baudot

Jesus tastes like styrofoam?
(On wedding planning, reformed Catholic cultists, and what dip goes best with the body of The Lord.)

I'm going to minister for a wedding in about a year. Yesterday, the bride and I ran around town looking for dress patterns, fabrics, et al. Our first stop was Catholic Supply. They've some amazingly beautiful things there. Raw frankincense, vestments in the colours of the high holy days, goblets and censers... none of it remotely reasonable in price. That's where the alms go, eh? Not that I blame them - functional art good.

Now Maria has just escaped from a particularly nasty cult - a schismatic splinter of the Roman Catholic Church called the Society of St. Pius X. She's broken free with the usual desire to check out all those things that were forbidden all along and test the limits of the real world. Not that she's ungrateful to her upbringing; She mentions that Ben is especially pleased with the training she had being on her knees all those years, and following the Lord's commandment, "Eat me."

Now it was obvious that we were heretics the moment we stepped through the door. Maria, the bride, was insisting on buying me a Fiacre idol. I asked why. She explained that so long as I was poly, I needed Fiacre's protection. He's not only the patron saint of gardening, but genital warts and venereal diseases as well. Maria insists that Fiacre will keep me safe. They did not, however, have a pocket sized St. Fiacre. I may continue to place my faith in latex.

After looking over the religious supplies there, we hop across the street to Ted Drewes frozen custard - being the best ice cream in the world - and satisfy that particular urge. We pick Ben (the fiancee) up a custard as well. They make a sunday called a 'Cardinal Sin' which is the obvious choice, given that the first thing we do is sprinkle it with crushed communion wafers and then throw it on dry ice for when Ben gets off work.

From there it's off to fabric stores in search of patterns and cloth. At the first, we find that they're less set up for our religious needs than they are for Rosemary's baby shower. A baby-sized blanket hangs conspicuously from the ceiling, stitched in a pentacle pattern. Only it's hung upside down. You know, horns ascendant position. For that special, satanic baby in your life.

The next fabric store has the good fabrics. They also have a sense of humor. I'm wandering through the aisles, feeling the different weaves. "ooh... this chenille is nice..." and Maria flags down an assistant. They start to discuss what to make my cassock out of. Before deciding that the red silk is the stuff, they discuss other fabrics. "That would look frufy on him." "I can see you in frufy. That's the problem." They're going to break with tradition it seems, and try to make the priest look straight.

...and that was our grand shopping adventure. After that we returned, grabbed Ben, and went out with a bar code reader to scan one of everything to go on the bridal registry from Bed Bath & Beyond. ("My porn store!" - Maria.)

The remaining question is this: What dip goes best with communion wafers?

Maria thinks spinach-artichoke.