Creeping Christianism everywhere


Welp, the good news is that the small town of Morris has a shiny new store, The Homestead. It’s a small big box store that has moved into the location of the old Pamida.

The bad news: it’s run by the conservative apostolic sect that infests this area.

The good news: we walked over to check it out today, and it’s nice and clean and has a fairly good selection. They’re also installing a modern-looking coffee shop, which I think will open by September. This is welcome news, since I haven’t been happy with the Common Cup Coffeehouse in town (also run by churches, goddamnit), because their wifi only works for me about a quarter of the time.

The worstest, most horrible news: they play Christian church muzak nonstop. My eyes, ears, nose, and other orifices were all leaking blood after 5 minutes in the store, and my epithelia were delaminating and the cells dissociating. I might have erupted in flame if I’d stayed longer.

Bottom line: I don’t think they’ll get much of my business. They’ll probably do fine without me.

Comments

  1. Bruce Fuentes says

    Is the pharmacy associated with the sect also? Will be interesting to see if they will fill all prescriptions.

  2. raven says

    The worstest, most horrible news: they play Christian church muzak nonstop.

    I hope it isn’t xian rock.
    Xian rock is every bit as bad as its reputation.

    I only listen to xian rock when I’m in far Northern California near and past Redding. That is when xian rock is what is on the few car radio stations that you can get. I consider it cultural anthropology.
    It’s usually a singer droning in monotone with a simple backup band of drums and a few guitars. It all sounds the same and the same doesn’t sound all that good.

  3. Ed Seedhouse says

    I can’t stand “background” music of any kind, especially since these systems have terrible fidelity and there is never any music I can stand, let alone like. I spent 450$ Canadian for a top line pair of Sony noise cancelling headphones and it makes life worth living when I am out and about.

  4. hemidactylus says

    @3- raven
    POD and Creed struck me as Christian adjacent music, not overwhelmingly religious. Both were pretty good for the time IMO. Creed gets a crap ton of hate. Stapp was a horrible trainwreck sure, but so have been many other rock fronts. And as much as I liked the Metal Evolution docuseries, they dissed Creed as some cheesy Pearl Jam knockoff. Creed actually cultivated a larger than life Florida or Southern sound in a similar vein to Sevendust. Stapp’s vocals don’t remind me of Vedder at all, though I think Pearl Jam a much better band.

  5. lumipuna says

    There’s something to be said for shopping with noise cancelling headphones.

    In small town Minnesota you might possibly need nice cancelling headphones.

  6. snarkrates says

    If I were to accidentally stumble on a Christian rock station, I would twirl the knob away from it as quickly as I could even if the knob were shooting jets of flame! And don’t get me started on fucking “Praise Music”. I can tolerate most gospel, and some of the old hymns are pretty, and Mozart’s Requiem is sublime, but “christian music” from this century is a fucking oxymoron. I’d rather listen to John Cage!

  7. weylguy says

    #3 Raven
    Yes, Christian rock is truly awful. But I still love “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” and my all-time favorite, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

  8. Akira MacKenzie says

    They’ll probably do fine without me.

    That alone is the greatest indictments against captialism: It give the morons what they want rather than what they need.

  9. UnknownEric the Apostate says

    A couple of years ago, I visited a rather normal looking thrift store only to find the walls plastered with Jesus stuff, everybody wishing me a blessed day, Christian rock being played in-store, and a used CD section filled to the brim with gospel CDs. Amazingly, I managed to find barely-used copies of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” and Herbie Hancock’s “Future Shock” on LP and got out of there as quickly as I could. Never been back.

  10. birgerjohansson says

    The Cristian rock is useful to keep out vampires. No, it has no supernatural power, but vampires have too much style to suffer such dreck.

  11. James Fehlinger says

    I still love “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”

    Especially the duet that Lillian Gish and Robert Mitchum perform
    in The Night of the Hunter (1955). ;->

  12. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @2:

    There’s something to be said for shopping with noise cancelling headphones.

    I suspect a loophole,that music doesn’t qualify as noise, no matter how awful.
    I only say this from a mathematical perspective, and reading about the principles Bose used for the first noise-cancelling ‘phones.FWIW

  13. says

    The music isn’t Christian rock. It is literal church music, an assortment of hymns, played on an organ. It’s the stuff you’d hear at a funeral.

  14. Tethys says

    I probably know several of those hymns, and they are horrible ear worms.

    The only times I’ve heard some of them in decades IS at various funerals, so I would definitely avoid that store.

  15. hemidactylus says

    @15- PZ
    What’s funny is that in junior high I got into Pink Floyd in a major way. My dad liked The Wall mostly and Dark Side but I recorded much of their early experimental stuff on cassette and 8-track (for his work van) and once he had had enough of that he assertively said something about turning that “funeral music” off. He was at the end of his rope on that and had totally lost his shit.

    To give him total credit he took me to see Live at Pompeii at a hole in the wall theater and several Pink Floyd laser light shows at the plane-arium.

  16. jrkrideau says

    @ 11 UnknownEric the Apostate
    I stop in fairly regularly at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store and don’t remember if I have ever heard anything vaguely religious.

    I did pick up some nice ramekins a few years ago.

  17. hemidactylus says

    I’ve forgotten most of the early catalogue, but this might have been what caused my dad to snap:

    https://youtu.be/6oWOConfUV8

    Actually I wouldn’t mind shopping to that in the background. It might reduce the crowd density in these more dangerous times and the early Floyd aficionados who would go to the store just to listen to it would be congregated in the flowers and birthday balloon aisle staring at the tracers the movements of their hands make across their field of vision, so easily avoided.

