Coming out of the closet

Before somebody else forces me out first

My online friends,

A friend of mine recently bookmarked some videos on Facebook, and I don't know whether it was due to a random glitch or a nefarious scheme, but Facebook started showing them to me. On my feed. And even worse, I’m pretty sure they showed up without his permission; a collection so out of character that I was — let me be honest — deeply amused.

Because my own saved reels are such a bizarre and controversial hodgepodge I immediately went searching for my own privacy settings, a labyrinthine tangle full of false starts and dead-ends which left me a little bit frustrated and a little more worried. What if you guys see all the things I thought were interesting, but I didn’t feel comfortable sharing?

So I’ll rip the bandaid off and out myself right now.

On this list — should you be so privileged to see it without my permission — there are reels about aging with questionable scientific data and even more dubious remedies. There are old Soul Train videos sped up and set to bangers from Super Mario World. There are grimdark fantasy videos of armies that don’t exist from tabletop games I won’t play. There are random live performances of the Red Hot Chili Peppers — which I save to watch later, because I keep expecting them to surprise me with something good. And I just checked one right now, and boy do they suck.

There are psychedelic cartoons from 1980s Soviet Russia that are borderline disturbing for no apparent reason. There are videos of the Sex Pistols and coal miners to remind me not to be a total pussy. There are videos with political arguments I’m supposed to remember and never do. There are scenes from movies I’ll never watch, but a (fully clothed!) lady in them was really hot. There are (a lot of) ugly Democrats doing stupid things in embarrassing ways. There are videos of “minorities” doing things so feral and backwards that bookmarking the video could, in itself, be construed as an act of racism. Their fault, really, so if you’re offended at me, up yours.

There's a hilarious impression of Tim Curry making pillow talk. There’s a video of Ryan Gosling giving a thumbs-down to “free Palestine” and “I stand with Israel” and a thumbs-up to “nuke India.” There are people making fun of Will Smith’s new music and saying he “sucks now” even though his new music is just as bad as his old music.

There are piss hippies drinking their own piss. Inspirational videos by black metal goths. Cute 20-somethings in sundresses doing a cover of Fugazi. A black man admitting he has "black fatigue.” Michael Caine reciting Rudyard Kipling and a Jewish weenie crying about assault rifles. TikTokers dancing next to a smoking car wreck. Mickey Mouse chewing out a bad parent. A picture of a Muslim guy’s four dream wives to counter all the ugly women leftists casted on Netflix. There are videos about crime statistics (“racist”), questionable marriage tips (“sexist”), and reminders to stop being a jackass (“Christian”). Some of these — thank God — are more influential to me than others. None of them hold sway over me indefinitely.

I have an opera video by a gay art-deco clown named Klaus Nomi who died from AIDS. I have multiple reels of George Costanza and Alex Jones ranting in Imperial Space Marine armor. I have videos of Indian street vendors showcasing their total disregard for food safety. I have historical videos of psychological experiments scientists used to run on students — Milgram and Stanford Prison, etc — but are now considered to be "immoral.”

Their loss, my gain.

In short, I have a list of things so kaleidoscopic and promiscuously slapped-together that they're the closest thing I have to my actual, every-day inner-life: a portrait of a man so tossed about by every wind and whim, and so carried away with interest in the interesting and the uncomfortable and the novel and the bizarre, that I wonder how I ever formed a good thought — and, looking beyond this, how I ever formed a coherent one.

And I would hate to be any other way.

Yours,

-J

P.S. It might be asked, especially since I write so much about Christian themes, where all the Christian reels are on my list. Simply put, they aren’t there, for the simple fact that to me, Christian reels, like Christian books and movies and music, are boring.

This reminds me that I met a Christian mom this week who was stockpiling food for a youth group. She said she had around 20-30 teens coming over to her house this weekend, and was preparing to go broke. But despite the massive outlay, her daughter wasn’t happy. The mom was pushing to do Jesus stuff for the party. The kid insisted parties were “for fun.” And back and forth they went, she said: Fun, Jesus, Fun, Jesus, Fun, Jesus, Fun — until I interrupted and asked if the two were mutually exclusive.

Now, I don’t believe Jesus is boring even a little bit. He’s either the best thing in your life if you love Him, and the worst if you’re honest and you don’t — but drab is the last thing I would ever categorize Him as. The big question is, why does anyone have a chance to paint Him as dull? And will we be embarrassed when we meet Him face-to-face, and we find out he’s a riot?

This is probably the reason the Greeks had so many gods. Simply put, they had no idea how to fit wisdom and war and wine and sex into the same being — and ended up with votaries for Diana and Dionysius.

But even this is unfair to God. It might be mentioned here that, by nature, fun is a diverse thing — and that two kinds of fun being totally different is the reason we can enjoy any of them at all. Simply put, being distracted by one keeps us from getting tired of the other. Thus I propose “God fun” and “earth fun” are two equally beautiful and exciting things in their own way — not entirely separate, and the reason we can experience one is because of the other. We keep in flight by swinging one vine to the next, like Tarzan; never able to rest in any one particular thing, and letting one go after the next so we don’t come to a full stop, and end up dropping to the floor. By nature, we are fickle.

I would add one more thing. “God fun” isn’t so much like the vines but the trees — too big to grasp in entirety, and too solid for the fleeting, shifting, reckless joy of flight itself. It’s the thing all the other funs are dependent on; and without it, the thing the other funs are pointless without — even tragic. Without it you have nothing to swing from; and in the end, like George of the Jungle, when you fly too fast and too loose, God is the only one left to catch you — even if you slam into Him face-first, and it really hurts.