Gunfight at the Jesus Corral

RantWoman is having several "Bad Friend" moments in the fullness of Seattle's summer heatwave and the resulting truly prodigious outbreak of totally overwrought whining about same. By "Bad Friend" moments, RantWoman does not mean merely screaming at children, snoring during Meeting for Business, or coveting new items of clothing or especially footwear far outside her range of budgetary sensibility. RantWoman means the sort of mental hiccups that cause RantWoman herself pause when considering whether it is appropriate to venture out into the streets.

In RantWoman's experience, unprogrammed Friends are darned unfamiliar with many forms of street prosletyzing or if they are familiar with it, they are resoundingly agin' it, sometimes with great overlays of past religiosity-induced personal trauma. RantWoman is of considerably more heterodox stock, which is perhaps one reason she lingered long enough for the following experience:


If someone were singing "Come on down and meet your maker," would you think this is:

a. a choral summons to a gunfight?

b, some kind of a weird invitation to a suicide cult.

c. an altar call at an ad-hoc outdoor Christian rock concert?


RantWoman was calmly sitting in a downtown park cooling her heels and working some Sudoku when she heard the above summons. The music was danceable, upbeat. There was a bit of scripture reading RantWoman did not hear and the kind of gushy testifying one might expect from this sort of street concert. RantWoman often takes awhile to parse and remember the words of songs, and the only other bits that stuck with her were "Rescue me." Nevertheless, RantWoman decided just to go with option c and to defer judgment on both theological and psychological grounds about the "rescue me" part. Despite past decades' religious imprecations against dancing, here RantWoman would advocate "just shut up and dance."


It is also Seafair weekend. This means some parts of town are awash with seamen (and women) on shore leave. It also means the navy's Blue Angels are holding midday practice flights and then air shows for several days running.

Blue Angels' appearances mean ear-splitting, crockery-rattling noise and airborne acrobatics. They also mean eardrums curling in the sound wave front and things flying so low overhead that feline staff would attack them the same way she attacks everything on the "cat TV" window flyby--if she weren't cowering under something secure because of the noise.

Can RantWoman maintain her good standing as a member of Cranky Pacifists Opposed to Mayhem Everywhere, resent the hell out of the Blue Angels' annual high-velocity wankfest--and still admit she thinks it might be really fun and a GIANT adrenalin rush to fly INSIDE one of these planes?

Is RantWoman further exempt from full opprobrium for medical reasons? RantWoman has the kinds of medical issues that cause doctors to recommend against things like rugby, football, and boxing. What are the odds that, even if RantWoman were easily to assemble a reasonable psychic framework within which to enjoy such a flight, her doctor might still find it contraindicated for such as RantWoman to fling themselves about at a few extra G's? Let's just say, if RantWoman ever gets any time to mess around with Second Life, a mad female fighter pilot avatar may just blaze across the sky. On her way to Meeting for Business?