Blog resurrection erection.

It's been a quiet day so far in Bloomington (came here this weekend to visit Chris), and this seems like an ideal time to resuscitate The Copy Machine. There was no great reason for my failing to post the past couple months — just never got around to it, I guess.

Anyway, about halfway through my four-hour drive here on Thursday afternoon I had an experience that really got me thinking about bringing dead things back to life for no good reason. Just about 8 p.m. I rounded a wide bend on Interstate 70 when suddenly, what appeared directly in front of me — brilliant, tall and vaguely phallic — but a monstrous aluminum cross.

Of course, anyone who lives near Effingham or drives through the area regularly has seen the 198-foot salute to Christian wealth a million times. It's not like it was some big surprise. And pretty much everybody who happens upon it unexpectedly, especially anyone who drives up at night when it's lit up like at a Klan rally, seems to agree it's pretty creepy. So again, no surprise there. But what made this particular meeting with The Cross^TM especially moving was the soundtrack to my drive. Just as it came into view, I was listening to the bridge of a particular Bonnie "Prince" Billy song. The lyrics seemed appropriate:

Now I want the world to see,

Everybody look at me,

I'm a good person and free

and she loves me.

So if you switched "she" to "He," it seems like that part of the song would have worked pretty well to explain the thinking of the pious individuals who spent a million bucks to build The Cross^TM. It would be difficult to really dispute that. And here are some more lyrics from the song, titled "So Everyone."

Oh take it, oh take me, oh take it so easy

Oh make it, oh make me, oh kneel down and please me

Oh lady, oh boy, show how you want me and do it so everyone sees me

Yeah. So that song was pretty obviously written about a public performance of fellatio. It's a pretty strange song, and it's not exactly written as any kind of joke regardless of how ridiculous it sounds (sort of like the cross). 

So yeah, there was something about those lyrics playing as I drove through Effingham County that really struck me as funny (even though the cross is a very old, very tired joke by now) and surprisingly appropriate (even though it's also incredibly easy to point out the cross's absurdity).

And it made me want to write here again. All right.