Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
A Dog Named Yahweh
Back in the 80s, a friend was thinking about getting a new dog. She planned to name him Yahweh.
People, of course, name their pets for gods all the time. (Whether or not this is a good idea lies outside the parameters of this post.) Still, naming your dog Yahweh seems a little...well, let me at least say that I wouldn't do it. Do you really want to use someone that you love to even a score?
For this was the Reagan Era, and the Age of the Culture Wars. The danger of a full-blown theocracy in the US seemed like a very real possibility at the time. (The Kreesh-chun Reich certainly seemed to think so.) So you did what you could to strike a blow—even a symbolic one—against the theocrats and their triumphalist ways.
One can, of course, readily appreciate the idea's humorous potential.
"Yahweh bit me!"
“Bad Yahweh! Bad boy!”
“Yahweh really stinks; I'm afraid he needs another bath.”
“Oh no, Yahweh peed on the carpet again.”
Still, when it comes to Yahwehs, one has to admit that one—even one that only exists in people's heads—is bad enough.
I'm happy to say that, in the end, my friend did not name her dog Yahweh after all, because she ended up getting a female instead. Thank Goddess for small favors.
The last thing that the world needs is more Yahwehs.
Comments
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Thursday, 19 September 2019
I think of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, with the shopping mall zombies, the zombie Hare Krishna and the zombie nun among them. Satire, anyone?
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I remember the 80's too well. Ronald Reagan Antichrist, Nancy Reagan the Scarlet Woman, Milton Freedman the False Prophet. I had a friend who said he wasn't comfortable going home to Lynchburg because of all the zombies at Liberty University. To this day I still can't stop seeing zombies as a metaphor for fundamentalism.