Category: LEARNING DAY
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Sometimes when you see a movie from the 1960s with all of those glamorous costumes, elaborate sets, and live animals, you think, wow, they would never make this today! Then there are times when you see a movie from the 1960s with those glamorous costumes and those scenes where a man drugs two women for a bit and convinces a jury that murder should be legal if your wife is really annoying, and you think thank God they would never make this today! Related: check out this authentic movie poster for How To Murder Your Wife, complete with the insinuation that you poison women via the vagina? Or try strangling! There are five great options, starring Jack Lemmon; in Technicolor!
In 1965 the best way to lure a woman to a movie theater was with threats! A second tagline for this movie was, “Bring the little woman. Maybe she’ll die laughing!” This makes perfect sense as a marketing strategy for this movie because its thesis is that women aren’t afraid enough of men.
Society would be better if only women were more afraid of men. Who would write that? A maniac on the inside of a used pizza box in Times Square? No, How To Murder Your Wife is the first feature film from the screenwriter who adapted Breakfast At Tiffany’s and The Manchurian Candidate into movies. Unpleasant fact: both of those movies featured white men playing Asians in ways that had even the ancient people of the ’60s saying, “Hold on, whoa, wait a second.”
How to Murder Your Wife is categorized as a dark comedy, but it’s way darker today than in 1965. If there was a This Has Aged Poorly Olympics, How To Murder Your Wife would steal all of the medals and smelt them into a golden statue of a man slapping a woman on the ass while winking.
It’s also, and I’m used to using this term as only the highest compliment, extremely gay. The main character, Stanley Ford, is a bachelor who lives with, as the movie constantly refers to him, “his man.” Every day his man greets him after work with a martini in a chilled glass. His man cooks for him, cleans for him, and otherwise does all of the things a bachelor would normally need a wife for. How can Stanley Ford afford a man? He’s in the bustling media business, which will surely never collapse.
Stanley draws spy cartoons, but he always acts them out first, which is why the first woman we see in this movie is being removed from a shipping container. She’s a storage device for a belly button diamond that contains spy microfilm. “Women: Better than Tupperware Because You Can French Them” was another proposed tagline for this film.
Stanley Ford’s bachelorhood is interrupted when he impulsively marries the stripper from his friend’s stag party. Her name is, hahaha, she doesn’t get a name. What is this 1996? Stanley never asks. Not at first, and then never for the entire movie. Everyone addresses her as Mrs. Ford and that’s how she’s credited.
Cake Woman has the most insane backstory in movie history. She’s an Italian Miss Universe contestant whose clothes were stolen, and she was somehow forced to find a job wearing only a bathing suit and speaking no English. So stripper was the only job she could get? It feels like the studio bristled at the idea of an actual stripper involved in the plot of this movie, so they made her a silly Italian virgin who accidentally found herself covered in whipped cream and dancing as if Mr. Bean slipped on a banana peel into an erotic photoshoot.
Stanley is immediately trapped in this marriage. His lawyer says his wife hasn’t given him grounds for divorce, and they already consummated the marriage, so his evil nemesis/beloved bride has Stanley right where she wants him. Because he’s so invested in acting out all of his comics, Stanley has his spy main character get married too.
I really wanted to know how people reacted to this movie when it was released. I got that it was supposed to be a dark comedy but I couldn’t tell if it was criticizing the feminist movement in the U.S. or men’s reaction to the movement? It’s hard to tell who the butt of the joke is in this movie, but maybe it was more apparent in 1965? I’ve googled How To Kill Your Wife so many times this week that if I were to disappear in a mysterious accident, my husband would be in big trouble.
I found a review from the New York Times, and it didn’t help. It was mostly obsessed with how hot the actress who plays Cake Woman (Virna Lisi) is. They end by saying, “wait until the women see this picture-especially those who are not yet wed and those (alas, their name is legion) who haven’t got what Miss Lisi has!” Which essentially translates to, “hoo boy ugly women will hate this movie, and there are a lot of ugly women out there.” I think that provides the needed context for how things were going for women when this movie came out.
Stanley’s life is turned upside down by his new wife, and so is his comic, which has changed from Bash Brannigan Spy to The Brannigans, a cute domestic story where Stanley is a bumbling idiot. He’s miserable, but there’s nothing he can do about it aside from something insane like, talk to his wife, maybe ask her name? MADNESS. The only thing a man should know about his wife is her blood type in case he ever needs a kidney.
