EPISODE 909: OF COURSE WE DON'T REJECT PEOPLE LIKE JASON, ;)
Also, Attack of the Blinding Stew People
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the Substack that comes out even on the morning after a glorious first day of spring. The news is not really cooperating this week, but I tried, I really tried.
THE WOWND UP
The Washington Post reports that the apparently very popular TikTok advice to pull your legs up and in on long airplane flights and then wrap your seat belt around your feet instead of your waist is actually a real bad idea. But personally I think the real story is how a social media app whose popularity was built around short form videos of dance moves has become a trusted source of information for people. No disrespect, but that is definitely a plot twist.
Also, the New York Times posted this weekend that the normal human body temperature is actually lower than 98.6, which also means that you could be running a fever at a lower temperature that you thought. Congratulations!
Across the pond, people are apparently losing their minds over the wherabouts of Kate Middleton, after she went in for abdominal surgery in January (which to me sounds pretty scary; is there such a thing as “routine” abdominal surgery?) and hasn’t been seen since; and this weekend I learned from the New York Times crossword puzzle that there are self-driving taxis owned by Google operating in California. Because of course there are.
TELL ME YOU’RE A RIGHT WING ANTI-GAY CATHOLIC WEBSITE WITHOUT TELLING ME YOU’RE A RIGHT WING ANTI-GAY CATHOLIC WEBSITE (RIGHT AWAY)
Last week the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a new website, Love Means More. If you happened to take a spin around the site, you might not realize who created it, as nowhere on any page of the site does it identify itself as the work of the Catholic Church, until you get far enough down the rabbit hole—and it’s quite a journey—to the extensive section on why being gay is just not great—first hint: it’s grouped with pornography and masturbation—at which point queer people who are willing to accept the site’s argument that it’s fine to be gay, you just need to find a community in which you are celibate, are invited to “Contact Us” for some suggestions on such communities (aka conversion therapy centers and summer camps). And the email, which only appears after you click on it, is defenseofmarriage@usccb.org.
The site’s worth checking out for a number of reasons. First, while it has a super clean look to it, its content pretty quickly veers into sheer gibberish. For instance, take a look at this page on “the good” and try to explain to me what it means.
You know you’re in trouble when your graph’s starting point is “Being.”
Then there are these charts from the page on sexual relationships.
Honestly, what the heck does any of this mean? (And why does it bring up abusers?)
Second, while the site insists that LGBT+ people are just fine, they just have to learn to love in different ways, the site also offers not one picture of a queer couple. Instead we get lots of pictures that feel like they were taken from ads for Viagra, Propecia, or anti-depression medication.
But this is my favorite page:
It goes on:
Coercive efforts to change a person’s feelings of attraction, bullying, and unjust discrimination are wrong and should be rejected. On the other hand, sexual activity with a person of the same sex is also wrong and should be avoided. Both can be true. While these two kinds of actions differ, it is a disservice to the individual if we obscure the truth about either one.
Honestly the whole site is basically the Catholic Church trying to lure in Gen Z kids, and wow, have we learned nothing?
A WHOLE DIFFERENT KIND OF WEB
I feel like I should have something to say about Madame Web, the newest Sony Spider-Verse box office disaster. Probably it’s better than the reviews, but I will say the promo photos sure did seem to feature a lot of shots of Dakota Johnson and co-stars running from or looking confused around this subway stop.
How amazing would it be if Sony made a super hero movie which spends the whole film at one very boring location?
MEANWHILE ON TWITTER
Yeah, Twitter is really is as crazy as you heard.
MOMENT OF WOW
I just don’t know that you can do better on a Monday morning that Anna Kendrick doing song and dance.
(Random characters suddenly synching up into a dance together is truly one of my favorite things.)
I’ll be back later this week with week 3 of prayer adventures (lol) and I think maybe something on my experiences with the vow of chastity (!) for subscribers.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for something to read, my friend Bill Glenn (who I interviewed before Christmas) just had a great piece published in Outreach about his experience of coming out. Nice job, Bill!
Have a great week!
That "1 day blinding stew" sounds like the answer for a lot of things...just sayin' ;-) Off to google it.