KM: Why is it always the lamest looking guys that start a sex cult? How does that happen?
ID: Good point. It’s never a dreamboat. Who is the best looking sex cult leader you can think of? My vote is David Koresh.
KM: That’s what I was going to say. In regard to regular cults, I’d say David Miscavige. Great hair.
ID: He’s kind of WASPy hot in a way.
Recently I was browsing the web and I saw a news item about two women in Fort Myers, Florida, who married a ficus tree. Now, this wasn’t (probably) a case of objectophilia, as the women mostly had the wedding in order to prevent the tree from getting chopped down, which the town planned to do as its roots were encroaching on a neighboring property. Still, it has echoes of object love: an affinity for a thing, a wedding ceremony with white gowns and cakes, and even, somewhat miraculously, an acknowledgment from the public (city officials are now working to save the tree). It reminds me of how whenever these kinds of stories come up in the news, I always want to write a listicle of sorts, with the above title.
So, herewith, my favorite ladies marrying things:
Eija-Riita Berliner-Mauer: I’ve written about her before. Apparently she died in 2015. Still waiting on someone to translate her documentary for me. The only information I would like to add to my original piece on her is this quote:
“I find long, slim things with horizontal lines very sexy. The Great Wall of China’s attractive, but he’s too thick – my husband is sexier.”
And this poem, which she allegedly wrote:
I Dream About You
You beautiful Berlin Wall.
You are so very sexy, my Darling.
I will always be here for you. My love for you is
so strong as the concrete blocks which
holds you standing.
I often think of the times when you in my loneliness
has made me so happy.
My kisses will warm you, when the night comes.
My life begins and ends with you.
Finally you should all know she observes a yahrzeit of sorts on the anniversary of the fall of the wall.
Erika Eiffel: In 2007, Erika Eiffel observed a commitment ceremony with the Eiffel Tower, whose curves she admired. I’ve always thought the Eiffel Tower to be a bit cliched but I wouldn’t want to yuck someone’s yum, so get it, Erika! Eiffel says that prior to her union with the Tower, she had an affair with an F-15, with whom she was besotted she ended up becoming an expert on it and earned a $250,000 scholarship to the United States Air Force Academy.
Jodi Rose: Also in France, Jodi Rose married Le Pont du Diable, but I kind of call bullshit because she spoke (for her bridge lover!) and said that “he understands that I love other bridges––and men.”
I found a few others but there isn’t really enough information on them (a woman who fell in love with a metal processor, a woman who married a fairground ride) to make it into my Very Brief History. And thus we come to my favorite of the bunch: artist Tracey Emin marries a rock! Emin, the famous wild child of British art, decided to marry a rock in the garden of her summer home in France. She wore her father’s funeral shroud as her wedding dress. “Somewhere on a hill facing the sea, there is a very beautiful ancient stone, and it’s not going anywhere,” she told the press, which is just about the gosh darn most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. More than you can say for many partners, anyway.
A field of eligible bachelors, in Brittany
Guys.
What’s with the disembodied hand trend on the cover of cookbooks? Two of the most popular cookbooks in recent years feature them; in fact, the covers look suspiciously similar to one another in more ways than just that one. So, what exactly is happening here? Why do I find this a little bit… scary?
This eerie similarity is not enough for me to not want these cookbooks, though, just for the record.
So I started an homage to great similes elsewhere (cough cough). This one below is too long for me to incorporate there, but is still excellent, for so many reasons.
Yeshua’s kingdom apparently exists in ever-changing resemblances. He does not say what it is, only what it is like. It’s like a tiny seed. Like something inside you. Like a pearl you’d give everything to possess. Like wheat growing among weeds. Like the camel climbing through the needle’s eye. Like the way the world looks to children. Like a servant making good use of the master’s money. Like getting a day’s pay for an hour’s work. Like a crooked magistrate, who has fixed the case in your favor. Like a narrow gate, a difficult road, a lamp on a stand. Like a wedding party. Like a wedding party where all the original guests have been disinvited and replaced by random passers-by. Like yeast in dough. Like a treasure, like a harvest, like a door that opens whenever you knock. Or like a door you have to bang on for hours in the middle of the night until a grumpy neighbor wakes up and lends you a loaf. The kingdom is––whatever all those likenesses have in common. The kingdom, he seems to be saying, is something that can only be glimpsed in comparisons, because the world contains no actual example of it. And yet the world glints and winks and shines everywhere with the possibility of it.
~Francis Spufford , Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense
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