To make mock of various things, beginning with hypocrisy. My mother, who lives in the ghastly bible-belt territory of Missouri, actually told me that in their area, most of the kids trick-or-treated on Saturday evening instead of actually on Halloween.

Why? Because the Godly objected to them dressing up in costumes and celebrating a 'pagan' holiday on the week's holy day. This, you understand, encapsulates religion for so many people. There are things it's okay to do Monday through Saturday that aren't okay on Sunday. What the hell kind of morality is that?

Also, it was okay to celebrate a pagan holiday, as long as you didn't celebrate it on Sunday. You can dress up as a witch or warlock or skeleton or mummy or druid or fairy, but not on a Sunday. It's okay on Saturday, but blasphemy on Sunday. What the hell kind of rationale is that?

And they're okay with celebrating a pagan holiday, complete with pagan symbolism (although I'm of two minds about the Druids being pagan), if it's dressed up as someone's birthday, but if you can't pull that veneer of respectability over it, then you're out of luck.

It's all about the appearance of propriety. It's not what you're doing that matters...it's how it looks.

The bible-belt is like that all over. I remember when I was young and living there, the bars stayed open until 3:00 in the morning, six days a week. So you could drink yourself stupid from midnight Saturday for three hours into Sunday, but once you woke up on Sunday morning, you couldn't buy a drop of booze anywhere in the state until sometime Monday morning. You could drink on Sunday, as long as you started on Saturday.

Also, there are things it's okay to do in the dark that you can't do in the light of day but I don't know what they are and I might have made that part up, anyhow, just because I'm feeling contemptuous at the moment.

Blue laws, they're called. Ostensibly about legislating morality, they're really about enforcing a christian-church-based routine on a society. When I was young, they forced most merchants to be closed on Sundays, too. I guess they assumed if you couldn't shop, you'd go to church and be holy. (I was usually sleeping off a hangover and I wouldn't have gone to church even if I'd been awake.)

In many areas of that part of the country, these laws are still in force. Even though I came from there, I sometimes forget how backward parts of this country can be and I know there are places in the southern states that make Kansas and Missouri lo0k like blue-ribbon winners in the Progressive stakes.

It's the 21st century and these people haven't come to grips with the 20th century yet. Take Kansas, on a map of this country. Color in every state where the majority of the territory lays on a line south and/or due east. Aside from pockets of sanity, that part of the country scares me sometimes.

Whoops.

Okay...this started out to be light-hearted mockery of the kind of hypocrisy that allows a six year-0ld to dress up as a kitten on a Saturday, but not on a Sunday. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm sorry for the digression.

I should be working. Failing that, I could be writing. But sitting here blogging...that's just wrong. Maybe I'm bitter because I just thought, "I'm kind of hungry, it's time for breakfast" and then realized it's 1:15. I'm running out of day and I've barely started doing any work yet.

annezo.net <-- coming soon