Eventually he decides to regain some control over his life by murdering his wife in the comic. Since he always acts out his comics to make sure they are plausible, he has to plan the perfect murder. There’s this big deal about what a good murder he’s come up with and it turns out he’s just going to drug her and toss her in a cement machine at a construction site. This is the vanilla ice cream of murder plots and he’s so proud of himself.
He even walks by a store with a mannequin that looks like his wife, runs inside, and buys it. It’s not a mannequin store. He walked into a normal clothing store and was like, “I’ll give you any amount of money for the mannequin in the window. It looks just like my hot, hot wife.” That’s how committed to this fake murder he is. He’s willing to make some poor store clerk the first person to look up mannequin fetish in the dictionary.
Then he drugs his wife with a fun party drug called “goofballs” that doctors in 1965 gave to any middle-aged white men who looked trustworthy. You know, the exact description of all serial killers. He also drugs his wife’s shrill friend as a joke. He thought it would be funny, and he had the extra drugs, so why not! They both do silly dances on top of a piano and then pass out.
Stanley carries his wife out of the party, then switches her for the mannequin and crawls out the window of their townhouse to throw the dummy into a cement mixer while his man films the whole thing for non-mannequin fetish purposes (supposedly). Stanley stays up all night drawing the murder into the cartoon and then falls asleep next to it. Unknown to Stanley, his wife wakes up, sees the cartoon, and leaves him. He later tells his lawyer she must have gotten angry about “some little thing,” AKA the fact that he murdered her in effigy.
Unfortunately, publicly debuting a murder plot for your hot wife right before she mysteriously disappears is not a great look. Some crazy people get it into their heads that Stanley murdered his wife, and they’re weirdly uncool about it. Stanley can’t prove his wife isn’t dead because he doesn’t seem to know a single piece of identifying information about her, including where she’s from beyond the nation of Italy. He can’t do much to find her beyond look in any big cakes he might run across, so he gets put on trial for her murder.
Now I’d like you to think of the darkest possible ending for this movie. It might be that Stanley gets the electric chair for murdering his wife because he couldn’t ask her one simple question about herself. It might be a reveal that Stanley has a rare STD called junky penis that makes his penis absolutely terrible. It’s still there, but it’s bad, and everyone knows it just by looking at him. Or, it might be that Stanley admits to murdering his wife but talks the all-male jury into letting him off anyway, as a lesson to scare their wives into behaving lest they also be murdered, because that’s what actually happens.
The men lift Stanley on their shoulders and carry him out of the courtroom in triumph, while the women, in one of the saddest scenes in cinema history, quietly stare into space and contemplate their mortality. The answer to how do we control these crazy women was right there all along. All we had to do was threaten to murder them! The world’s most effective negotiation strategy.
Stanley returns home to his happy bachelor life, only to find that his wife is back! His man points out that he can now legally murder her without being tried for the crime again because of double jeopardy laws. He also happens to have a gun on him, so he loads it up and hands it over, fully expecting Stanley to shoot this woman, but for some reason, Stanley doesn’t murder his wife!
That’s…a happy ending? I mean, he can still legally murder her at any time. That card is in his back pocket, but, yeah, it’s a happy ending, I guess. And they all lived…well, they all lived!
…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Tom Sekula: Who will now turn up on Google results for “how to murder your wife.”
Categories
Learning Day: The Missouri Breaks 🌭
Mornin an howdy I am excited to join you again in this year of 2022. LaRene and Trayton got me a gift subscription to my hot dog e-zine again this year (I know it’s not really a gift subscription, it’s hooked up to my email but I act surprised when they tell me and now we all get it that its not actual hot dogs we’re paying for here, no its something even more precious than that: community and connection with people born between 1977 and 1983 without having a facebook)
Anyway now that I been reading this blog for a while I’m buildin what some might call a ’‘sense‘’ for the type of “generated content” that they post, and well I really like the ones where a hot dog writer will take a beloved piece of pop culture what we all know real well and have a deep fondness for it and write about a part of it or a angle that maybe we didn’t think of ourselves even though we seen it a hunnerd times, so I thought I might try one of those ones.
