rejectomorph | Parbroiling

Oh, hot! It's a good thing it rained a lot this year, because I estimate that I'm drinking at least ten percent of the flow of Butte Creek all by myself. I run the risk that my sweat will cause rain clouds to form in my room, of course, and there'll be little storms throughout the day, getting all the electronics wet. But the alternatives are either dehydration, or spending all my time in the furnace the outdoors has become. I hate the idea of starting the air conditioner in the middle of May, but I might be driven to that extreme. The weather is broken! Broken, I say!

Something completely different:

Not really Great Poetry (a lot of what shows up in

greatpoets is not great poetry), but a splendid piece of light verse I found more than usually entertaining: Patrick Barrington's My Love is a Theosophist. Theosophy. Heh. The modern Theosophy movement dates back to the 19th century, and in the early 20th century, Southern California became a hotbed of Theosophist activity, much to the displeasure of the mostly conservative Protestants who by then controlled most of the region's positions of power.

Despite establishment disapproval, Theosophy thrived in the area, and Pasadena (a place oddly hospitable to rather peculiar religious institutions) is still the international headquarters of The Theosophical Society, one of the largest Theosophist organizations. The Los Angeles area also proved fertile ground for various offshoots and heresies of Theosophy, including The Gnostic Society and Paramahansa Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship. (A rude little song we used to sing:

Paramahansa Yogananda, parlez-vous?
Paramahansa Yogananda, parlez-vous?
Paramahansa Yogananda, Paramahansa Yogananda,
Paramahansa Yogananda, Ooooommmmmmmm!)

And, of course, there's Scientology, headquartered in Hollywood, but they've totally jumped the couch. It's like Theosphy on 'roids. Growing up in the environs of L.A., I heard a lot about odd religions as a kid, the adults often speaking of them in the lowered voices they used when talking about the crazy aunt who ran off with the carny or the cousin who ended up in prison. As kids we just made jokes about them. But you never knew when the nice old lady down the block with all the flowers in her yard might whip out a tract for some "non-scheduled theology", as Lenny Bruce called them. They were everywhere- everything from Holy Rollers to Wiccans. In the end, most of them weren't that much odder than many of the followers of more conventional religions, so I came to see them as no more than another part of Southern California's rich pageant. As a rule, their sort don't go off and drink the Kool-Ade. They do sometimes end up in front of the speeding lorry, though- but there's nothing very odd about that.