubstantiation: bread and wine transform literally into human flesh and blood in a way that is both literally true and entirely unelectable, for ritual acts of pseudo- cannibalism.

Because it's doing the impossible, it's a miracle! But it's also completely invisible on every level.

What if... something goes wrong and it transforms into something else entirely? What if the priest is not so holy and had been doing pacts with demons? What are some things that wafers and wine might turn into?

Answers on a postcard, please.

Man, we had a whole evening of catholic discourse and I only caught the last few minutes. 😿