Yep thats right I bet this one doesn’t need more explanation from me, your probably all allready real excited and callin over your family members and coworkers to look at your phone because here is a article about probly everyones favorite childhood nostalgia film Director: Arthur Penn
I know yr already playing through your favorite Arthur Penn moments in your head and you don’t need me to lay them out. So this next part is more like buddies sayin “member when” and thinkin about favorite memories, and not as much as me thinkin I’m showin you anything new but hell, now that I say that if maybe you somehow missed one of these classic cinema movies, then here’s a lil poke to get straight on that.
Mr. Penn showed us his chops early on in the screen in a big way by showin not tellin how in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) it was like Faye Dunaway was in jail even though it was her bedroom, because of so much caged feelins of onwee? omway? Inyuix? One a those is right
(Editor: “Ennui.”)
And then like I already said Little Big Man (1970) and maybe the crushes got even bigger cause here Dunaway was a preacher’s wife but she was still horny maybe? And Dustin Hoffman is supposed to be like 14 here i think, so that was confusin to our heads but not so much to our young hearts (and the genitals)
Arthur Penn also taught us a new way of men can have a sexuality in Night Moves (1975). Member this was when all the James Bonds and High Plains Drifters was runnin round like consent hadnt been invented yet. Like here is Gene Hackman doin some post coitous fondue with his wife which: even though they’re goin through some arguments they still enjoy each-others’ bodies, like how he keeps his foot tenderly up on her female breast which she seems to like it. Not everybody does Larene and I tried it, the foot part not the fondue part that seems dangerous, but she said the way my toenails kinda flake off and and leave like a nail-powder everywhere wasnt her thing.
I can almost hear the Trailer Man’s voice now:
ARTHUR PENN IS…
DEAD OF WINTER
STARRING MARY STEAMBURGEN AND…
MARY STEEMBURGEN!?
Yep thats right through the magic of highly skilled cinema direction and also camera tricks Mary Steenbrugen played TWO different women in the SAME movie. And she gets kidnapped by Cornelius the Ape and maybe Werner Herzog? And she gets her finger cut off and she wakes up next to a sex doll of herself and guess what: its actually a triple roll theres a whole other Mary Steemvurgen.
So that was a nice stroll through some of our favorite Arther Penn memories we share together. But of course we know the real reason we’re all here is to talk about his magnet opas, what you hot dogsmen would surely call the Bloodsport of Xanadu of Robocop Conan:
Although maybe with a soup’s on of live-action Wicked City.
There are some images what just carry a big deal of power like pale blue dot or a camper with a beautiful sunset airbrushed on it, and here we have something similar where just a simple pretty-good drawing of Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando on ol timey paper – well if your like me you can just feel the sense of manful defiance and struggle for crops or violence and probably some love in there too.
You probly know this one is what they call a “revisionist” western which near as I can tell means the cowboys can get there feelings hurt. You can tell if yr watching a revisionist one because instead of just normal orchestra or guitar music sometimes it will be pretty funky! Like what they might play in a JC Penney in 1983.
Speakin of music it’s John Williams did the songs for this movie an you can tell, like the first shot its kinda like the Jaws song except instead of a shark coming its cowboys and it takes like 10 minutes.
Now the people in the movie don’t come out and say it at first and it was confusing to me, so I’ll just tell you: just because its called The Missouri Breaks don’t mean it don’t take place in Montana. For a while we just watch and get to know the setting and people and probably what its gonna be about, which is Frontier Justice: At What Cost?
“And truly isn’t it as if we are all (dramatical pause)…The Missouri Breaks?”
Our important people to know about so far are: Jack Nicholson is… Tom Logan
He’s a horse stealer with his friends but one of em gets killed and Tom seems pretty sad and worried about it, and they start up a farm as a cover for better horse stealing but Tom seems to really take to farming! And you can tell he’s pretty proud of his cabbages he keeps showing to everybody that comes by, it reminds me of how Trayton likes to show me he can make a Minecraft farm except the movies doesn’t have a lava pit where you put the rabbits.
Kathleen Lloyd is Jane Braxton…
You probly recognize her, she actually played two different people in Magnum (I personally prefer the witt and pathos she brought to the waitress from Cleveland trying to do right by her dad’s ashes over when she was the Hawaii lawyer) and then she was in the one where the devil car tries to kill Thanoses dad. In this one she’s the rich guys daughter but she likes Tom and because its a revisionist movie she’s allowed to have a sexuality.