  18. Erp says

    @16 Billseymour

    My personal favorite church hymn is Ralph Vaughan Williams’ setting of “For All the Saints”.

    He was music editor for the 1906 English Hymnal and decided that that it needed some better tunes.
    Vaughan Williams was also an agnostic/atheist (and a double great nephew of Charles Darwin).

  19. blf says

    Some xianity-inspired music would be Ok, e.g., Leon Rosselson’s Stand Up For Judas (audio), sung here by Dick Gaughan:

    [… S]tand up, stand up for Judas
    And the cause that Judas served
    It was Jesus who betrayed the poor with his word

    By sword and gun and crucifix
    Christ’s gospel has been spread
    And two thousand cruel years have shown
    The way that Jesus led
    The heretics burned and tortured
    And the butchering bloody Crusaders
    The bombs and rockets sanctified
    That rain down death from heaven
    They followed Jesus, they knew the answer
    All unbelievers must be believers
    Or else be broken
    “So place no trust in saviours”
    Judas said, “for everyone
    Must be to his or her own self a sun”

  20. John Morales says

    Silly lyrics, blf. On multiple levels.

    Anyway, no music is better than any music, for some people. Like me.

    So, no. It would not be OK.

  21. whheydt says

    Re: billseymor @ #16…
    The standard tune for “Onward Christian Soldiers” was written by Sir Arthur Sullivan (rather better known for his collaborations with librettist W. S. Gilbert).

  22. whheydt says

    Re: jrkrideau @ #19…
    There used to be (it went out of business, or moved, and if the later, I don’t know where) thrift shop run by some church or other. They were the ones that seemed to get all the used computer monitors and so were my source for cheap ones.

    Once a week they had a “50% off for senior citizens” price, so I’d get 19″ 1280×1024 monitors for–usually–less than $20.

  23. PaulBC says

    “The Homestead” already sounds like a cult compound or name of a horror movie.

  24. John Morales says

    leerudolph, that wouldn’t be hard.

    But that’s not the point; point is that it’s unsolicited, unnecessary noise.

  25. Rob Grigjanis says

    leerudolph @28:

    That’s the last verse. The preceding ones are better

    No, they are not. They are cringe-inducingly horrible. Comrade Judas? Gimme a fucking break. Responding to feeble propaganda with your own feeble propaganda is a mug’s game.

  26. thejacob says

    Hi, I came here looking for Pink Floyd fans and found Christian haters. Such is life. Look, I’m no fan of organized religion, but don’t confuse that with the words and life of Jesus Christ. He was one very cool guy. Just ask Timothy Leary, he’ll tell you, or he would have told you had he not melted into the Internet.

    Here, I ran across this, a friend sent it to me. It’s a YouTube video about Careful with that Axe, Eugene. It shows that there is a hidden message there. It’s pretty cool, to me anyway and very in tune with what is happening today. If you like Pink Floyd you’ll like this:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7_A4elrM3MY&pp=sAQA

    Also, and this is along the same lines – vaccine tyranny – here is a link to a doc that shows how it is the William Henry Gates – I call him Billy Boy Gates – has got caught up on the dark side of the plan. Now, this is pretty wild but if you don’t wear masks, won’t get injected, have no interest in being digitally tracked to the grave, and don’t have a yearning for digital currency issues by the Fed, you will like this one quite a bit:

    https://drive.protonmail.com/urls/0DZFQZ7V0M#tx7yxQheww2Z

    Anyway, hope you enjoy and remember, if you are unwilling to find your local mosque and walk on in and tell them that you are aware that they want to kill or convert all anti-Islamic folks (besides the LBTGTQ crowd, those must be tossed off buildings, they won’t budge there) and that you demand that they stop immediately, then I by all means support the bashing of Christianity here. I respect consistency 100%.

    Well, let me know what you think of the links. They are very, very informative.

    Stay cool and more importantly – stay free!!

  27. says

    That was…idiotic? I need a stronger word.

    The video claims that “Careful with that Axe, Eugene” carries a secret message. By fiddling around with the words, and flipping words around, it means “Medical + Eugenics”.

    No, it doesn’t.

    The original title of the song was “Keep Smiling People”, and was later retitled “Murderistic Woman”, before Pink Floyd settled on the final title for the Ummagumma album. Retroactively twisting the words around to make a claim that you think is valuable is garbage.

    The second link is even worse. Bible bullshit + numerology? Fuck off. Christian conspiracy theorists and gullible End Times fools aren’t welcome here. You aren’t banned yet, but if you try to peddle more of this kind of inanity and misinformation you will be.

  28. raven says

    I’ve rarely seen that much insanity in one comment.
    OTOH, he is so brain dead and spaced out, he left out all the Qanon stuff and the Shapeshifting Space Reptiles.

  29. raven says

    I’ve rarely seen that much insanity in one comment.
    OTOH, he is so brain dead and spaced out, he left out all the Qanon stuff and the Shapeshifting Space Reptiles.

  30. beholder says

    That was…idiotic? I need a stronger word.

    It struck me as something generated by a modestly sophisticated chatbot. Who knows, though, maybe several villages share one idiot.

    You’d think societal acceptable of mask-wearing would be a dream come true for the privacy-conscious and paranoid among us. Apparently not.