the GOD plane

I sat next to two ladies on the plane from Seattle to Cincinatti, Ohio.

Both of whom were very God-oriented. The older lady is your basic Catholic. A believer, nice, friendly. Nothing terribly wacky.

The young one is, wellll....

Talks about the plans God has for her. Wherever God puts her is God's will. She's traveled everywhere, Europe, Africa, sees God's hand in everything, including helping poor children find God in Africa, even though they're starving. That, of course, is not God's fault.

Meanwhile, I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's Choke. A book about a sexual addict, who talking about how he's gotten or getting laid in pretty explicit detail. Also about working as a fake Irish indentured servant in Colonial Dunsboro (like Williamsburg, only the name has been changed to protect the innocent), where his friend spends much of his work week in the stocks for being modern in some way, and where pretty much everyone who works there is an addict of one kind or another. And also about his upbringing by a mother who keeps kidnapping him away from all his foster parents every time she gets out of jail (where she has to go for doing various odd little annoying misdemeanors).

Ultimately, it's all about not letting yourself get brainwashed by society, and here's two nice folks filling the hours of the plane ride talking about how they've let themselves be brainwashed. Hell, they've been active and happy participants in the cleansing experience.

I got to hear Chuck read once, from the very book I'm reading, at the University Bookstore in Seattle. People had brought their kids to this reading. Little kids. And he reads from the second chapter, which is essentially about how the main character, Victor, goes to a support group for recovering sexual addicts, where he hooks up with a woman who's been released from prison to go to this support group, and they have sex on the floor of the Ladies... Palahniuk is a great believer in being a bit confrontational. For his book tour for Haunted (yeeeeeeeeesh), he would read from the chapter entitled Guts, which is beyond disgusting. People would faint.

Not sure where I was going with all this, but I'm still jet-lagged after four days in Toronto.