(Brockway said I could do three gifs and I thought it would be good to use one for Equality)
Randy Quaid is Little Tod…
He’s kinda dumb and funny but will he meet a tragic end? (for shadow)
Harry Dean Stanton is Calvin…
You probably know him from when he stood in the spaceship rain but in this one he’s kinda like The Dad of the Cowboys. And another example of how its revisionist is Calvin has a forever trauma from when he was a little boy and somebody shot his dog for getting in the butter and it makes us think: Maybe cowboys ain’t traumatized the exact same as Jewish filmmakers from Philadelphia, but perhaps there’s more difference within groups than between?
Anyway thats pretty much the important ones at first and its all enjoyable enough: we see a variety of western situations like a hangin’, and they visit a old west sex-worker-house and ask where are the chubby ones? And a train robbery where they mess it up and the money falls everywhere and you can tell that Penn really thought the wooden tressil bridge made neat shapes on camera cuz he filmed it ALOT and so far its kinda just a nice little movie! And then it all kinda changes when the rich bad guy is havin a funeral for a friend and a unexpected guest arrives:
Marlin Brando. This is after Godfather, mind.
Now: Arthur Penn had worked with Brando before and maybe knew something about his intendencies: when they made The Chase together Brando found out the producer had some trauma cuz someone he cared about died by motorcycle crashin’ so he did a funny prank by coming to work on HIS motorcycle! Hawhaw! But that was like 10 years before this movie and it seems like Brando just got even crazier in that time because in this movie he sort of seems like he is not even paying attention to anything or maybe even knows there is a director. My personal thinking is that Brando was maybe actually more like a not funny Robin Williams, but because our first introduction of him was a real serious, horny, handsome-boy, we all got confused. He decided he’d spend the rest of his life correctin our erroronous first impression.
So Brando’s name is Robert E. Lee Clayton and he starts off by havin a Irish accent, like most Confederacy Veterans I believe, (dont worry he doesnt keep it for the whole movie).
And the rich people are saying nice things about their deceased acquaintance thats lying there in ice, and Brando comes in and is sorta like you are all cowards and fuck your dead friend. We learn the rich guy hired him to kill the rustlers but i guess its like a life imitates art cuz Clayton doesnt seem to wanna listen to his boss, anymore than Brando wanted to listen to Penn. Like: yes he kills the rustlers but not in a efficient way, no, more like he puts on a priest collar and one a those asian hats what are racist now, and stops doing a Irish accent, and just kinda messes with Cousin Eddy for like a whole camping trip together before he finally drowns him and his horse in the river.
Sissyneck Movie Sadness Fact: Jug the Horse sadly did drown for real in this part and the Humane people came to do a investigation, and the producer told em Jug died because he hit his hoof on a car and then had a heart attack and then died of shock, which they didnt believe him anymore than I do and thats why The Missouri Breaks is rated “U” for unacceptable by the American Humane Association. Well that and more horses got hurt but I don’t know there names.
Also they said Brando did more funny pranks during the river filming parts like taking bites of live frogs.
But more gladly here is where we start to collect in earnest our “Good Halloween Costume Ideas for Kids From The Missouri Breaks” which we all remember from our childhood. Whom among us didnt dress up as at least one of these memorable outfits?:
Busted Hat Lil Tod (pre-drownin):
Ol West Gramma Bonnet Sniper Clayton:
Kicky Felt Hat Cabbage-Blastin’ Clayton:
Dishtowel Head Sharecroppin’ Tom Logan:
And a course Non-Irish Priest Bug In Your Mouth Camping Prank Clayton:
But then to return to the plot-wise:
Clayton keeps killin’ the other rustlers in creative ways like…
Farmers Wife In Flagrant Delincto Snipin’:
Reverse Blood Meridian Outhouse Snipin’:
And Make A Zipline and Send A Lantern Down On It and Shoot It When Its Over The Cabin and Harry Dean Stanton Runs Out on Fire and Then Western Chinese Star Face Impalin’:
Which apparently Brando invented this weapon himself, he said he was a good knife thrower and he thought why didn’t someone already invent this one?
