There was an incident in Green Bay that made me feel like a dirty little heathen and I liked it and it irritated me beyond measure.

I was sitting at the bar with a friend, who was wearing a Weetacon name badge. Now the theme of the weekend was The Seven Deadly Sins, and the name badges featured an image of the Virgin Mary along with a light-up heart and the name of the participant.

A woman in her fifties who was moderately drunk leaned across the bar and said, “Oh, are you guys here for the miracle?”

“No,” we answered. “What miracle?”

“The miracle. You guys are here for the miracle.”

“We don’t know anything about any miracle.”

“Your name badge. With Mary. You’re here for the miracle.”

Apparently there had been some sort of Catholic miracle in Green Bay, and it had even been recognized by the Pope or a Cardinal or some other important deity or bird.

“Seriously, we don’t know anything about the miracle. We’re here for a writer’s retreat.”

(We always use the term “writer’s retreat”, and believe me, we laugh our fool asses off every single time we say it.)

Writer’s retreat. Heh.

“But… why do you have the Blessed Virgin on your name badge? Is it a Catholic retreat?” she asked, confused.

“No,” I said (and this was monumentally stupid), “I’m Jewish.”

Her hackles went up immediately. “Oh. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.”

We tried to explain the concept of the seven deadly sins and that it was our theme, and it did nothing but piss her off.

She proceeded to drunkenly ream us out for our disrespect for the Virgin Mary, and she shot us dirty looks for the rest of the evening.

BLASPHEMERS!

I’m used to this sort of thing, because I live with a hardcore Catholic.

Recently gay marriage has come up for debate here in Indianny (guess which way THAT vote is going to go), and my stepfather made a pithy little crack: “Thou shalt not toot on another man’s flute.”

“That in the Bible?” I scoffed.

“No, but homosexuality is a sin. It’s in the Bible.”

“It also says you can beat your wife and own slaves and stone people in the Bible. You up for that?”

Silence.

My stepdad is pretty devout as far as things go. He attends church every Sunday and goes to Stations of the Cross on Fridays. He prays regularly and gave up all snacking for Lent.

He is also the most impatient motherfucker I have ever seen, swears like a sailor when he’s pissed off, forgets NOTHING, and does not forgive anyone for anything, ever.

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t necessarily say “religious” to me.

What do I know, though. I’m just a dirty heathen who hasn’t seen the inside of a church in a month of Sundays.

In other news, the J-Man had to do a project on a mythical being for his English class involving both a speech and a poster, and damn, was I impressed by both his speech and his mad artistic skills. He worked on the poster for several hours, and may I say I have never seen such lifelike and attractive elves.

I smell an A.

My dad bought the kid some (ridiculously expensive, WHY are tennis shoes so expensive) new shoes, and this morning he sat in the recliner stroking them and gurgling, “My precioussssss…” like Gollum.

My child is freaking weird.

I can’t imagine where he gets it.

Happy Thursday.

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