Heatwave
Right now, this would only make my room cooler.
If you’re fortunate enough to live in Oregon, you’ve probably noticed recently that the sun is a lot closer than it usually is – namely, it’s hovering about 10 feet over my conspicuously non climate controlled dormitory in an attempt to cook out all my flavor so that it can make gravy. You may doubt this, and if so, you are stupid, because you don’t know how hot it is in here right now. I don’t care where you live, be it a constantly erupting volcano, Hell, or even Michigan in the summer; no matter where you are, it’s hotter in my room. As my room is on the third floor, all the heat generated by the nonstop hormone factories (girls) on the second floor has been drifting up to me and my Y-chromosomed compadres. The heat has been so bad that most of the guys up here have taken to smoking marijuana in the showers and getting drunk all the time – to be fair, they do this all year round no matter what the weather is like, and would probably continue to do it if it spontaneously started raining cash and Jessica Alba, but thanks to the heat the smell of their activities is that much worse. The stairwell leading up to my room, which usually only smells a lot like stale urine and pot, now smells so overpoweringly of both that I’m starting to wonder whether the very building is made out of anything but ganja and pee. I live in a very smelly place* ordinarily, and turning up the heat has done little to improve things.
*Rumor abounds that one of my neighbors has been crapping in the garbage can in his room instead of walking all the way down the hall to the toilets. No, I’m not making this up. In fact, we’re all pretty sure that it’s the truth, y’know, that this grown man who lives very close to me has been defecating in a small plastic container, because we’ve heard the suspect talking about it to his friends (and who wouldn’t be proud of that, am I right?) and also smelled some disturbing things. So, just for the record, at the University of Oregon, at least one freshman is pooping in the garbage bin which he keeps in his 100-odd square foot room. Yeah, he’s just sitting around in there, dropping the kids off at the pool, only it’s not a pool, it’s a garbage can that he just keeps in his room, because to say ‘pool’ implies that this human being who is paying for and receiving (to some extent) a university education is capable of utilizing the miracle of modern pumbing, which he is clearly not, as evidenced by the fact that he stores his own shit in an open receptacle right next to his bed in the middle of a goddam heat wave! These people are fucking savages! I have to get out of here!
As you can tell from the above footnote, the hot weather has been bringing out the more aggressive qualities in just about everyone. Indeed, it is at this time of year that the unbridled rage on campus really gets flowing, but not just because of the heat – because of the combination of heat and some of that old time religion.
The University of Oregon has a few full time Christian evangelist types, the most prominent of whom is Jesus Guy, who, every day, rain or shine, stands outside the student union with a large sign reading “TRUST JESUS”, along with a few hearts thrown in for good measure. For the record, I like Jesus Guy a lot. He isn’t preachy, he doesn’t force his views on anyone, and the message he’s sending with his sign is pretty friendly and unobtrusive. Also, he’s out there every day. I’ve I can’t remember a day that I haven’t seen him leaning on the fence, holding his sign, and quietly smiling at passerby. I admire his devotion; I mean, sometimes I feel like I’d give my life to get Firefly back on the air, but I sure as hell wouldn’t stand around on the street all the time with a “TRUST JOSS WHEDON” sign. The other regular is Apocalypse Dog Guy, who generally makes an appearance about once a week for a few months at a stretch, preaching about the impending Apocalypse while his dog lies at his side. He’s a lot feistier than Jesus Guy, but I like his dog, and I still have some respect for his tenacity, if not quite his message. However, the warm (or, as I might have mentioned earlier, unbearably hot) weather of spring term signals the arrival of other, less enlightened street preachers.
These are the Incredibly Hateful Christians, who show up for a few weeks every spring like the horribly prejudiced swallows returning to Capistrano. They stand around in the amphitheater by the student union and shout at passers-by about how anyone who doesn’t abide by God’s law is going to hell – this includes “rebellious” women, loose women, people of any faith except their branch of Christianity, people who drink, people who smoke pot, women who are not entirely subservient to men, and – say it with me now, folks – atheists. They’ve got loads of facts to support their views; for example, did you know that all Mormons everywhere are child molesters? Apparently, Mormonism is just one big ‘ol cult dedicated to molesting children – but hey, somebody’s got to do it. Those kids aren’t going to molest themselves, now.
Fortunately, the very rational students of the University of Oregon have responded to the Incredibly Hateful Christians with more hate of their own, which, as every country in the Middle East has repeatedly shown us, always solves everyone’s problems completely, forever. Angry feminists, atheists, and all sorts of other “ists” spend hours gathered around these Incredibly Hateful Christians, trying to pick apart their nonsensical bigotry with logic and facts; this process is about as effective as trying to tunnel to the center of the Earth by Riverdancing in the same place for several hours – you just wind up making a lot of noise and looking like an idiot. But hey, some people saw Riverdance like seven times, so you can be my guest and go argue with these people, but expecting them to hear your Wikipedia researched facts about the Bible’s take on homosexuality and spontaneously stop being Incredibly Hateful is about as logical as them expecting you to hear that all Mormons are child molesters and join their church.
I think the best course of action, when faced with this sort of offensive, aggressive, attention craving razzmatazz, is to follow Jesus Guy’s example: Just stand further away and let the idiots do their thing. We can’t let this distract us from our real enemy: The Sun. It’s so hot and sticky around here that my hair won’t even hold its form anymore, and that just will not do. I plan to spend most of tomorrow on the roof screaming at the Sun to stop being such a dick, and we’ll see what happens.
Truman Capps understands that he’s written two faith related articles in the course of a week, but it’s really way too hot to think of something else to write about.