And meanwhile, all the time his buddies are dyin Jack Nicholson is courtin and such
but then he finds out and starts to come after Clayton. And here is where we get a Arthur Penn personal special touch, because where a normal movie might do a scene that raises the suspense or anticipations of the reckoning what is to come, instead we get about 10 minutes of Brando just goofin and talkin to his animals. We learn that his mule she is a treacherous harlot and so she gets hit (with a carrot):
But he loves his horse very much and kisses her on the lips and Lady and the Tramps with her (with a carrot):
He does a English accent for this part.
And then Marlon Brando goes to sleep and when he wakes up Jack Nicholson already cut his throat, and it kinda looks like Marlon and Jack arent even in the same room when they film this part and that kinda makes sense because it sounds like Brando left filming early and this was before the days when they could photobooth a smile on him if he wouldnt smile for the camera.
And then thats pretty much it, Jack Nicholson goes to the rich guy and its like Roadhouse kinda where we learn that its more powerful to render impotence pon the rich bad guy than to kill him, but then he pops back up with a gun so it is better to kill him after all.
And Tom and Jane are like we love each other, but we’ll probably have to check back in like 6 months to find out if we can make a relationship work so they get in their respective wagons and go their respective ways respectively.
THE END.
So I know there wasn’t nothing you didnt already know about here. Arthur Penn and his films are just kinda the culture water we’re all swimmin in, but I hope even though it was thru the internet this was maybe like good friends leaning on a pasture gate, just talking and sharing thoughts about just a good movie we both like it and seen it a million times but that dont mean its not fun to spend a little time rememberin it and saying the funny parts to each other and just looking out over the fields and no eye contact at all but just saying what we remember from the movie and laughing and theres a feeling so strong but never saying it: this is what friendly love feels like.
Alright. But it is getting time for supper and probly time to get in the truck and head home, but if we allow it: the Arthur Penn companionship warmth in our hearts might just sit there in the passenger seat next to us the whole way home in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
Categories
Learning Day: Magic & The Bible 🌭
Some of you aren’t old enough to remember this, but there was a time when Christians thought sorcery was real and they devoted their lives to destroying it at any cost to their dignity or their children’s happiness. It seems embarrassing now, but things were different back in the year … wha!? *RECORD SCRATCH* 2020!?
Published less than two years ago, Magic & THE BIBLE is hard to describe. It’s sort of a comprehensive list of make believe things the Bible didn’t mention but WOULD HAVE if they were real, but it’s also a collection of flimsy excuses for why someone would write it and how what they’re doing is, in fact, not crazy. I’m here to prove otherwise. Keep in mind I don’t have any formal psychology training. I’m just a man from an Earth where magic isn’t real with the research skills to know this book cover cost exactly $19.00 USD.
Magic & THE BIBLE was written by 70-year-old Becky Fischer, and if you’ve seen the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, she’s the one who crawls out of the little girl’s ear after laying her eggs. She’s a giggle coming from a desiccated corpse. The thing all those clowns are running from. “Becky Fischer” will be the dying words of the last mountain gorilla. Here she is, bursting from a Happy Flesh Day musical greeting card:
To be clear, this is not a book about the dangers of secular influences. Well, I guess it is, but it’s mostly about how magic powers are an actual part of life, and it’s important to make sure the ones you use come from God. This is all probably a grift, sure, but Becky will certainly die before admitting it, so we are going to treat her as she presents herself: as a lunatic who has dedicated her entire fucking life to defeating the tooth fairy and can’t.
This is a book meant to turn kids into dumber, more confused kids, but Becky starts by speaking directly to those poor children’s parents and grandparents:
There’s a weird self-awareness to Becky’s writing. You’d think someone who was really concerned about sorcery destroying the One True Path would be more frustrated and terrified, but she comes off more smug than anything else. She has an “I told you so,” attitude like someone who warned everyone about wizards and then sure enough, someone wrote popular books about them and killed God.
I feel bad pointing out the obvious ironic things like how this elderly woman hunting witches after Sunday School is making fun of people for thinking they know “the difference between make believe and reality.” There’s no sport in it. As a target of ridicule, Becky is a deer walking meekly into your sausage maker. She thinks “research” is quoting right wing news clickbait about the number of Millennial witches. And is that… is that sarcasm at the end there? Is that something you should risk in an actual kid’s demon hunting handbook? Becky took a liar’s word for it that they counted all the teen witches and she was like, “Oh, only six billion semen drinkers with Pokemon powers. I’m sure the white babies will be soooooo safe.”
Becky does acknowledge all the times people have tried to harness impossible forces and it didn’t work. Dark forces are quite mysterious. But the thing is, when you’re operating under the strict but unclear rules of an invisible being who can’t talk and maybe doesn’t exist, there’s no difference between sorcery and attempted sorcery. Becky puts it the only way kids will understand– think of wishing you had magic is like how fucking your friend’s wife is the same as wanting to fuck your friend’s wife.
I find analogies a useful writing tool to help a reader understand your perspective. They can be evocative and persuasive, but there is a danger in using them wrong. For instance, if someone could find a difference between extramarital penetration and pretending to be a wizard, it might unravel your entire argument. Why, you might even look like a total goddamn idiot. That’s not the case here, of course. Presto cadabra, ladies.
Becky is a master of comparisons. For example, if you’re having trouble understanding how God can be a holy ghost and also His own son, think of Him like an egg. An egg has three parts too, and she can start again if you’re confused, you dumb piece of shit. Her tone, not mine.
The book is 53 pages long, but every left one is taken up by a single piece of affordable clipart to help her illustrate a point. Like when she was trying to use eggs to explain just the very basic concept of God to her extremely Christian young readers, Becky chose a cute picture of Fӧnku Plūp Jesus with gushing crucifixion head wounds. It helps make it fun for the little ones.
And I’m not exaggerating when I say she is still going over the broadest possible Christian concepts well into the second half of the book. I don’t know who the intended audience is exactly, but I know they’re a working child necromancer who hasn’t heard of Jesus Christ.
Here she is on page 11, still explaining “souls.”
It’s complicated, kids, but souls are like the inside of an astronaut suit. And outer space is an ordinary, liveable atmosphere. Think of it like this: you’re a cosmic egg but ignore the yolk since you’re not your own Son, and reading Harry Potter is condomless anal. I can’t make it any clearer.
If you’re not familiar with Satan or “The Devil,” he’s a super hot guy who could get it. “Fill me with thine gifted dick much in the same way a Dungeon Master might draw a maze,” says Becky’s subtext.
Another trait of Becky’s writing, besides baking her head in coal gas until Jesus gives her a simile, is that she can work herself into a frenzy over the course of a single sentence. She starts by introducing you to the very concept of demons, who are out there and have powers, but their powers don’t work on her! She’d like to see their bitch asses try! Magic? Weapons!? Try Jesus blood, fuckers! Hyarrgh! HARK FORSOOTH, DEVILS! FOR BECKY SHALL REMOVE ASUNDER YOUR SEXY, SEXY PENISES!
There are a few unexpected twists in the book. Like when I learned, yes, ghosts are real, but they’re not exactly “ghosts.” They are only demons (sometimes known as serpents or scorpions) pretending to be dead people to trick you into talking about them. So in her own way, I guess she’s arrived at the reasonable conclusion “people who believe in ghosts are likely wrong.” I’d call it a deranged, unforced self-humiliation, though. It’s like saying we know eggs are real because astronauts are at war with breakfast, but we all need to take our own path to find truth. Speaking of truth, are witches real?
Like all supernatural things, Becky assures you witches are real, but you’re wrong about them. They aren’t green. But you’re right about everything else. They cast spells, pierce the veils between worlds, all that. But you’re wrong about that being a big deal. In fact, Becky wishes a witch would. STEP TO BECKY’S JESUS BLOOD, MAGIC COWARDS! YOUR WIZARDRY IS TRASH. JESUS WILL PICK A CARD ON YOUR FUCKING GRAVE.
Becky explains there are three kinds of magic. The first is “black magic,” which is the kind you use to bend reality to your wicked will and perform the impossible. The second is fun, like finding a quarter behind someone’s ear, and the third is “white magic” which is the same as the first kind of magic only used for heroism. However, there’s also only one type of magic: demonic. It doesn’t matter if you’re using sorcery for good or not at all while delighting at a birthday party, magic is from demons. I have to say, even in Christian literature, it’s rare to see an author so clearly lay out how poorly their brain works. Becky Fischer truly attacks a logic problem like a cat sneaking up on a ceiling fan for the third time.
After condemning all pagans and birthday magicians to an eternity of torment, Becky takes a breath and reminds her Christian readers they have no right to judge the demonic, weak, foul sorcerers who walk among us. And I know you’re tempted to do this since all of the powers from fairy tales are real, but do not get in a curse battle with these disgusting, pathetic secular fucks who you would never judge.
“Necromancy,” or as Mexicans call it, “DIA DE LOS MUERTOS,” is when wrong and demonic people are tricked by identity thief spirits into having conversations. Their savage Spanish beliefs are wrong and ridiculous, says author Becky Fischer.
So far Becky has hit on some broad topics, but let’s get into some specifics. What should you, as a Christian child, do about zombies?
Zombies aren’t in the Bible, but God probably wouldn’t like them, right? I’m saying if they were real, and you could ask Him, it’s reasonable He’d say “was disappointed when they arrived and were flesh eating monsters, one star.”
To her credit, Becky admits zombies don’t exist, except when they do, in a thing called “Voodoo,” which is “found in Africa and Haiti.” Still, they don’t seem to be much of a problem and it’s not really clear why she brought them up. Vampires, on the other hand…
Vampires weren’t a serious problem yet when they wrote the Bible, so Jesus didn’t have a take on them. But Becky has deduced, more from gut feeling than citation, that drinking human blood to gain nocturnal bat powers has at least some elements which go against Christian tradition. In the end, it’s your decision, kids. We can’t decide for you whether you stay in your grave or rise again as a servant of the night.
Like most of these Christian authors who are against every single thing in a world of unlimited things, Becky often has to make wild guesses about why she’s making her decisions. I’m going to go through Becky’s line of thinking here with as much good faith as possible.
So she decides she’s afraid of Pokémon Go, a thing without any clear indicators of witchcraft. Fine, but maybe it’s the lack of witchcraft which is the problem! Maybe it’s exactly this non-Satanism which “can innocently open up secret doors to the enemy.” Why would it? Well, listen: the creatures have powers, which God didn’t give them since they’re fictional and He’s not, and if they didn’t get powers from God, there’s only one other option: the Devil, who unlike God, is the kind of real that can give powers to the fictional. And that’s how, with one gut feeling and at least three questionable leaps of logic, a very dumb lady has convinced herself everything that has ever been is her enemy. Which is disappointing, because I always pictured the helplessly stupid as happy.
I think at this point of the book Becky started proofreading and hearing how crazy she sounded, so she’s now asking herself a lot of pedantic questions. Or “great questions,” as she describes them. It leads her to accidentally sum up her entire doctrine with “it’s virtuous to read about magic only if the magicians are evil because others are villainous even when they’re not.” I don’t know if I have a joke for that. It’s like something a below average pig brain would spit out if you stabbed an electrode into it.
This section, “IS IT WRONG TO WATCH MOVIES ABOUT MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT?” featuring seven dollars worth of Legally Distinct Wizard Boy clipart starts out almost beautiful.
Becky says there’s no limit to our imagination and the change it can make on this world. But she doesn’t mean any of that in the good way. She means you might accidentally imagine being Harry Potter so hard you betray God. She also tells you to follow your gut to see what God wants you to read, which is a lot of faith to put in us only 15 pages after she had to explain to us who that guy was.
Now that you know all imagination deviating from Jesus is a crime against Him, the book ends with Becky giving you conditioned permission to celebrate Halloween. So long as you do it in a way that ruins it for everyone in your neighborhood.
Becky doesn’t suggest doing normal insufferable Christian things like handing out tiny Bibles instead of treats. She is a true maniac who has created her own anti-holiday from directions you can’t have predicted. She suggests hanging confusing anti-monster signs like “EVEN ZOMBIES CAN HAVE LIFE IN JESUS’ NAME!” or “SORRY, VAMPIRES! The REAL POWER is in the BLOOD OF JESUS! (A VAMPIRE’S POWER IS FAKE POWER!)” And as for treats, how about giving “a bowl of hot chili to your visitors to bless them!” Why? If the danger of Halloween is the actual, real vampires, how is chili the opposite of that!? Becky! How dare you, after all that madness, hand me a bowl of chili and tell me the devil is defeated! This is a bullshit ending! I’ll never forgive you for this, Becky!!!!
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